taxes

In ancient Israel the only taxes imposed on people mentioned in the Bible were for the maintenance of the tabernacle and its officiants (Deut. 18:1 ff.) but kings exacted much more in order to pay the army and the court (1 Kgs. 12:11). In Palestine under the Romans a poll tax had to be paid to Caesar (Matt. 22:17). Jews paid a temple tax (Matt. 17:24) of a half-shekel every year, and also had to pay customs duties (Mark 2:14) at Jericho, since a frontier post which lay between the Roman province of Judah and Perea, part of the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas. It provided an important source of his revenue. It was at Jericho that Jesus encountered Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10), an official hugely unpopular because, as a subcontractor, he took the money and remitted it to his employer, who in turn sent it on to Rome. This procedure allowed much scope for greed and dishonesty. The collectors were known as publicani, hence the English ‘publicans’ of AV, RV.