Rycke Brown

"Give unto Caesar..." actually means the exact opposite of the way it is general understood. It is generally taken as an admonition to pay your dues to both Church and State, even as a primitive separation of church and state. Taken by itself, it would seem to be so. But taken in the context of the question asked, the politics of Roman-occupied Judea, and Old Testament laws, it means something entirely different.

The following quotes are from Matthew 22:15-22, New King James version, except where otherwise noted:

"Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God in truth; nor do you care about anyone, for you do not regard the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?'"

The fact that they asked the question (in front of the puppet Herod's men) shows that it is a point of controversy, as well it should be. The 1st commandment, Exodus 20:3,4 says, "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image...You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them...." And Deuteronomy 17:15 says, "You shall surely set a king over you whom you Lord God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall choose as king over you; you may not set a foreign king over you, who is not your brother."

"But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, 'Why do you test me, you hypocrites? Show me the tax money.'
"So they brought him a denarius.
"And He said to them, 'Whose image and inscription is this?'
"And they said to him, "Caesar's."

Well, son of a gun; here's a graven image of a foreign god! A foreign king who considers himself a god, anyways. A good Jew shouldn't even be carrying it in his purse. And he shouldn't be bowing down to him, or serving him, or paying taxes to him.

"And he said to them, 'Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' When they had heard these things, they marveled, and left Him and went their way."

His answer requires one to think about what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. Romans, who think everything material belongs to Caesar, would not be troubled unless they really understood Judaism. What belongs to Caesar? His coins and his troops, and they should be sent back to Rome. What belongs to God? The land of Israel, and the people of Israel, their labor and their devotion. Little wonder that the disciples of the Pharisees marveled. They couldn't even explain it to the Herodians or the Romans without admitting their own guilt against their Lord God and treasonous thoughts against Caesar.

It is important to remember that this was a specific question about paying taxes to a specific god-king. It is not a general admonition regarding the roles of church and state. But it is useful to think about what those separate roles are, and keep the state confined to its proper role.

Tubby Lardmore

Interesting thought.

I suspect there is a lot of stuff in the Bible that goes right by a modern reader without being absorbed in the way it was originally intended to be, given how much daily life has changed in 2,000-3,000 years.

I once emailed a "verse" to a Christian friend of mine, and asked her to discern if it was a real KJV one, or just something I made up: Seethe not thine manservant's raiment in oil, nor thine maidservant's garment in goat's milk.

She took "seethe" to mean "see-eth," so I had to explain that it is King James English for "boil." At that point she figured it probably was in the Bible. But in fact I had made it up. My point to her was that a mere human such as I can come up with stuff that sounds just as divinely inspired as the stuff in the Holy Bible.

Rycke Brown

Hey, Tubby, Joseph Smith wrote a whole book in that style. It's called the Book of Mormon.

But your girlfriend's answer illustrates how many Christians have read the Bible from beginning to end, which is to say darned few. Anyone who had would immediately perceive that oil and milk are way too valuable to be boiling clothes in, which would serve no purpose anyways.

Oil does figure heavily in the sacrifices demanded by God for transgressing any one of the 600-odd commandments in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. These sacrifices were a disguised tribute to Moses' tribe, the Levites, which he elevated to priestly class. Part of Jesus' revolt was a revolt against the rules of the Levites and the sacrifices they demanded, as well as against Caesar and his occupation of Israel.

Charles Wilson

This story works on many levels. I believe this was written ~ 8 - 12 CE and is a challenge to both the Pharisees and the Zealots. Note that Jesus understands the trap before he pulls his coin trick. The Zealots/Essenes would not even look at a statue over a city gate, much less the face on a coin. So,what's the trap? The Pharisees want to get Jesus tied to an insurrectionist group. If they can do this, Jesus convicts himself. Getting him tied to the Zealots would do just fine. On my view, Jesus is about 1 year or two away from the death of Judas of Galilee.

Therefore, Jesus was not a Zealot.

Jesus, however,does want to eliminate the Romans. Therefore, his ideas are different from the Zealots. Jesus wants to challenge the Pharisees. "Tell me, is it right to do good or evil on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?" The Pharisees have done something on the Sabbath that they will not acknowledge to Jesus. Notice that later, the Pharisees have a chance to do something "right", not paying attention to what the crowds want. They pander to the crowds.

So what's the deal, here? Looking at the face on a coin is not the act of uncleanliness. "Why worry about the splinter in your brother's eye and not see the plank in your own eye?" The Pharisees have rendered everything they see unclean. They will not even acknowledge the blood on their own hands. Jesus is looking way past this. He is a Priest. He knows about being unclean, ritually and otherwise. After all, he has lived through an act that has brought death and slaughter to the Temple itself - an act that occured with the approval of those very Pharisees.

CW

Rycke Brown

Quite right, Julian. "Looking at a face on a coin is not an act of uncleanness." Jesus was not concerned with symbolic actions that don't hurt others. He was, as you say, not a Zealot. (Zealots throughout the ages have been more concerned with symbolism than substance.) But supporting Rome with their taxes was indeed an act of uncleanness, as it supported the Roman Emperor and his war machine.

But he could hit the Pharisees in their symbolism, subtly pointing out that they were not just ignoring idolatry, but forcing their people to put another god before their Lord God, while being greatly concerned about hygeine and the keeping the Sabbath. (Of course, enforcing those nit-picking rules brought them lots of sacrifices of attonement.)

Not putting other gods before Him might seem to be purely symbolic, except that it required the nation of Israel to stay free of foreign rule and foreign gods. Which is why the sheep of the House of Israel were lost, and needed to be redeemed.

Solomon had broken every rule for kingship laid out in Chapter 17 of Deuteronomy. His son didn't listen to the people when they cried for relief from his father's taxes, and ten tribes walked away, and fought with the other two, until they were all conquered by the Babylonians and the ten tribes were lost to history, presumably assimilating into their conqueror's culture.

The Maccabees regained Israel's independence for a while, until the Romans rolled over everyone in the neighborhood. Jesus came along and saw that a kinship-based holy nation was impossible; there were always bad people and bad kings.

But a holy nation could be built if citizenship was voluntary and based on holy actions, if the rules were few and simple, and if the king was undying and uncorruptible and didn't change his rules. He built a shadow government that people could feel good about giving their allegiance and support to, that would help people instead of sucking sacrifices out of them, while avoiding direct confrontation with the conquerors as much as possible.

But they would refuse to be individually conquered, would die before they'd bow down to Caesar. Which is why the Romans killed so many of them, until Constantine figured out how to divide and conquer the Church.