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NOTE Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage

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My paper today is on Render Under Caesar. I call it the most misunderstood New Testament passage.

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And what inspired me to write this paper was of a very devout Catholic friend who said,

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Don't you know, Jeff, that Jesus supported taxes?

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And I said, Gee, no, I didn't know that. And he said, Sure, he did.

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You know that there's that Render Under Caesar passage.

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And so I looked into this and want to do a little exposition on this passage.

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So before I go in, I just want to really briefly, I'm not into the death by PowerPoint.

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This is from the Dewey Rains translation, Then the Pharisees going, consulted among

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themselves how to ensnare him in speech, and they sent him to their disciples with the

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Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art a true speaker, and teach us the way of

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God and truth.

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Neither carest thou for any man, for thou dost not regard the person of men.

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Tell us therefore, what dost thou think?

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Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?

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But Jesus, knowing their wickedness, said, Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites?

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Show me the coin of the tribute.

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And they offered him a penny, which is literally a denarius.

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And Jesus saith to them, Whose image and inscription is this?

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They say to him, Caesar, and he saith to them, Render therefore to Caesar the things that

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are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

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And hearing this, they wandered, and leaving him, they went their ways.

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Now here's the problem.

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This comes from St. Justin Martyr, this is written about, oh, circa about 150 AD.

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St. Justin Martyr says, And everywhere we more readily than all men endeavor to pay

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those appointed by you the taxes, both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught

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by him.

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For at that time some came to him and asked him if one ought to pay the tribute to Caesar,

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And he answered, tell me whose image does the coin bear? And they said Caesar's. This

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pro-tax position was first expounded by St. Justin Martyr and has been with us ever since.

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Now, not everyone agrees with this position, I might add. Augustine disagrees with this

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position. But, for example, as eminent scholars like Lord Acton and James Shaw agree with

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St. Justin Martyr and take the pro-tax position. But really the question is, did Jesus really

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What did he mean for his followers to provide financial support to Tiberius Caesar, a murderer,

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a pedophile, a tyrant, and a man who declared himself a god?

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And Tiberius was really a sexual deviant.

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Suetonius describes him as taking a swim in a pool, and as he would jump into the pool

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he would have prepubescent boys swim up and nibble at his naked body.

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I mean, really a complete nut job.

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I can't imagine that that's exactly what Jesus would mean by this.

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So the paper that I've written looks at four basic things.

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It looks at the historical setting of the tribute episode.

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It looks at the rhetorical structure of the tribute episode.

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It looks at the context within the Gospels.

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And finally, because I'm a Catholic,

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with again, with my apologies to my evangelical colleagues,

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the Catholic Church's interpretation of the tribute episode.

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In the historical setting, tax revolt, you can see there's Judea, it's a Roman province

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on the back water of the Roman Empire.

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By 6 AD, Roman poses a census tax, it's a head tax, and by 17 AD, the Judean province

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is appealing to Rome for relief.

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Romans were pretty brutal here in their imposition of these taxes, and the Jews were not particularly

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I was really happy about that and there was a tax revolt led by a man by the name of Judas the Galilean.

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Judas taught, as Josephus reports, the taxation was no better than the introduction to slavery

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and he and his followers had a quote, inviolable attachment to liberty.

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This revolt lasted for decades and the Romans responded by crucifying two of Judas' sons in 46 A.D.

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and a grandson in 66 A.D.

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Now, switching gears, that's the sort of general overview of the background.

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In Jerusalem, the tribute episode takes place right after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem is a hotbed of political and religious fervor.

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Frongs of religious pilgrims have been streaming into the city because of the Passover celebration.

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They just proclaimed Jesus King.

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Now Passover celebrates the deliverance of the Israelite people from the Egyptians and

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the restoration of the Israelites to the land of Israel, land now occupied by the Romans.

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And because of the mass of pilgrims, the Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, had also

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In Judea, Pilate was the emperor's chief soldier, chief magistrate, head of the judicial system, and chief tax collector.

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Filers described Pilate as cruel, exceedingly angry, a man of most ferocious passions, who had a habit of insulting people and murdering them, untried and uncondemned, with the most grievous of inhumanity.

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In fact, just a few years prior to Jesus' ministry, the image of Caesar nearly perished, and Pilate was the king's son.

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In fact, just a few years prior to Jesus' ministry, the image of Caesar nearly precipitated

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insurrection in Jerusalem when Pilate, by cover of night, surreptitiously erected effigies

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of the emperor on the fortress of San Antonio, adjoining the Jewish temple.

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Jewish law forbade both the creation of graven images in their introduction into the holy

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city of Jerusalem.

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Pilate averted a bloodbath only by removing the images.

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As I said, in short, Jerusalem would have been a hotbed of political and religious fervor.

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It's against this background that the tribute episode unfolds.

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So, the first thing we look at is that they ask them the question.

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And the question is really is it listed under the Torah to pay taxes to the Romans?

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This is a halakhic question. It's a question on a point of religious law.

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Really what the interrogators are doing is they're tempting Jesus to assume the authority of a rabbi

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and they expect him to, number one, answer the question,

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and number two, base that answer in scripture.

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They're testing his scriptural knowledge and they're hoping to discredit him if he cannot answer the question.

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And it's a malevolently brilliant question.

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If Jesus says it's lawful to pay the tribute, he'll be seen as a collaborator with the Romans.

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If he says it's not lawful to pay the tribute, he'll end up alienating the Romans

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and, of course, he'll be seen as a political prisoner.

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Jesus immediately recognizes the trap. He exposes the hostility and hypocrisy of his interrogators, and he rhetorically first asks why his questioners are tempting him, and he also recognizes that his questioners are daring him to enter the temporal fray of Judeo-Roman politics.

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But instead of entering the political discussion, Jesus curiously asks to see the coin.

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Now, I note that the coin, he doesn't have to respond, he doesn't need to see the coin

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to respond.

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So that he requests to see the coin suggests that there's something meaningful about the

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coin itself.

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And in the tribute episode, the coin is a denarius.

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The interrogators produce this small little silver coin, it's approximately a tenth of

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an ounce, about 3.9 grams of silver.

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The Romans hadn't gotten into debasing it with any vigor at that time.

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Under Nero, they started really debasing it.

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Roughly the day's wages. It was truly the Emperor's property. It was issued by Emperor Tiberius.

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Tiberius issued, whereas Augustus issued hundreds of denarii, Tiberius issued only three and of the three, one was really typically popular.

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Tiberius preferred this third and issued it from his personal mint for twenty years.

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The emperor used it to pay his soldiers, his officials and his suppliers, it bore the imperial seal, and it differed from the copper coins used by the Roman Senate.

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And it was the coin with which subjected peoples, in theory, were required to pay the tribute.

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Tiberius even made it a capital crime to carry any coin stamped with his image into a bathroom or a brothel.

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In short, the denarius was the tangible representation of the emperor's power, wealth, theification and subjugation.

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Now circulation of Tiberius' denarii in Judea was likely scarce. So the only people who routinely transacted with the denarius in Judea would have likely been soldiers, Roman officials and Jewish leaders in collaboration with Rome.

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Thus it's noteworthy that Jesus himself doesn't possess the coin. The questioner's quickness to produce the coin at Jesus' request implies that they routinely used it, taking advantage of financial largesse,

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and the Advantage of financial largesse, whereas of Roman financial largesse, whereas Jesus did not.

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Moreover, that tribute episode takes place in the temple.

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It implies that or reveals the religious question of hypocrisy.

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They bring a potentially profane item, the coin of a pagan, into the sacred space of the temple.

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Finally, I would point out that the coins of the ancient world were major instruments of imperial propaganda.

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Promoting agendas and promulgating deeds of their issuers, and particularly the apotheosis

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of the emperor.

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So then we move to the counter question.

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After seeing the coin, Jesus then poses the counter question, whose image and inscription

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is this?

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Again, this counter question is not necessary to answer the original question as to whether

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or not it is licit to pay taxes.

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This counter question follows a pattern of formal rhetorical rhetoric common in 1st century

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rabbinic literature where an outsider poses a hostile question to a rabbi, the rabbi responds

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with a counter question, by answering the counter question the interrogator's position

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becomes vulnerable to the attack and the rabbi thus refutes the interrogator's position.

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But Jesus has to base his answer on scripture, preferably using the Torah. I argue that the

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The use of the word image in the first part refers to the first or the second commandment,

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prohibition against creating false gods.

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Second part, the use of the word inscription, refers to the Jewish prayer, the Shema.

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Now a Shema is a Jewish prayer, it's one of the holiest prayers a Jewish person can say,

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and it commands a person to love God with his whole heart, mind, soul and strength.

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And it also requires a person to bind the words of the Shema metaphorically in his heart,

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and inscribe them literally on their doorposts and city gates.

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Observant worshipers use, I think it's pronounced a teflon.

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Back in January, a Jewish teenager brought a U.S. air flight to an emergency landing

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by tying one of these on, I don't know if you remember that in the news,

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he was trying to pray on a U.S. air flight from LaGuardia and they thought it was a bomb.

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So these little, this little leather box, and these have words of scripture in them.

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So they literally bind these words, words of scripture to their hearts and to their

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bodies and to the doorposts.

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So what's the inscription look like?

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This is the coin itself.

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When they answer they say, what is the answer to the counter question? The verbal answer

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is Caesar's image is on there. The actual image and inscription is much more revealing.

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The front of the denarius shows a profiled bust of Tiberius. We see here this is clearly

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a Roman Empire. What is the inscription around this? This is an abbreviation for Tiberius

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It stands for Tiberius Caesar, worshipful son of the god Augustus.

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On the back, you've got the Roman goddess of peace, some say that's Tiberius' mother,

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and this is Pontifex Maximus.

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So you've got what is, I think, the most richly ironic passage in perhaps the entire scriptures.

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You have the son of God and the high priest of peace, Jesus Christ, newly proclaimed by

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his people to be a king, holding the tiny silver coin of a king who claims to be the

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son of a god and the high priest of Roman peace.

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I'm going to skip ahead here because I want to...

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It's only after this cycle of coin counter question does Jesus answer the original question

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with the famous render under God.

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So this begs the question, what's God's?

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In the Hebrew tradition, everything belonged to God.

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Your whole heart, your soul, your mind, the land of Israel, even the gold and silver in

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that land, the first fruits, all of your produce belonged to God.

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What did the emperor claim?

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Well, if you look at his coin, he claims that everything belongs to him.

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He's a god himself.

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Roman occupiers occupied the land, and even the Roman peace, Pontifus Maximus, the goddess

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of peace here, says Roman peace is attributable to God, so what Jesus is saying here is that

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the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive, has nothing to do with taxes, really

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all Jesus is doing is simply inviting his readers to choose their allegiance.

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I also argue that within the context of the Gospels, the tribute episode is a part of

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what I call subtle sedition. Now subtle sedition refers to scenes throughout the Gospels which

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were not overtly treasonous and would not directly threaten Roman authorities, but which

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deliver political messages that first century Jewish audiences would have immediately recognized.

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And the Gospels are replete with these instances of subtle sedition. The point in these are

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are not to argue that Jesus saw himself as a political messiah. It's simply to argue

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that there are just these times in the Gospels where the Gospel writers like to poke at the

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eyes of the Romans. Just subtle little pokes, little nudges. I'm not going to go through

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all of these, I just want to point out one, and that's the puring a legion of demons.

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There's one in St. Mark's Gospel, St. Mark details an encounter with a garrison demoniac.

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The territory of the Garrison was pagan territory, and this particular demoniac was extremely

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strong and frightening.

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In attempting to exorcise this demon, Jesus asked him his name, and this demon replied,

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legion is my name, and there are many of us.

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Jesus expels this demon and casts him into a herd of swine.

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While first century readers would have been well acquainted with the name legion, at that

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time an imperial legion of Roman soldiers was approximately 6,000 troops.

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The Demon Legion was an agent of the devil, was a thinly veiled reference to Roman occupiers

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of Judea, and swine were considered unclean animals under Jewish law.

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The symbol of the Roman Legion, by the way, which occupied Jerusalem, they used a boar.

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That was their symbol on their shields.

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So the first century audience would have easily grasped the symbolism of casting the Demon

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Legion into the herd of unclean swine in driving itself into the sea.

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So what does the Catholic Church say? Well, the Catechism says it's morally obligatory

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to pay taxes for the common good. I'm not going to debate what the common good says.

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Catechism also quotes the tribute episode. Interestingly, Catechism does not use the

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tribute episode to stand for the proposition it is morally obligatory to pay taxes. What

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the Catechism does use the tribute episode to do is to justify civil disobedience. It

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says that you must, it quotes the tribute episode to say you must disobey Caesar. You

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You absolutely must disobey Caesar. I'll end with a quote from Dorothy Day who said,

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If we render unto God all the things that belong to God, there will be nothing left

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for Caesar. Thank you.