Chapter 184 of 404

Welcoming Tax-collectors

That Jesus welcomed tax gatherers into the kingdom, ate with them, and even invited one or more to follow him as disciples is multiply attested (Mk 2:14-15; Lk 19:2; Matt 11:19//Lk 7:34).¹⁵⁴ In doing so, Jesus was not merely playing to his primary audience of nonelite Galileans, but was expressing a controversial conviction about the kingdom. The common people and nonaristocratic pietists alike despised tax-gatherers as agents of the Romans and their aristocratic pawns.¹⁵⁵

Like the parable in Lk 18:10-11 (cf. Mk 2:16), later rabbinic texts sometimes contrast tax-gatherers and Pharisees, the least and most pious people one might expect to meet in daily life.¹⁵⁶ Later rabbinic tradition likewise continues the common people’s disdain for the profession.¹⁵⁷ (Perhaps not surprisingly, those directly involved with taxation were not popular elsewhere in the Empire either.)¹⁵⁸

The average Jewish person in ancient Palestine had several reasons to dislike tax-gatherers. First, Palestine’s local Jewish aristocracies undoubtedly arranged for this tax-collection.¹⁵⁹ Second, that the Empire sometimes had to take precautions against tax-gatherers overcharging people¹⁶⁰ suggests that some taxgatherers did just that.¹⁶¹ Extant documents indicate that to avoid such problems people sometimes paid tax gatherers bribes, in one case as high as 2200 drachmas “for extortion.”¹⁶² Further, nearly all scholars concur that taxes were exorbitant even without overcharging.¹⁶³ To illustrate in an extreme manner (though matters were probably less severe in Galilee), in some parts of the Empire taxation was so oppressive that laborers fled their land, occasionally depopulating entire villages.¹⁶⁴

In Mk 2:14-15, Jesus calls the tax gatherer Levi to follow him, and eats in his home along with many other tax gatherers and “sinners” who were following him. Levi’s office would have made him locally well-known. Levi probably either taxed local fishermen or acted as a customs agent charging levies on merchandise leaving Philip’s tetrarchy for that of Herod Antipas.¹⁶⁵ Because Capernaum was ideally located for significant customs revenue, many scholars today lean toward the view that Levi here is a customs officer.¹⁶⁶ Customs officers¹⁶⁷ probably generated less local discontent, however, so this interpretation might have greater problems explaining the contextual association with despised sinners (Mk 2:15-17).¹⁶⁸

For Jesus to welcome tax collectors into God’s kingdom suggests a radical rethinking of the character of the kingdom. Jesus, like John, called all Israel to repent in light of the coming kingdom; repentance along the lines of Jesus’ movement would grant one a place in the kingdom regardless of one’s past sins. The matter of the kingdom was apparently also urgent enough to welcome whoever would embrace it (Matt 22:9; Lk 14:23).¹⁶⁹

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