Give the emperor what is the emperor's

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The interest penny (Titian)

“Give the emperor what is the emperor and God what is God” is a sentence ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth in the wording of the Luther Bible (Matthew 22:21). In the Greek original: ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ . This sentence is the culmination of a school conversation shaped as an apophtegma :

15 So the Pharisees went and counseled that they should catch him by what he said, 16 and sent to him their disciples and Herod's followers. They said: Master, we know that you are truthful and teach the way of God rightly and ask about no one; for you do not respect people's reputation. 17 So tell us what do you think: Is it right to pay taxes to the emperor or not? 18 When Jesus saw their wickedness, he said, Hypocrites, what are you tempting me? 19 Show me the tax coin! And they handed him a silver groschen. 20 And he said to them, Whose picture and inscription is this? 21 They said to him, The emperor's. And he said to them, Give the emperor what is the emperor's, and to God what is God's. 22 When they heard this, they were amazed, and left him and went away. ( Mt 22.15-22  LUT )

Parallel passages

Matthew took this material from the Gospel of Mark ( Mk 12,13-17  LUT ) and revised it stylistically.

Luke also took over the material from Mark ( Luke 20 : 20–26  LUT ). He set the following accents: the questioners are " people ... who should pose as if they were righteous " (v. 20), they are sent in advance by the scribes and high priests with the plan explicitly mentioned here, " so that one ( Jesus) could hand over to the authority and power of the governor . "(Ibid.)

Since the Gospel of Matthew quickly developed into the main gospel of the Roman Church, the pericope “from the penny of interest” was received primarily in the Matthew version.

Interpretation of the word of Jesus by the evangelist Matthew

The opponents of Jesus are the Pharisees , whom Matthew presents to the reader as a closed group (together with the "Herodians", a group about which research has puzzled over a lot). Your address is emphatically polite, but is only intended to set a trap for Jesus. Jesus either opposes the Roman occupation forces and himself provides the reason to arrest him, or he loses popular sympathy. Jesus sees through their plan, and his astonishing answer ensures him victory in this speech duel; the opponents withdraw for the time being.

Silver denarius of Tiberius . Most of the time it is assumed that the dispute was about such a coin. The prices that collectors are willing to pay for an interest penny ( tribute penny ) are correspondingly excessive .

So Matthew's intention is to tell how the Pharisees “put a noose around Jesus and how they fail. Today's readers of the Perikope, on the other hand, would primarily like to know what significance the text has for the question of the relationship between the Christian community and the state. "

Contemporary color

When the ethnarchy of Archelaus was converted into a Roman province (6 AD), the Romans began to register the population (the "estimate" known from the Christmas story) for the purpose of collecting property and poll tax. “All male members of a household aged 14 and over and all female members aged 12 and over had to pay tribute, with one denarius per head being payable annually.” The registration was accompanied by brutal interrogations; in response to these coercive measures there was, for example, an uprising under Judas the Galilean .

In the event of unrest among the local population, it was the Roman practice to hold the local upper class responsible for collecting taxes. From remarks made by Flavius ​​Josephus , one can conclude that this was also the case in Judea shortly before the outbreak of the Jewish War . But it is uncertain whether this regulation already existed at the time of Jesus of Nazareth.

Possible meaning in Jesus of Nazareth

One can then ask the pericope whether a memory of the political positioning of Jesus of Nazareth is preserved here. It was an explosive political situation that ultimately culminated in the Jewish uprising against the Roman occupation .

Since ἀποdίdωμι is a terminus technicus for paying taxes , the word in Jesus' mouth cannot be given a deeper meaning than his opinion that the tax is a refund of what belongs to the emperor.

Eschatological interpretation

According to Albert Schweitzer's interpretation, Jesus expected the rulership of God to begin soon; the Roman state belongs to the anti-divine powers, which will then be disempowered anyway. Hence, he understands Jesus' answer ironically. This Jesus is politically disinterested:

“What he [Jesus] thinks about the state is clearly stated in his answer to the question about the interest penny , since the Pharisees wanted to catch him (Mark. 12). Give the emperor what is the emperor's, and God what is God's, that is: religion and state have nothing to do with each other. How do you want to combine divine power and earthly power? "

Klaus Wengst understands the attitude of Jesus in a similar way : as a poor hiking radical, the question of money no longer arises for him.

Jesus takes a mediating position

According to this interpretation, Jesus distances himself from the Zealot movement, but without making himself common with the cause of Rome. He steers a middle course by pointing out the questioners to their own inconsistencies through the conduct of the conversation: they participate in the Roman economic system because they have Roman coins in their pockets.

Jesus sympathizes with the Zealot cause

By reading καί not as “and” but as “but” in the Greek text , the claims of the state and God come into conflict: since God demands the whole human being, the emperor no longer has to make any claims. Any zealot could have agreed with this sentence. The pericope had been apologetically defused by the Synoptics, but the simple meaning that the contemporaries heard was: every tax payment to the emperor is an act of disloyalty to Yahweh; that is exactly what Jesus meant.

Ulrich Luz basically agrees with a translation with “but” : “There are no linguistic indications that would allow καί to be understood as“ and ”other than in its most normal and widespread meaning. But for reasons of content, καί is not simply additive, because it combines completely incomparable demands in terms of content. "This understanding of the text is only followed by the Good News Bible among the German Bible translations :" Then give the emperor what belongs to the emperor - but give to God, what belongs to God! "

Interpretation in the ancient church

Jesus and the interest groschen, fresco (1744) by Paul Troger, Altenburg Abbey Library (Lower Austria)

Tertullian

The Bible reader owes Tertullian an interpretation that is still appealing today : The coin bears the image of the emperor, which is why it belongs to the emperor; man is the image of God ( Genesis 1.27  LUT ); therefore man belongs to God.

“But you have to give the emperor what the emperor is.” - Fortunately, it says: “And God, what God is”. So what is due to the emperor? Of course that was what it was all about at the time when the question of whether or not one should pay tribute to the emperor. That is why the gentleman asked that a coin should be shown to him and asked whose picture it was, and when he received the answer: “The emperor's”, he said: “So give the emperor what is the emperor's, and God, what of God is ”, ie the image of the emperor, which is found on the coin, the emperor, and the image of God, which is found in man, God, so that you give the emperor your money, but God your person. Otherwise, if everything belongs to the emperor, what will be left for God?

It was obvious to Tertullian and his contemporaries that this could bring Christians into opposition to the state, up to and including martyrdom.

Gnostic reinterpretation

The Gospel of Thomas (ThomEv) provides in Logion 100 a different version of the story:

They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to him: “Caesar's people demand taxes from us.” He said to them: “Give what is Caesar, Caesar. Give what is God, God. And what is mine, give me. "

The situation is kept neutral; the questioners are not characterized as insidious. The coin shown does not play a role in the course of the conversation. The designation as gold coin is anachronistic, because the personnel taxes were collected by the Romans in the form of silver denarii. It follows that the wording of ThomEv against the Synoptics is secondary, and according to Jesus' answer has to be interpreted, which is tripartite in ThomEv, the weight is on the addition: " And what is mine, I give." There are So there are three demands placed on people: from the state, from God - and from Jesus. Behind this is a reinterpretation of the material by the Valentine Gnosis . We owe a breakdown to Clement of Alexandria (Eclogae 24: 1-3): the emperor is identified (!) With the creator god, who as a demiurge stands in opposition to Christ, the Redeemer. For the sake of this statement, the historical, contemporary implications of paying taxes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth have been ignored.

Interpretation during the Reformation

A state-supporting interpretation of the pericope was already widespread in the early church (e.g. theophylact). For the reformers, the pericope is an application of the two kingdoms doctrine . Since it was the sermon text on the 23rd Sunday after Trinity , Martin Luther had several opportunities to interpret it; and the essence of his sermons on the subject was to inculcate obedience to the authorities. In the house table for the Small Catechism , Matthew 22:21 is listed under the heading: What the subjects owe the authorities to do .

John Calvin emphasizes that "no outward submission can hinder us from inwardly our conscience is free before God."

The second part of Jesus' sentence ( give God what God is ) remained in force with the reformers, but all emphasis was placed on inciting the obedience of the subjects.

Political theology

In the German Empire

During the First World War, the pericope was popular with field preachers of both denominations. The image of the emperor on the denarius became the image of the most peaceful ruler, "who lives in the heart of all German soldiers," Joachim Gnilka quotes a field preacher.

The experience of National Socialism

If the advocates of the doctrine of the two kingdoms understood the connection between imperial service and worship as both-and without any problems, some exegetes saw a radical alternative after 1945: obedience to God can stand in opposition to the duties as a subject. Political theology finds in Matthew 22:21 a reference to the practice of Jesus of Nazareth: the demand of the state can have "only a limited right and a relative importance" for the Christian; B. Wolfgang Schrage .

reception

Henrik Ibsen chose the Jesus word “give the emperor what the emperor is” as the leitmotif in his drama Emperors and Galileans ( Kejser og Galilæer , 1873).

literature

  • Joachim Gnilka : The Gospel according to Mark (Mk 8.27-16.20), EKK II / 2, Neukirchener Verlag 1979. ISBN 3-7887-0591-4 .
  • Ulrich Luz : The Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 18-25), EKK I / 3, Neukirchener Verlag 1997. ISBN 3-7887-1580-4 .
  • Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question: The interest groschenperikope on the religious and political background of their time with an edition by Pseudo-Hieronymus, De haeresibus Judaeorum, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012. ISBN 978-3-16-151841-6 .
  • Werner Stenger : Give the emperor what is the emperor's! A socio-historical study of the taxation of Palestine in the New Testament period. Königstein 1988, ISBN 3-610-09104-5
  • Samuel George Frederick Brandon: Jesus and the Zealots. A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity, Manchester 1967
  • Richard Faber, Helge Høibraaten: Ibsen's "Emperors and Galileans": Sources, interpretations, receptions, Würzburg 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ . German Bible Society. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  2. ^ Joachim Gnilka: Markus . 1979, p. 151 (Characteristics of the school talk are: question - counter question with demonstration - final answer.).
  3. ↑ Objects from the Bible House: The Tiberius Denarius. Retrieved December 23, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Ursula Kampmann: The coins of the Roman Empire . 2nd Edition. Battenberg, Regenstauf 2011, p. 50 .
  5. ↑ Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 254 .
  6. ↑ Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Wolfgang Stegemann: Urchristliche Sozialgeschichte . Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne 1995, p. 112 .
  7. ↑ Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Wolfgang Stegemann: Urchristliche Sozialgeschichte . 1995, p. 112-113 .
  8. ^ Joachim Gnilka: Markus . 1979, p. 153 .
  9. ↑ a b Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 259 .
  10. ↑ Albert Schweitzer: Conversations about the New Testament . CH Beck, 2017, p. 149 .
  11. ↑ Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question . 2012, p. 3-4 .
  12. ↑ Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question . 2012, p. 4-5 .
  13. ↑ Samuel George Frederick Brandon: Jesus and the Zealots . 1967, p. 347 .
  14. ↑ Samuel George Frederick Brandon: Jesus and the Zealots . 1967, p. 348 .
  15. ↑ Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 260 .
  16. ^ Tertullian: On idolatry (De Idololatria). Retrieved December 23, 2017 .
  17. ↑ The Gospel According to Thomas. (PDF) Retrieved December 24, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question . 2012, p. 266 .
  19. ↑ Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question . 2012, p. 267 .
  20. ↑ Niclas Förster: Jesus and the tax question . 2012, p. 267-269 .
  21. ^ Joachim Gnilka: Markus . 1979, p. 155 .
  22. ↑ BSLK . S. 525 .
  23. ↑ Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 255 .
  24. ^ Joachim Gnilka: Markus . 1979, p. 155 .
  25. ↑ Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 257 .
  26. ↑ Ulrich Luz: Matthäus . 1997, p. 256-257 .