Didn’t Jesus say something along the lines of “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”? Sounds to me like he was pro taxes.
Matthew 22:20,21: He said to them: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”
He probably didn’t want to get crucified for encouraging tax evasion.
You are really crossing a line here with your comment!
I thought he kinda nailed it
He definitely spearheaded this comment thread.
Are we resurrecting these old puns again?
Jesus Christ
Duh, because in the Bible he was crucified for blasphemy so if he ended up crucified for tax evasion the whole story would have fallen apart.
Didn’t stop fundamentalists from retroactivity trying to create links of “prophecy” all throughout the OT for shit that wasn’t even remotely related or intended as such.
They’d just have claimed he wasn’t killed for tax evasion, no problems there for the fundies.
Exactly what my dad said when I tried to teach him about pirating media lol
Caeaers dead, dad.
Only Caesar I’ve ever seen, was a salad.
No he didn’t. That line was added at the Council of Nicea a couple of hundred years later
Every line in the Bible about Jesus was added later.
Source?
My A-Level in biblical criticism thirty years ago. Sorry, I don’t have the notes any more. Maybe google can help?
I couldn’t find anything that supports your claim
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s
except that’s not what taxes are - taxes are citizens money going in to a pot to pay for things citizens need.
Also doesn’t sound like something Jesus would say (in the context being portrayed) considering how much he hated the rich and their greed (to be clear, I’m not even christian, but this is well known).
Either way, some rich fuck trying to claim them for themsleves (or whoever added it later to serve the ruler of the time) doesn’t change what taxes are.I love people so deliberately missing the point… Fuck Jesus and what he did or didn’t say, taxes aren’t for and don’t belong to the ruler of a country/community/whatever, no matter what that ruler tells you, it really isn’t that fucking complicated.
Also doesn’t sound like something Jesus would say
It is literally something he said, after specifically being asked about paying taxes.
Mf really talked out of his ass didn’t he?
Don’t we all?
Always does.
Someone else said this line was a later addition.
And as someone ELSE else pointed out, EVERY Jesus line was a later addition.
If we’re taking that route, we ought to end the discussion right now.
Okeydoke. Have a nice nice day
Just saying, if it’s all made up, there’s no room for discussion, because there’s no truth to discuss
What other route even is there?
Either you discount things added later, so you discount everything and there is nothing left. Or you don’t discount things just because they were added later, in which case this quote still stands.
You can go now.
I think you may have gotten the wrong impression. I wasn’t telling you to shut up.
Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” He saw through their duplicity and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”“Caesar’s,” they replied. He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Luke 20 NIV
It’s pretty clear they’re taking about taxes.
The Bible actually says to shut up and pay your taxes without complaining lmao. Wonder who wrote that?
Yeah, you can bet your ass the Pope wanted everyone paying up.
There is very specifically tax fraud issues in the Bible. Mostly by tax collectors themselves. Lots of other places where it says to follow the laws of government.
The meme does encapsulate the views of a crap ton of fake Christians though.
It doesn’t really discourage rape or slavery either, though. It’s not a good manual for modern society.
You’re mostly correct about slavery, but rapists got stoned to death. Deuteronomy 22.
AFAIK they had to pay 50 shekels and marry the woman they raped right?
Yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t have left out that detail. Raping an unbetrothed virgin doesn’t get the same treatment as raping another man’s wife. I’d still say paying a fine and never being able to divorce counts as “discouraging” rape, but… damn.
An “unbetrothed virgin” wasn’t a woman, Romans didn’t even give them names at birth, just a serial number like Prima, Secunda, Tertia… and they were an expenditure to maintain until they could get sold in matrimony… guess for less than 50 shekels, or it wouldn’t be much of a fine otherwise.
Wasn’t JC kind of nice to slaves or sth?
Idunno, probably? Being nice to the downtrodden seemed to be more or less his thing when he wasn’t telling people that he was his own imaginary sky daddy 🤷
Pretty sure he didn’t actually FREE all the slaves or even told slavers to please do so, though. Spartacus is a much better role model than Jesus in that aspect.
Here, here! Jesus just did lame stuff like die on a cross. He could have saved a bunch of slaves sometime around 30 AD, specifically in the region of Roman occupied Israel. That would have been more important for the history of humanity.
I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or sarcastic. If it’s the former, I completely agree.
I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or sarcastic.
Whichever gets me the most upvotes from you. Death of the Author, Poe’s Law, and all of that.
Call me a mirror, 'cause if you be projecting, I be reflecting.
Okeydoke
For the time, maybe. But the few times slavery is mentioned in the NT the focus is on treatment of slaves, not abolition. And even then, for slave owners who didn’t follow Christian teachings, slaves were basically told to suck it up and get back to work (1Peter 2:18). Paul appears to free Onesimus in the book of Philemon (although I can’t tell if his intended meaning is literal), and it’s also worth noting that Christian nations were the first to abolish chattel slavery, but it’d be a stretch to say the Bible directly discourages slavery.
Actually, the first nation to abolish chattel slavery was Haiti, which was NOT a Christian nation at the time. The country as we know it today was literally founded through a successful slave revolt!
There is a verse in the Bible which specifically says you have to follow the law unless it conflicts with the Bible.
Too bad it said nothing like that about science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_unto_Caesar
The original message, coming in response to a question of whether it was lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar, gives rise to multiple possible interpretations about the circumstances under which it is desirable for Christians to submit to earthly authority.
All three synoptic gospels state that hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities. The accounts in Matthew 22:15–22 and Mark 12:13–17 say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke 20:20–26 says only that they were “spies” sent by “teachers of the law and the chief priests”.
The Tribute Money, by Peter Paul “Pee Wee” Rubens (1610–1615)
They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was “to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor”. The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. Initially the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark[3] the additional, provocative question is asked, “Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar’s tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose head and inscription were on it. They answered, “Caesar’s,” and he responded: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.
Render unto Cesar that which is Cesar’s.
Lots of people are mentioning the Caesar thing, but nobody has mentioned that tithe is also a tax, and there is plenty said about that. Malachi 3:8, for example.
omw to look at the comments to see if it actually does
Stealing is a sin and tax fraud is stealing money from the country you live in
Fraud also involves lies, so that a two for one.
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ITT:
A lot of people that don’t get the anti-Roman rabble rouser was sneakily saying Caesar isn’t owed anything by Judaea.
Can you expand upon this please?
Not to an academically rigorous degree, lol, but basically speaking it is clear from the known history of the region under Roman rule and the fragments of early records in non-Roman churches is that when Christianity was still a Jewish sect it found such fertile ground because it was specifically a rebellion against Roman rule and heirarchy. A non-violent one under Christ, supposedly, but one that inherently criticised Jewish collaboration with Roman rule.
Keeping in mind at the time just refusing to worship the Emperor as a god was treason, which is a bit of a problem to a monotheistic religion that damns you for doing so, but in the time Christ was preaching and later when the Apostles were running around converting everyone in earshot Judaea was working itself up for a massive rebellion against the Empire that would come to a head in The First Jewish Revolt.
Very long and blurry story short, in the three centuries between the death of Christ and the spread of his cult in the Jewish diaspora and then the oppressed underclasses of the Roman slaves and plebiscite, and quite a lot of repressed revolts against Roman rule, the canonization process of what would become the most popular Christian dogma would cease to be so explicitly anti-imperial as the early Catholic Church centered on Rome chose to whitewash anti-Roman sentiment to avoid persecution and, with luck, become more broadly appealing to their neighbors, along with their embrace of syncretist practices such as the co-opting of Mithraist rites to help convert the Roman military arms.
And, of course, it worked. By becoming a force of the Roman heirarchy instead of a critic the religion of rebels would eventually become the state religion of Rome, and thus Europe.
TL;DR when a Roman asked a non-violent cult leader preaching a doctrine that was explicitly treason in at least one way whether he was rebelling against Rome, not wanting to be executed but also not wanting to lose his followers he answered with a dogwhistle.
You can hear the quote in two ways with two answers:
What is Caesar’s to a Roman? Everything.
What is Caesar’s, false God, conqueror, and oppressor to a Jew? Nothing.
As a non-academic non-christian (so what I write isn’t worth anything, yet still I write) my interpretation was that money was subject to the law of man, but that money was inconsequential compared to the soul, which was the purview of god.
That is certainly the interpretation the European aristocracy favored and spread through their capture of the priesthood when it became fashionable to send spare heirs into the clergy, in addition to the implications of general fealty.
How tragic it is that this bit of snark towards some spies came to mean you do everything your lord demands in this life while hoping for better in the next.
Well, it probably wasn’t a real quote, but still. It does reveal the primary concern the Romans had with Christ, “Is this guy trying to raise a rebellion? And, most importantly, stop paying us?”
It actually is in favour of tax fraud painting the tax collectors as evil
Matthew 22:20,21: He said to them: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”
Tax collecting and tax paying are two different things.
IRRC, tax collectors had a lot of power and not enough oversight.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get
The Pharisee paints the tax collector as evil, but the pharisee is the bad guy in this story. Literally the next two verses:
13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other one; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Yeah, to me it sounds like “even a tax collector, the worst type of person you know, is better than the Pharisee in this story”
