Tax Collectors• How much of their salary

do people pay in tax? • What happens to this

money? • What happens if you

don’t pay? • To explain the role of a tax

collector in Roman Israel• To understand why tax collectors

were unpopular• To evaluate Jesus’ choice of a tax

collector as one of his disciples

The Romans collected taxes from all their conquered territories to built roads, towns, theatres, arenas and aqueducts. This improved trade, made impressive cities and created more wealth in the empire.

BUT...people who couldn’t pay their tax had land and animals taken away, or were put in prison, or sold with their family as slaves. If they refused to pay, they were crucified along the main roads into town, to send a message to everyone else. You need to pay your taxes, even if it’s the last thing you do!

The Romans often used local people to collect the taxes. No one liked them because they worked for the Romans, taking money and goods from their own Jewish people and betraying their wealth to the Romans.

Tax collectors were also considered “unclean” for another reason : they made a living handling Roman coins – which bore the inscription that the Emperor was a god, and the son of a god.

1. Explain who the Jewish people had to pay taxes to and 3 things this money was used for.

2. What happened if you couldn’t pay your taxes? 2 things. 3. Why were tax collectors hated? *Draw a Roman denarius and the inscription on it. Explain why

making their living handling it, would make tax collectors “unclean”.

“Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus”

HW Diary Entry

Yet Jesus chose a tax collector to be one of his 12 disciples. Why would Jesus do this?

Watch the movie. Why did Jesus choose Matthew for a disciple?

Read Mark 2:13-17.

1. How does Jesus explain his choice of associating with sinners, to the others? Write out the relevant quote. Explain what it is saying.

2. Do you think Jesus did the right thing? Or should he have stuck to picking respected people?

17 ”I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the Jewish teachers of the law saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Who could Jesus be saying this to, today?