Zacchaeus

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Niels Larsen Stevns : Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus was a Jewish toll tenant from Jericho . The New Testament of the Bible tells of his encounter with Jesus of Nazareth .

etymology

The personal name Zacchaeus ( ancient Greek Ζακχαῖος Zakchaíos ) is the Greek form of the Hebrew name זַכַּי zakkaj . This is the rudimentary short form of a verb sentence name, whose subject (and theophore element ) has failed. The predicate is derived from the verb rootזכר zkhr , German 'to remember' from, The name can be translated as “(God) remembered”. Alternatively, a derivation comes from the rootזכך zkhkh , German 'innocent / pure' in question. Then it is a one-word name meaning "innocent / the innocent".

New Testament narrative

One of the trees in Jericho that Zacchaeus was said to be sitting on

According to Lk 19.1–10  EU , Zacchaeus was a “chief of the tax collectors” and “rich”. In contrast to this, he was “small in stature”: he climbed a mulberry-fig tree in order to be able to observe the arrival of Jesus into the city, which was expected by a crowd. Quite surprisingly, Jesus greeted him by name as he passed by and then went to Zacchaeus' house.

The witnesses from the crowd grumble about it: He has come to a sinner's house. Because of Jesus' affection, Zacchaeus changes his whole life up to now and vows before God to give half of his property to the poor and to reimburse stolen goods four times. Jesus answers this with the promise of salvation for his family and affirms:

“For he too is Abraham's son. For the Son of Man has come to seek and save what is lost. "

According to the New Testament Apocrypha, which were summarized in the 4th century in the Apostolic Constitutions , Zacchaeus was installed by the Apostle Peter as the first bishop of Caesarea Maritima .

Social background at the time

This episode illustrates a basic feature of the preaching of Jesus, who turned to the groups that were despised in Israel at the time. "Tax collectors" were used by the Romans to collect tributes and taxes from the Jewish population. They were hated as collaborators with the occupying power and were socially isolated. They often made their own livelihood through excessive demands and embezzlement in order to attain such a modest level of prosperity - which at that time, however, was far above the average income and insofar as it was considered wealth. This, in turn, increased the popular rejection they experienced. From a religious point of view, too, they were considered sinners who, with robbery and aiding in robbery, transgressed the traditional Torah and violated the people of God.

Theological meaning

Jesus' unexpected turn to this group of people can be seen as a sign of his entire message of salvation and the goal of his mission. Some Pharisees strictly rejected his dinner with “tax collectors and sinners”. According to the older Gospel of Mark, he is said to have said to them: The strong do not need a doctor, but the sick. I came to call sinners and not the righteous. On the one hand, he declared the Pharisees present to be "just" anyway, and on the other hand the rich were "weak".

As a penniless itinerant preacher from Galilee , Jesus was one of the poorest of the poor. On his arrival in Jericho, which was on the way to Jerusalem , he had probably already gained a reputation as a prophet of the kingdom of God and a miracle healer , which also preceded him in the southern kingdom of Judah. The retreat with Zacchaeus shows how Jesus called the “sinners”: by breaking through their isolation and giving them God's presence as their guest.

The conflict between rich and poor, which the Evangelist Luke emphasizes, is overcome by the unexpected encounter between the messiah of the poor and the representative of the rich Jewish upper class who lived from the exploitation of poor fellow Jews: the rich voluntarily gives their stolen property back. Then Jesus' promise of salvation takes him back into the people of God. With this he fulfilled his mission to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” ( Mt 10,5  EU ).

The text is one of the materials that only the Gospel of Luke transmits (the so-called special property ) and represents - similar to the story of the “prodigal son” ( Lk 15.11–32  EU ) - a basic motif of Lukan theology unmistakably at the same time admonishing the rich of his community to give up half of their property as well.

The subject of rich and poor also plays a major role for Lukas. In the hymn of praise to Mary, in Jesus' inaugural sermon, in his field speech, in the story of Lazarus etc. a. the social justice and revolution that Israel's Messiah will bring to the fore. He presented the Jerusalem early community as a community of property in which everything belonged to everyone ( Acts 2,44f  EU ): “They […] owned everything together.” With this, the early Christians followed Jesus' call to his followers to give up everything.

However, in the Zacchaeus story, common property is already weakened to “intra-congregational compensation” ( Wolfgang Stegemann ): The rich should no longer give up everything, but only half of their property when they become a Christian. But in this way the Christians of the second generation preserved the goal of overcoming the unjust conditions that divided God's entire people, also in the mission of the people in the Roman Empire.

Patronage

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Rechenmacher : Old Hebrew personal names, Münster 2012, p. 67.137.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Wiefel : The Gospel according to Luke . Theological Hand Commentary on the New Testament , Vol. 3, Berlin 1987, p. 326.
  3. ↑ Apostolic Constitutions: Enumeration Ordained by Apostles . tape 7 , no. 46 , chap. 4 ( newadvent.org ): “Of Caesarea of ​​Palestine, the first was Zacchaeus, who was once a publican; after whom was Cornelius, and the third Theophilus. "

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Zacchaeus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Biblical-Jewish customs officer (Jericho)
DATE OF BIRTH before 33
DATE OF DEATH 1st century