Render to Caesar
Render to Caesar
`Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's' (Mark 12:17)
For many readers of the Gospels this does not seem to be a particularly hard saying. They pay their taxes to the state and give financial support to the Church and various forms of religious and charitable action, and consider that this is very much in line with the intention of Jesus's words. There are others, however, who find in these words material for debate, arguing that their meaning is not at all clear, or else, if it is clear, that it is quite different from what it is usually taken to be. Our first business must be to consider the setting in which the words were spoken. When we have done that, we may realise that some of those who heard them felt that here was a hard saying indeed.
Mark, followed by Matthew (22:15-22)and Luke (20:19-26), tells how a deputation of Pharisees and Herodians came to Jesus while he was teaching in the temple precincts during his last visit to Jerusalem and, expressing their confidence that he would give them a straight answer, without fear or favour, asked him if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. By `lawful' they meant `in accordance with the law of God, the basis of Israel's corporate life'. Mark says that the questioners planned `to entrap him in his talk' (Mark 12:13); Luke spells this out more explicitly: their purpose, he says, was to `take hold of what he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor' (Luke 20:20). The governor or prefect of Judaea was the representative of Caesar, and any discouragement of the payment of taxes to Caesar would incur sharp retribution from him.
It was, indeed, a very delicate question. After Herod the Great, king of the Jews, died in 4 B.C., the Romans divided his kingdom into three parts, giving each to one of his sons. Galilee, where Jesus lived for most of his life, was ruled by Herod Antipas until A.D. 39. Judaea, the southern part, with Jerusalem as its capital, was given to Archelaus (cf. Matt. 2:22). The sons of Herod received taxes from their subjects, as their father Herod had done. The Herods were not popular, but religiously they were Jews, so no religious difficulties stood in the way of paying taxes to them. But Archelaus's rule in Judaea proved to be so oppressive that, after nine years, the Roman emperor removed him to forestall a revolt, and reorganised Judaea as a Roman province, to be governed by a prefect appointed by himself. From now on the people of Judaea were required to pay their taxes to the Roman emperor, Caesar. A census was held in A.D. 6 to determine the amount of tribute which the new province was to yield.
The Jews had been subject to Gentile overlords for long periods in their history, but no prophet or religious teacher had ever taught in earlier days that there was anything wrong in paying tribute to those overlords. On the contrary, the prophets taught them that if they fell under Gentile domination, this was by God's permission, and they should acknowledge the divine will by paying tribute to their foreign rulers. But around the time of the census in A.D. 6 a new teaching was spread abroad, to the effect that God alone was Israel's king, and therefore it was high treason against him for his people to recognise any Gentile ruler by paying him tribute. The principal teacher of this new doctrine was Judas the Galilean, who led a revolt against the Romans (cf. Acts 5:37). The revolt was crushed, but its ideals lived on, and the propriety of paying taxes to Caesar continued to be a subject for theological debate. It would be generally agreed that Jews in the lands of the Dispersion, living on Gentile territory, should pay taxes in accordance with the laws of the areas where they lived. But the land of Israel was God's land; this was recognised by its inhabitants when they handed over one-tenth of its produce to the maintenance of his temple in Jerusalem. But the taxes which the Roman emperor demanded were also derived from the produce of God's land. Was it right for God's people, living on God's land, to give a proportion of its produce to a pagan ruler? When the question was framed in those terms, the obvious answer for many was `No'.
What would Jesus say? While he stayed in Galilee the question did not arise: taxes in that region were paid to a Jewish tetrarch. But when he visited Judaea, he came to a place where it was a burning question. However he answered it, it would be almost impossible to avoid giving offence. If he said that it was unlawful to pay taxes to Caesar, the Roman governor would get to hear of it and he could be charged with sedition. If he said that it was lawful, he would offend those who maintained the ideals of Judas the Galilean and many would think him unpatriotic. This would lose him much of his following in Judaea.
`Bring me a denarius,' said Jesus; `let me see it.' The denarius was a Roman silver coin; Roman taxes had to be paid in Roman coinage. When a denarius was forthcoming, Jesus asked, `Whose face is this? Whose name is this?' The answer, of course, was `Caesar's'. Well, said Jesus, the coin which bears Caesar's face and name is obviously Caesar's coin; let Caesar have it back. The verb translated `render' has the sense of giving back to someone that which belongs to him.
Did he imply that the use of Caesar's coinage was a tacit acknowledgment of Caesar's sovereignty? Perhaps he did. There were some Jews whose orthodoxy was such that they would not look at, let alone handle, a coin which bore a human face. Why? Because it infringed the second commandment of the Decalogue, which forbade the making of `any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth' (Exod. 20:4). Jesus did not necessarily share this attitude - money of any kind was held in little enough regard by him - but there may have been an implication in his words which the Pharisees among his questioners might have appreciated: such coins were unfit for use by people who were so scrupulous about keeping the law of God, and should go back where they came from. Caesar's coins were best used for paying Caesar's tribute. If that was what Caesar wanted, let him have it; the claims of God were not transgressed by such use of Caesar's money. What was really important was to discover what God's claims were, and see to it that they were met. Once again, he laid primary emphasis on seeking God's kingdom and righteousness.
Some interpreters have discerned more subtle ambiguities in Jesus's answer, as though, for example, he included in `the things that are God's'the produce of God's land and meant that none of it should go to Caesar, not even when it was converted into Roman coinage. But this kind of interpretation would render the whole business about producing a denarius pointless. Certainly his answer would not satisfy those who believed that for Judaeans to pay tribute to Caesar was wrong. If some of the bystanders had been led by the manner of his entry into Jerusalem a few days before to expect a declaration of independence from him, they must have been disappointed. And indeed, there seems to have been less enthusiasm for him in Jerusalem at the end of Holy Week than there had been at the beginning. On the other hand, if his questioners hoped that he would compromise himself by his reply, they too were disappointed. He not only avoided the dilemma on the horns of which they wished to to impale him, but turned it so as to insist afresh on the central theme of his ministry.