Caesar and God

[TEPO]

It means we must pay taxes…!

Just joking -I think it has nothing to do with taxes at all, although a lot of people try to make that claim.

 

[patrick457]

The statement about rendering to Ceasar was Jesus’ response to a trap which the Pharisees had set for him so that he might be put to death.

The curious thing here is, the question about taxes is really the last pericope in the Synoptics in which “the Pharisees” figure prominently. After this they disappear altogether in Mark and Luke, and get relegated to a few token cameos in Matthew. From here, “the chief priests and the scribes and the elders” almost completely become the antagonists.

Notice that the Pharisees send not only their own desciples but also the “Herodians”. The Herodians were the representatives of Herod who was the Roman occupation ruler. The questioun they ask Jesus is one which thy believe has only two answers - yes and no.

Just a little aside: we don’t know what the ‘Herodians’ were. They only appear twice in Mark (3:6; 12:13-17), and not at all in Matthew and Luke. Both instances have them conspiring with the Pharisees. Some think that they were partisans or high-level bureaucrats and servants under the pay of Antipas; Shimon Gibson (The Final Days of Jesus) even think that they refer to the Essenes, which enjoyed special favor under the Herods (an Essene named Menachem predicted to a young Herod the Great that he would become king; Herod soon returned the favor - a gate in his palace in Jerusalem was even called the Gate of the Essenes).

If Jesus answers no, that it is unlawful to pay the census tax then he is guilty commits treason against Cesear. If Jesus answers yes, that it is lawful to pay the census tax, then he recognizes the Cesear as a legitimate authority and breaks the law of Moses.

Yep. The trick lies in whether Jesus will side Himself with the dissidents (by advocating tax evasion) or with the collaborators (by advocating payment of taxes). It’s really interesting to note here that Judas of Gamala’s rebellion in AD 6 was in response to this same issue: the payment of the Roman poll tax.

In Luke’s Gospel, the census tax episode occurs right after the Pharisees question Jesus’ authority. Jesus’ authority is questioned all through the Gospels.

No, in all three Gospels it is “the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders” who question Jesus about His authority. This is of course followed by the parable of the tenants. Only Matthew and Mark directly say that Pharisees came to Jesus (in Mark, they are joined by the “Herodians,” and the implication seems to be that the chief priests sent them.) Luke doesn’t identify the questioners explicitly as Pharisees but “spies who pretended to be sincere,” also sent by the chief priests.

 

[patrick457]

Jesus tells the Phariesses and Herodians both that they possess legitimate authority but that they do not use that authority rightly, as God would want it. The Pharisees used what had been the legitimate authority given to them by God through Moses to enrich themselves and to become powerful politicians. This was a perversion of the Law of Moses. The Romans on the other hand, used legitimate civil authority to exhalt themselves as Gods. Both were perverting the legitimate authority which they possessed, and in so doing had really given up the right to use that authority any longer.

You’ve just turned my nitpicking switch on.

The Pharisees are probably one of the successor groups to the so-called Hasideans (Ḥasidim) or the ‘pious’, a Jewish religious party which commenced to play an important role in political life during the time of the Maccabean wars (though they had apparently already existed for quite some time) because of their resistance to the influx of Hellenism during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV.

The ḥasidim apparently supported the Maccabean revolt (1 Maccabees 2:42), at least at first; this alliance would increasingly grow weaker as the Maccabees continued to fight for political autonomy and the advancement of their own family. Jonathan’s (aka Apphus, Judah Maccabee’s brother) acceptance of the high priesthood as a gift from Alexander Balas in 152 BC proved to be very controversial, since while the Maccabees were priests, they were not of the ‘legitimate’ Zadokite line and thus had no claim to the office. Furthermore, the high priesthood was bequeathed to Jonathan by a pagan ruler whose questionable authority rested in claiming to be the son of the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes. Most of the ḥasidim however seem to have acquiesced to this settlement when “the yoke of the gentiles was removed from Israel” (1 Maccabees 13:14) in 141 BC, and in the following year a national assembly confirmed the high priesthood and kingship of Simon (aka Thassi, Judah Maccabee’s other brother) and his family “till there should arise a faithful prophet” (1 Maccabees 14:41). For one, the main line of the former high-priestly family of Zadok had already gone to Egypt and installed themselves in a new temple in Leontopolis.

It was during the time of Simon’s son John Hyrcanus that relations between the ḥasidim and the ruling Hasmoneans became completely disrupted. Curiously, it is also the time when the Pharisees begin to appear in the historical record: one theory about the origin of the name Pharisee is that meant ‘separated’ in the sense of one who broke alliance with the Hasmoneans. The Talmud relates a legend about how John Hyrcanus, who once supported the Pharisees, was told off by a Pharisee named Eleazar that he cannot be king and high priest at once and demanded him to give up the office of high priesthood. Hyrcanus naturally took offence at this remark, and, goaded by a Sadducee named Jonathan, began to withdraw his favor away from the Pharisees.

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

The legend is most likely an over-simplification of the historical fact, but in any case, it is probably certain that until the death of Alexander Jannaeus (who was very anti-Pharisee, to the point of hanging/crucifying 800 Pharisean rebels at one point and slaughtering their wives and children before their very eyes - Jannaeus was feasting while watching this cruel spectacle) in 76 BC, the Sadducees, who first appear in the records as the party supporting and advising the Hasmoneans, were the party in power and the Pharisees were in opposition. They seem to have enjoyed a miniature golden age during the reign of Jannaeus’ widow, Salome Alexandra, who favored their party. From her time onwards the Pharisean party began to have some secure political position within the high council (i.e. the Sanhedrin).

When Herod became ‘King of the Judaeans’, both the high priest and his group of advisors lost most of their authority, though the Pharisees’ popular prestige increased, because they did not shrink from opposing Herod publicly when the situation called for it. When Herod’s kingdom was broken up among his sons and the tetrarchy of Judaea became a Roman province in AD 6 (after Archelaus, whose share the area formerly was, was deposed for being incompetent), high priest and council resumed control of internal affairs - since Rome preferred an indirect way of rule - though they were directly responsible to the prefect. During the next sixty years the high priests were regularly selected from the wealthy Sadducean families, and these families dominated the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees were officially back in the minority, though this time they enjoyed huge popularity among the masses.

So, in conclusion:

(1) The Pharisees as a whole were not aristocratic. They were a party with members from all social classes: most of them were probably laymen, though some were ordinary priests. A number of members may be aristocratic, but note that some of the famous Pharisaic sages of the period, such as Hillel and Shammai, seemed to be of peasant stock (there was no middle class; you were either varying shades of ‘rich’ or ‘poor’, a divide which increased with time) and worked in various trades such as cobbling, charcoal burning, woodcutting, and craftsmanship; St. Paul himself, who claims to be a Pharisee, was a tentmaker in his spare time.
(2) At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees never really held any true political authority. Their fortunes depended on who was in power: as noted above, the golden age which began in Queen Salome’s time ended with the Herodians and the subsequent Roman conquest of Judaea, when their rivals the Sadducees became promiment. Making up for their lack of political status was their popularity among the common people.

 

[patrick457]

Why?

The Holy Family was in the Grace of God.

The Old Covenant was a covenant with the Jewish People and it was about their nation. The nation was in decline at the time, so if you believe the Covenant, this would tell you that the Jews weren’t holding up their end of the Covenant. The Northern Kingdom had long fallen to the Assyrians and the Southern portion of the nation was under the control of the Romans.

Nope. Under the Neo-Babylonian and the Achaemenid empire, the former kingdom of Judah became a province known as Yehud (or later, Yehud Medinata). Soon, the Achaemenid Empire became a part of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire, and after his death, the Seleucids occupied the territory. The revolt of Judah Maccabee succeeded in throwing the Seleucids out and subsequently resulted in the Hasmonean dynasty who ruled in Judea for over a century. The Hasmoneans then began to expand their territory: it was during the reign of John Hyrcanus that the Transjordan, Samaria, the Galilee, and Idumaea became a part of the kingdom. In 63 BC the kingdom became a protectorate of Rome, under the supervision of the Roman governor of Syria. Around 57-55 BC, the kingdom was split into three regions: the Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, with five districts of legal and religious councils (synedrion in Greek, where the word ‘sanhedrin’ comes from).

Herod the Great, who became a client ‘king of the Judaeans’ with Roman help, inherited wholesale the Hasmonean territories, only for it to be divided among his sons as a tetrarchy (‘ruler of a fourth’) upon his death, with Archelaus (his son by his fourth wife Malthace the Samaritan) receiving the lion’s share - namely Idumaea, Judea and Samaria - and the title of Ethnarch; Antipas (Archelaus’ brother) receiving the Galilee and Peraea; and Philip (Herod’s son by his fifth wife Cleopatra of Jerusalem) receiving the northern parts. Archelaus was soon booted out for being incompetent in AD 6, and so his tetrarchy became a full-blown Roman province (Iudaea Province) under the governance of a prefect. The other two brothers continued to keep their share, and so by the time when Jesus set out into public view, His native province of the Galilee was (still) under the rule of the tetrarch Herod Antipas.

 

[steve53]

The Gate of the Essenes was outside of the palace wall of Herod, and marked the northwest corner of the upper city of Jerusalem.

The Pharisees were not all aristocrats, but it helped. The Jews respected the common man whom God chose to work through and minister to the people. The Old Testament is full of them. But being known as a Pharisee was a full-time commitment to the study of Jewish law, and if you had no money or sponsor, that pathway was closed for all practical purposes.

 

[patrick457]

The Gate of the Essenes was outside of the palace wall of Herod, and marked the northwest corner of the upper city of Jerusalem.

Josephus mentions two landmarks associated with the section of defense wall running from the Hippicus tower - one of the two monumental towers that were inserted into the line of the defense wall - southward: ‘Bethso’ (beth tso’a ‘house of excrement’?) and the Gate of the Essenes.

The city of Jerusalem was fortified with three walls, on such parts as were not encompassed with unpassable valleys; for in such places it had but one wall. The city was built upon two hills, which are opposite to one another, and have a valley to divide them asunder; at which valley the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end. Of these hills, that which contains the upper city is much higher, and in length more direct. …] Now, of these three walls, the old one was hard to be taken, both by reason of the valleys, and of that hill on which it was built, and which was above them. But besides that great advantage, as to the place where they were situated, it was also built very strong; because David and Solomon, and the following kings, were very zealous about this work. Now that wall began on the north, at the tower called “Hippicus,” and extended as far as the “Xistus,” a place so called, and then, joining to the council-house, ended at the west cloister of the temple. But if we go the other way westward, it began at the same place, and extended through a place called “Bethso,” to the gate of the Essens; and after that it went southward, having its bending above the fountain Siloam, where it also bends again towards the east at Solomon’s pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called “Ophlas,” where it was joined to the eastern cloister of the temple. The second wall took its beginning from that gate which they called “Gennath,” which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia. The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it reached as far as the north quarter of the city, and the tower Psephinus, and then was so far extended till it came over against the monuments of Helena, which Helena was queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates; it then extended further to a great length, and passed by the sepulchral caverns of the kings, and bent again at the tower of the corner, at the monument which is called the “Monument of the Fuller,” and joined to the old wall at the valley called the “Valley of Cedron.”

To this day we don’t know exactly where the Gate of the Essenes was located. Some think that it was located at the southeast end of the First Wall on the lower slope of the traditional Mount Zion, at a point where it led into the Kidron Valley and toward the Judaean Desert, and indeed, a gate was found at this spot on two separate occasions during the late 19th century and the 1960s. Judging by its construction style, the gate seems to date from the Byzantine period (mid-5th century at the earliest) or later, though potsherds discovered in a small probe beneath the fills of the adjacent paving are found to date from the 1st century. (Others contest this date, however, since the potsherds could equally likely be residuals in a consolidation fill poured beneath the Byzantine paving.) Others are more circumspect, suggesting that the gate is somewhere west of the city, not far from the Hippicus, but without providing any exact location.

Recently, some people have begun to propose that a monumental gateway found in the 1970s along the western Old City wall in the 280-meter stretch between the southern moat of the Citadel and the present-day southwest angle of the Old City was the gate. This complex was built somewhere in the latter part of the 1st century BC (probably during the time of Herod the Great), with the remains of a large courtyard situated between two inner and outer fortification walls, each with respective gates. On the northern side of the courtyard was a rocky outcrop and on top of it was a small rectangular built platform with steps: the southern side seems to have been originally paved, albeit the paving stones are now gone (probably taken away during the Byzantine period). A few folks (like Shimon Gibson and James Tabor) even opine that this gateway, in addition to being Josephus’ Gate of the Essenes, was the Gabbatha of John’s gospel.



Below is a map showing the gate excavated by Frederick Bliss and Archibald Dickie in 1894-7 (marked as ‘Gate of the Essenes?’), with the one found by Magen Broshi and Shimon Gibson in the 1970s added by me (marked as ‘Gabbatha / Gate of Judgment’).

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5438/mapif.jpg

 

[patrick457]

The Pharisees were not all aristocrats, but it helped. The Jews respected the common man whom God chose to work through and minister to the people. The Old Testament is full of them. But being known as a Pharisee was a full-time commitment to the study of Jewish law, and if you had no money or sponsor, that pathway was closed for all practical purposes.

By contrast, the people did not have much love for the Sadducees, who were “the first men,” (i.e. the leading citizens) and who were always busy in-fighting and had “the confidence of the wealthy alone,” the wealthy being a group made up largely of themselves - or at least Josephus claims (Antiquities 13.10.6; 18.1.4; War 2.8.14). The popularity the more plebeian Pharisees enjoyed among the populace was potentially threatening for the Sadducees, since anyone who challenged their authority or who attempted to bring social change threatened a power pyramid from which they benefited.

 

[patrick457]

Ultimately, the kingdom of God doesn’t have anything to do with political entities.

In a sense, yes, but in a world and culture where it was virtually impossible to separate religion and politics, ethics and economics, the term “kingdom of God” has a far more grittier, edgier political meaning to it. Saying that Yhwh is the true King who rules the land would imply that Caesar isn’t - Caesar is, at best, just some sort of divine puppet, who only has power because God allows him to have it. Since, in the end, even the Roman emperor is merely but a small fish when compared to God, he can have his coin back: of more paramount importance is “the things that are God’s” and the interests of His kingdom, which is to be done “in earth as it is in heaven.” It is really this talk of another kingdom and a higher King within the Caesar’s domain (even one that “is not of this world”) that eventually sends Jesus to His death.

Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.”

Personally I think that the idea that Jesus’ teaching of the Kingdom was a form of radical nonviolent resistance against social oppression by class and colonial oppression by Rome (compared to the violent resistance typified by groups like the Zealots) may have some truth in it. Sin, inequality, oppression and injustice have no right to exist in the realm the just and merciful God rules over - the whole earth.

 

[steve53]

Gate of the Essenes…

Patrick- one obvious problem with the map you reproduced is that Herod’s Palace was connected to the Temple by an elevated causeway. If that map is correct, the pedestrian causeway had to be over a half mile long.

Pretty ridiculous, actually.

My favorite author, whom I durst not mention, has a nice couple of chapters on the layout of the upper city of Jerusalem, based on Josephus. The Palace of Herod is more centrally located, and much closer to the Temple, which would make sense.

Many people who have produced such maps based on archaeologic findings under-appreciate how much Titus and his legions changed the landscape of Jerusalem.

 

[teeboy]

Jesus’ rule over all nations far exceeds political considerations. So I would say no, I do not agree that Jesus is the “sovereign” ruler of all nations, simply because earthly politics and nationalism have nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

I don’t yet agree. There are many mentions of nations and wars and prices in Revelation. These things are meant to chastise. Chastisement is part of the two edged sword known as The Word of God.

 

[teeboy]

Our Justice system in the U.S., I would argue, is not in accord with the New Testament. I am speaking of turn the other cheek and love your enemy.

 

[teeboy]

Are you advocating that all nations become autocratic theocracies? I hope not because the past has shown us just how bad things can get when Church and State are one and the same.

You are reading between the lines.

 

[Ad_Honorem]

In respects to the OP, it is potentially a matter of secular conjecture.

If you want to go further, it could even potentially border on being a psuedo-mataphysical form of secular conjecture.

 

[teeboy]

In respects to the OP, it is potentially a matter of secular conjecture.

If you want to go further, it could even potentially border on being a psuedo-mataphysical form of secular conjecture.

There is one truth. I disagree with you. To have more than one truth would mean truth is non existence.

 

[Ad_Honorem]

There is one truth. I disagree with you. To have more than one truth would mean truth is non existence.

You’ll have to explain how the fact I italicized psuedo-metaphysical form suggested I was deviating from a singular truth?

 

[teeboy]

You’ll have to explain how the fact I italicized psuedo-metaphysical form suggested I was deviating from a singular truth?

Because you italicized a misspelled word.

 

[Ad_Honorem]

Because you italicized a misspelled word.

Ha…fair enough, just spotted that. Seemed right at gone midnight

 

[mercytruth]

D-R Bible, Haydock Commentary:

Ver. 17. Although Christ clearly establishes here the strict obligation of paying to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar, to the confusion of his very enemies, we shall still find them bringing forward against him the charge of disloyalty, as if he forbade tribute to be paid to Cæsar. (Luke xxiii. 2.) After the example of her divine Model, the Catholic Church has uniformly taught with St. Paul, the necessity of obeying the powers in being; and this not for fear of their wrath, but for conscience sake. Render to Cæsar the money on which his image is stamped, but render yourselves cheerfully to God; for the light of thy countenance, O Lord, is stamped upon us, (Psalm iv.) and not the image of Cæsar. (St. Jerome) — With reason were they astonished at the wisdom of this answer, which eluded all their artifices, and taught them at the same time what they owed to their prince, and what they owed to God: and whoever hopes for the favour of heaven, must conscientiously observe this double duty to God and to the magistrate.

This commentary is in agreement with the Apostolic Constitutions, Book II, Section 6, chapter XLVI:

XLVI. “Let not the heathen therefore know of your differences among one another, nor do you receive unbelievers as witnesses against yourselves, nor be judged by them, nor owe them anything on account of tribute or fear; but “render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” Matthew 22:21 as tribute, taxes, or poll-money, as our Lord by giving a piece of money was freed from disturbance. Choose therefore rather to suffer harm, and to endeavour after those things that make for peace, not only among the brethren, but also among the unbelievers. For by suffering loss in the affairs of this life, you will be sure not to suffer in the concerns of piety, and wilt live religiously, and according to the command of Christ. But if brethren have lawsuits one with another, which God forbid, you who are the rulers ought thence to learn that such as these do not do the work of brethren in the Lord, but rather of public enemies; and one of the parties will be found to be mild, gentle, and the child of light; but the other unmerciful, insolent, and covetous”

newadvent.org/fathers/07152.htm