"While Christmas is often associated with exchanging gifts and enjoying a day off, it also commemorates the birth of Jesus - a carpenter who shifted careers to preach, teach, and perform miracles. Not all of Jesus's actions won universal praise, however. He stirred controversy by associating with tax collectors, who were deeply despised at the time. One of his own apostles, Matthew, had been a tax collector."
"In the ancient Roman empire, the government was not directly involved in tax collection. Instead, the government engaged in tax farming. The government would sell tax collection rights in a given area to third parties for a fixed fee. The independent contractors, known as publicani, would then collect the taxes from the people with no limit as to how much they could collect. If they collected more than the fee they had paid to the government, then they profited."
"Property assessments were inflated in order to collect more taxes. Unpaid taxes were subject to very high interest rates. Sometimes, the publicani resorted to violence in order to collect. They could even call on Roman soldiers if needed. The Jewish people were hit particularly hard by the publicani. As a result, tax collectors were despised and were considered sinners. The Talmud considered tax collectors to be in the same league as murderers and robbers."
Christmas marks the birth of Jesus, who left carpentry to preach, teach, and perform miracles. Jesus associated with tax collectors, provoking controversy because many viewed them as collaborators and sinners. Roman taxation relied on tax farming: the government sold collection rights to publicani who had no cap on what they could extract. Publicani inflated assessments, charged high interest on unpaid taxes, and sometimes used violence or Roman soldiers to collect. Jewish communities suffered heavily, treated tax collectors as traitors, allowed lying to evade them, barred them from testifying in court, and sometimes excommunicated those engaged in tax collection.
Read at Above the Law
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