Were Tax Collectors "Marginalized"?
A search through New Testament scholarship reveals a substantial amount of references to “tax collectors” as members of a “marginalized” group in first-century Israel. One reason for this description of publicans is that the Gospels often couple them with “sinners” and place the two parties alongside Jesus to the dismay of the scribes and Pharisees. For example, Mark records that “the scribes and Pharisees, when they saw that [Jesus] was eating with sinners and tax collectors (τελῶναι, telōnai),said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (2:16). The readerly inference from these instances tends to see the scribal class as “elites” or “authorities” in Jewish society, and assumes that “tax collectors” (and sinners) must be somewhere at the margins of that society. However, this is an assumption that has no foundation in the Gospel texts themselves. Tax collectors were not “marginalized” by anyone in Jewish society; as Jews who dedicated their work lives to undergirding the Roman taxation system over their own kinspeople, they actively chose to besmirch their own reputations in pursuit of riches.
Despite the unsavory nature of the profession, sometimes tax collecting seems not to have had any marginalizing effect at all. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus mentions a “tax collector” from Caesarea named John. Josephus explains that the synagogue in Caesarea was near a plot of land owned by an anti-Jewish Gentile who erected shops and workspaces that abutted the Caesarean Jews’ house of worship, despite the synagogue-goers offering to buy the land for much more than it was worth. In response, Josephus writes, “the great men of the Jews with John the tax collector… persuaded [the Roman procurator] Florus, with the offer of eight talents, to stop the [building] work” (Jewish War 2.285-88). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Florus does not keep his word. Still, John is counted among the “great men of the Jews” in Caesarea; not only is there no mention of his marginalization, he is at the helm of a community effort to keep Sabbath-prohibited work from occurring around the synagogue.
Zacchaeus is probably the most famous of all tax collectors, but he is not “marginalized” from the rest of the people of Jericho. According to Luke’s account, Zacchaeus was the “chief tax collector (ἀρχιτελώνης, architelōnes) and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd (τοῦ ὄχλου, toū ōchlou) he could not, because he was small in stature” (19:2-3). Zacchaeus climbs a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus, but he’s not “marginalized” from anyone—on the contrary, he starts out in the midst of the “crowd” vying for a vision of Yeshua. It’s true that the members of that crowd “murmured” (διεγόγγυζον, diegōnguzon) at Zacchaeus and called him a “sinner” (19:7), but this is not the same thing as restricting him to the fringes of society. Even Jesus says that Zacchaeus had been among “the lost” (τὸ ἀπολωλός, tō apololōs; 19:10) prior to their meeting, after which “salvation” comes to the tax collector’s house (19:9)—that is, Zacchaeus had, indeed, been a lost sinner. Yet, he is not lost because his people have pushed him to the margins. Jesus’ words recall his parable of the lost sheep, in which a shepherd pursues the one lamb who is “lost” (ἀπολωλὸς) out of ninety-nine (Luke 15:4). Neither the shepherd nor the other sheep have “marginalized” the lost animal—it has wandered off on its own accord. Likewise, the formerly “lost” Zacchaeus had chosen to alienate himself from his peers through his profession, but his encounter with Yeshua turned him toward redemption.
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