'Surveillance and Seeing: A New Way of Reading Mark 12:17, “Give back to Caesar…”'

Studies in Christian Ethics2014, Vol. 27(1) 79 –90© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0953946813509340sce.sagepub.com

Surveillance and Seeing: A New Way of Reading Mark 12:17, ‘Give Back to Caesar…’

Nicholas Townsend1

Sarum College, UK

AbstractStoddart writes that the God of Christian faith ‘knew [surveillance’s] gaze [and] suffered its harsh consequences’. That was especially so during the last week of Jesus’ life, when the religious/political leaders engaged him in tension-filled exchanges. Employing Stoddart’s concept of ‘(in)visibility’, I propose a new way of reading the controversy about Roman tax which, taking up insights in Myers’s ‘political’ commentary, shows connections between this text and those immediately preceding it. Jesus makes central in the engagement about tax the same issue as is already at stake: identity and recognition. His ‘amazing’ response makes clear what the leaders are not seeing.

Keywordsα,πóδοτε, coin, Mark 12:13-17, Ched Myers, render to Caesar, Eric Stoddart, tax

IntroductionGive back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

If over-schematically, three main, contrasting ways in which Jesus’ statement has been interpreted have been distinguished, for example by Joseph Fitzmyer, who is followed by Walter Pilgrim in Uneasy Neighbors: Church and State in the New Testament.2

Corresponding author:Nicholas Townsend, Sarum College, 19 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EE, UK. Email: [email protected]

509340 SCE27110.1177/0953946813509340Studies in Christian EthicsTownsendresearch-article2014

Article

1 I am grateful for comments by those present, especially Andrew Goddard, when an earlier version of this article was given at the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics conference in September 2013 and for comments from Andrew Angel. For earlier feedback, and for encour-agement to develop the argument made here from work for the Virtual Plater project, special thanks are due to David McLoughlin.

2 Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X–XXIV (Anchor Bible, 28; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), pp. 1292-93; Walter Pilgrim, Uneasy Neighbors: Church and State in the

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80 Studies in Christian Ethics 27(1)

First, many have suggested or assumed an interpretation in which there is a balance, indeed a kind of equivalence, between the two parts of the answer. In this reading, Jesus was saying that Caesar and God each have their own distinct, even autonomous realms or kingdoms and, therefore, that what people owe each of them is separate and different; ‘taxes are owed to Caesar, while to God belong the inner loyalty of one’s heart and life’.3 Fitzmyer and Pilgrim both call this the ‘two kingdoms’ interpretation, and the affinity with Luther’s two Regimente by which God governs the world is clear enough.4

Second, some, notably Richard Horsley, have advocated an interpretation that is, more or less, the opposite of the first one.5 In this view, Jesus’ answer meant there is one true kingdom only, God’s, and Caesar has no place in it. We may call this the ‘God against Caesar’ view. They argue this because Jesus’ whole message was that the reign of God is coming and this is opposed to Caesar’s violent and oppressive rule. They point out too that the literal meaning of the verb traditionally translated ‘render’, α

, πόδοτε, is

‘give back’. So it is as though Jesus was saying: ‘These idolatrous coins have nothing to do with the true God, whose reign is now coming. They are Caesar’s tainted things—that is where they belong. Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Have nothing to do with them! You need not pay the tax!’

Third, there is what we might call the ‘God way above Caesar’ reading, or as Pilgrim puts it, ‘God first, then Caesar’.6 The two parts of Jesus’ statement do not have the equivalence attributed to them by the first reading. Rather, when his answer is seen in the contexts both of this exchange and of Jesus’ message as a whole, it radically relativizes the claims of Caesar. The emphasis is on its second part: ‘Render to … God what is God’s!’ In this kind of reading, nevertheless, Caesar has some role, however relatively insignificant, and to that end the tax should be paid.

Most exegetes and theological interpreters can be aligned with one of these three kinds of reading, although of course there are variants of each of them. As Pilgrim says, ‘a host’ of recent writers can be identified with the third.7 One example is Oliver O’Donovan who argues for a variant in which Jesus ‘did not recognise a permanently

New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), pp. 66-72. Pilgrim develops Fitzmyer’s three kinds of reading into four, (and favours the fourth) but it is not easy to see how his third and fourth are fundamentally different.

3 Pilgrim, Uneasy Neighbors, p. 66.4 Luther conceived not only of two kingdoms or empires (Reiche), which corresponded to

Augustine’s two cities, but, going beyond Augustine, also of two quite distinct ‘regimes’ or ‘governments’ (Regimente) by which God ruled the world; he thereby cast the Gelasian tradi-tion of dual authority into unprecedentedly sharp relief. See Secular Authority: To What Extent Should it be Obeyed? (1523), in H. Hoepfl (ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

5 Richard Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), pp. 306-17; cf. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), p. 43.

6 Pilgrim, Uneasy Neighbors, p. 69.7 These include Fitzmyer, cited above.



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twofold locus of authority [but only] a transitory duality which belonged to the climax of Israel’s history… The coming era of God’s rule held the passing era in suspension’.8

I am not going to offer an alternative to these. However I shall propose a new way of reading this exchange—or, taking a cue from Ched Myers and Ben Witherington, I shall tentatively explore a way of reading it that few exegetes or theologians seem to have taken. This will cast new light on Jesus’ answer and help to locate it in relation to those three possibilities. Jesus’ statement appears almost identically in all three Synoptic Gospels. I shall focus on Mark given the consensus that Mark preceded and was, for the exchange about tax and the two passages immediately before it in Mark, the main source for Matthew and Luke.9

Let me state briefly the conclusion for which I shall argue. In Mk 12:13-17, the way Jesus responds to the question about the Roman poll tax, in particular by asking to see a denarius bearing the image and inscription of Caesar, pulls what is at stake back on to the agenda of the immediately preceding passage, the Parable of the Tenants (Mk 12:1-12), that is, on to Jesus’ agenda. Reading the exchange about tax closely in the semantic con-text of the parable, and with reference also to the controversy story that, in turn, precedes the parable (Mk 11:27-33), is what is relatively novel. Doing this shows that, the question of Jesus’ identity is central to understanding the tax passage and, specifically, what should be rendered to God.

In making this argument, I shall draw on a concept articulated not in biblical studies but in recent work on surveillance: the fertile idea of the skill of ‘(in)visibility’. Eric Stoddart has coined this term to refer to the far-from-new practice by which people nego-tiate their visibility and invisibility in diverse relational contexts.10 He presents it as complementary but in some ways preferable to ‘privacy’. ‘Instead of being predicated primarily on the idea of withdrawal as in classic privacy discourses, (in)visibility attends to our movement within complex social space’.11 It gives ‘a way of discussing what we intuitively know about how we organise and live our lives’, as we develop ‘fluidity [in] making ourselves—and, crucially, being made—more and less visible’.12 As a lens through which to read the Gospel accounts, especially those of the last week of Jesus’ life, this concept enables a new perspective on aspects that can be hard to explain or are overlooked.

The Literary Context in Mark

The way of reading I shall propose gives attention to how the Parable of the Tenants and the question about tax are related. Almost no contemporary exegetes or theological

8 Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 93.

9 An argument parallel to that of this article could be made in relation to Lk. 20:1-26, but not in the same way in relation to Matt. 21:23–22:22, as I explain in n. 17, below.

10 Eric Stoddart, Theological Perspectives on a Surveillance Society (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).11 Stoddart, Surveillance Society, p. 156.12 Eric Stoddart, ‘(In)visibility Before Privacy?’, Studies in Christian Ethics 27.1 (2014)

p. 38; italics original.




interpreters identify any connection between these two passages—or, to put it both more clearly and more strongly, they do not even point to possible such connections and argue against their significance. It is for this reason at least that I have thought the case is worth considering.

One notable exception is Ched Myers, in his outstanding, often contestable, ‘political’ reading of Mark, Binding the Strong Man.13 What he points out has been taken up by Ben Witherington in his ‘socio-rhetorical’ commentary, even though it is then left undevel-oped.14 Witherington says:

Myers has noted a near identical five-step pattern to the two narratives which surround the parable of the vineyard in Mark 12:1-12. The pattern shared by the controversy narratives in 11:27-33 and 12:13-17 involves: (1) Jesus being approached by religious/political opponents; (2) they challenge him with a question concerning his authority; (3) Jesus poses a counterquestion, challenging the opponents to reveal their own views and loyalties; (4) the opponents respond; (5) Jesus answers the original question accordingly.15

As Witherington points out, we have here an example of a literary device that is charac-teristic of Mark’s Gospel, namely two related or similar passages that come either side of another narrative. Together the three texts make a so-called ‘sandwich’, forming a liter-ary unit that invites interpretation as a whole. Another example comes immediately before this one: Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree and, later, the lesson he draws from it appear on either side of the cleansing of the temple (11:12-25).16 While these ‘sandwich’ pas-sages are striking once you notice them, we cannot confidently say that Mark self-consciously employed this device or, therefore, that, where there apparently is such a relationship, we must make our recognition of it central in exegesis. Nor shall I do this here. Rather, Myers’s observation, taken up by Witherington, at least gives a reason for exploring what links there might be among the three passages in Mk 11:27–12:17. If we find connections that enable understanding, the case that the apparent ‘sandwich’ is sig-nificant strengthens.17

Let us widen the picture and look at the larger context in Mark. Finally, Jesus has entered Jerusalem. He has done so publicly and with intended drama (11:1-11). After first looking around the temple, he returns the following day and, with equal drama,

13 Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988).

14 Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).

15 Witherington, Gospel of Mark, p. 318, referring to Myers, Binding, p. 306.16 Other apparent examples of such ‘sandwich’ passages in Mark include 6:7-32, 14:1-11 and 14:53-

72. Myers refers to that on which we are focusing as a ‘concentric triplet’ (Binding, p. 291).17 The same ‘sandwich’ is found in Lk. 20:1-26, so a closely parallel argument as follows here

could be made in relation to that passage. In Matt. 21:23–22:22, the order of the three peri-copes is the same, but two further parables have been inserted, on either side of the Parable of the Tenants, forming, perhaps, a kind of double-decker sandwich. I do not begin to consider whether an argument partly parallel to that I shall make could be made in relation to Matthew.



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overturns the tables of people buying and selling, and speaks out against them (11:11-17). He is already known to the religious/political leaders and, according to Mark, this action, unsurprisingly, hardens their resolve to get rid of him. ‘And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching’ (11:18).18

We can say that, even if he was not before, Jesus is now under surveillance. The Jerusalem leaders know where he is, although Jesus does not make this difficult for them: he spends these days in public places, mainly the temple itself. ‘As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes and the elders came to him and said…’ (11:27-28). ‘When they realised that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him…’ (12:12). They then send Pharisees and Herodians ‘to trap him…’ (12:13)—these ask him the question about tax. Next, Sadducees, who were close to if not part of the leadership, come to question him (12:18).

Earlier in Mark, what scholars have called the ‘messianic secret’ is evident: Jesus’ unwillingness to be identified or to identify himself openly with messianic claims. As we shall see, this continues, even though Jesus now is teaching in public in the temple. It is in relation to such contrasts that Stoddart’s concept of (in)visibility can assist. Stoddart writes briefly about (in)visibility in the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus, and notes the con-trast between his earlier ministry in Galilee and the final week in Jerusalem.

A prominent narrative theme is his negotiating high visibility (as a miracle worker and itinerant preacher) among sections of the community whilst maintaining low visibility from the gaze of religious and political authorities. However, Jesus is not averse to raising his visibility for in the challenge/riposte pericopes he places himself in some considerable jeopardy.19

Developing this, and focusing on the last week of Jesus’ life, Mark’s account is strik-ing in portraying Jesus as setting and holding to his own agenda. He prepares the practi-calities for the very visible entry into Jerusalem. He decides the timing and takes the initiative in the public protest in the temple. In the series of controversies that follows, he is at no point diverted away from his own priorities, even though, as we shall see, this requires a balancing of public teaching with forms of interaction with his questioners that both sustain and reveal the messianic secret. He concludes by taking the initiative with a rhetorical question for the scribes (12:35-37), before openly denouncing them even though they are seeking his life (12:38-40). Later he makes advanced arrangements for the Passover meal with his disciples (14:12-16). The text conveys that, despite the threat, Jesus is working to his own agenda, and his practice of (in)visibility is markedly different from earlier in his ministry.

Mark 11:27–12.17

Especially after Jesus’ action in the temple, what is at stake is the basis on which Jesus acts and speaks, his authority, and who he is, his identity. According to Mk 11:27-33, the religious/

18 Biblical quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise indicated.19 Stoddart, Surveillance Society, p. 164.




political leaders challenge him directly on the former. They would do, as they are in authority. Jesus replies with another question, about John the Baptist’s authority. They don’t answer this, so he doesn’t answer them directly. Here the messianic secret theme remains evident.

Immediately, according to Mark, Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants. It is extremely provocative. Referencing Isa. 5:1-7 closely, Jesus is speaking unmistakably of Israel as God’s vineyard. Who are the tenants but the Jerusalem leaders? Jesus portrays these as rejecting God’s servants, the messengers sent to them, and then as rejecting God’s ‘beloved son’. This title has been given to Jesus twice earlier in Mark (at the pivotal moments of Jesus’ baptism, 1:11, and the Transfiguration, 9:7). So the vineyard owner will come and get rid of the tenants. Myers points out what could be called the populist resonance of the parable. The ordinary people of Judea, who were ‘spellbound’ by Jesus’ teaching, would have been only too aware of the power and, at times, cruelty of absentee landlords. Among these, Myers suggests, would have been members of the religious aristocracy. He says, with hyperbole, ‘Jesus here tells a story in which the Jerusalem leadership, who were in fact the absentee landowning class, appear as tenants of an absentee landlord—that is, Jahweh’.20

We cannot know how ‘the chief priests, the scribes and the elders’ hear the parable, except to the extent that they grasp enough to recognise that he has ‘told this parable against them’ (12:12).

Determined to arrest him but fearing the crowd, they send ‘some Pharisees and some Herodians’ to him to ask about the Roman poll tax. For the purpose of this article, we need not focus on who the Pharisees and Herodians were; the latter supported paying the tax; some of the former did and some did not.21 More significantly, these questioners are the Sanhedrin’s covert agents. Yet they are barely competent: they flatter Jesus, at some length, 12:14—it is surprising how much of the tax pericope (12:13-17) their flattery occupies—but he immediately sees through that.

Jesus then recasts the question in a way that puts it on his own agenda. Here the paral-lel is indeed close with how he responds in the earlier exchange about his authority, when he asks the question about John the Baptist. In this second incident, Jesus goes further by dramatising the question. He asks them to bring one of the coins in which they have to pay the tax. It is very likely that this is unnecessary, as controversy about the Roman tax during the past 25 years meant that everyone would have known the answers to the ques-tions Jesus then asks: ‘Whose image is this, and whose inscription?’22 The image was

20 Myers, Binding, p. 308; italics original.21 On the Pharisees, especially in relation to payment of tax, see Joel Marcus, Mark 8–16: A New

Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible, 27; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 822; and, more generally, N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), pp. 181-203. In relation to the Herodians, King Herod the Great and his sons, one of whom ruled Galilee at the time of Jesus’ ministry, were nominally Jewish and were backed by the Romans. They favoured a strategy of compromise with Rome in order to gain benefits for the Jews. ‘Herodians’ basically means supporters of the Herodian dynasty. See Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 816.

22 There had been controversy about payment of the Roman tax since imposition of direct Roman rule in Judea in 6 ce, when Judas the Galilean had led a revolt against Rome, arguing



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that of the Emperor, Tiberius. The inscription on one side of the coin was: ‘Tiberius Caesar, son of the deified Augustus, [himself] Augustus’.23 The coin claimed that the Emperor was the son of a divine figure. This is one of the reasons the tax was contested: the monotheistic Jews no doubt saw that statement, and therefore the image on the coin, as idolatrous.

The question the Sanhedrin’s agents ask him is, therefore, a real one. If he answers simply, ‘yes, pay the tax’, he will be affirming that they should accept Roman rule and use this coin. It is likely this would lose him the support of many of those drawn by his teaching. If he answers, ‘No, don’t pay it’, he will mark himself out as a rebel against what the coin represents, Roman occupation, which is no doubt what the Jerusalem lead-ership is wanting him to do.

But, why does Jesus ask them to bring and show him the coin? This was not necessary.

Several commentators repeat the suggestion (I don’t know who made it first) that he does so in order to show up the questioners’ hypocrisy—they can easily produce the coin and they thereby show they use this object which not only symbolises Roman oppression but also blasphemes. Even if there is something in this, it is not a strong point. The Herodians at least favour co-operation with Rome and payment of the tax, so it would be no surprise if they have one or can easily get hold of one. Moreover, even if the question-ers could not do so immediately, in occupied Jerusalem it would not have been difficult to locate one. Indeed, according to Mark, Jesus says, ‘Bring me a denarius…’, and they ‘brought’ one, which on the face of it suggests that one was not immediately to hand.

If that hardly gives a good explanation for why he asks for the coin, here are three other possible reasons, at least the second and third of which seem to me much stronger.

The first is simple: Jesus is giving himself a moment to think. He will not be diverted away from his own priorities.

I suggest, second, that Jesus’ action with the coin brings the issue at stake back on to his own agenda. He has the coin right in front of him. Whether he was holding it himself, we cannot know. Having focused on it, he asks: ‘Whose image is this and whose inscrip-tion?’ Can they recognise the face of Caesar on the coin which claims that Caesar is a divine son? Of course they can. In the tense drama of this moment, with Jesus next to this blaspheming image of Caesar, he makes the issue one of identity and recognition. What he is really asking is the same question as the parable has asked. They can identify this Roman ruler easily enough, with his false claim to divine sonship—but can they, the questioners and the leaders who sent them, see that the reign of God is coming and rec-ognise the vineyard owner’s ‘beloved son’?

The third reason for Jesus’s action is related to the second, but it goes further in help-ing, in a specific way, to prepare for the answer he then gives. For this we have to focus

that the tax was ‘incompatible with Israel’s theocratic ideals’, as F. F. Bruce puts it (‘Render to Caesar’, in E. Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (eds.), Jesus and the Politics of His Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 249-63, at p. 255.

23 Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 824. Marcus says that, as well as the coin’s attribution of the status ‘son of a god’ to Caesar, the name Augustus meant, ‘The one to be served with religious awe’.




on the Greek text more closely. In the Sanhedrin’s agents’ flattery of Jesus, part of what they say is, according to Mark’s Greek: ‘we know you are sincere, and you don’t care about [anyone]24; for you don’t look at the face of human beings (οʋ

, γα

,ρ βλέπεις ει

,ς

πρόσωπον α,νθρώπων)…’ (v. 14). According to Joel Marcus,

In Semitic contexts … ‘receiving the face’ means showing partiality… The Markan phrase ‘look at the face’ is a variation on this idiom; Van Rompay … considers it ‘an attempt to translate the idiomatic Hebrew expression in a way more understandable to Greek readers’.25

It is regrettable that the phrase, ‘you don’t look at the face’, is generally not reflected in English translations, which render it e.g. ‘you show deference to no-one’ (NRSV) or ‘you pay no attention to who [people] are’ (NIV). One that comes closer is ‘you do not regard a person’s status’ (NAB). The problem is that these do not convey the way in which the phrase resonates in what Jesus does with the coin. He not only asks for the denarius, but, in Mark, adds ‘so that I may see it’.26 He looks at the face of Caesar and makes a point of asking the superfluous question: this image that I am seeing, whose is it?27

This heightens the drama in a number of ways. First, taking the cue from the flattery, he is accentuating that the issue is indeed what people can see and recognise. He is ask-ing, not only of Caesar: whose face, whose image, whose divine sonship, are you looking at here?

Next, he is showing that he has no qualms about looking at the image of Caesar on the coin, and he encourages them all to do the same. Is this not deliberate irony? He is doing to Caesar exactly what the questioners gave him false praise for not doing. He is seeming to show deference to Caesar. Moreover, some of his fellow Jews would have been dis-turbed, even shocked: according to Marcus, the piety of some Jewish holy men ‘was such that they never looked at the image on a coin in their lives’.28

In this he is, as I said, preparing the way for his answer, to which we now turn: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’.

The show of deference to Caesar, the deified son of Augustus, that Jesus has just given is only that, a show. Making an unmistakeably sharp dichotomy between Caesar and God, he puts across: ‘Caesar is not God!’ Nothing is clearer from Jesus’ answer than this. Jesus’ reply rejects the idolatrous claim on the coin. He thereby repudiates Roman idola-try, deflates Caesar’s pretension, and stands as a faithful Jew against Rome.

24 In fact there is a double negative (as in other places in Mark): ‘you don’t care about no-one’.25 Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 816.26 This phrase is unique to Mark, although something very close to its meaning is implied in

Matthew and Luke by their use of ‘Show me’, rather than, ‘Bring me’.27 In Mark there is another possible reference to ‘seeing’. In relation to v. 15, ‘But knowing their

hypocrisy…’ (NRSV), Marcus says: ‘Most texts have “knowing” (eidos), but the evidence for idon includes important early manuscripts and Alexandrian, Western and Caesarian text-types… Idon, moreover, is the more difficult reading (how can one see hypocrisy?)’. He refers also to 12:28, where there is ‘the same sort of variation between idon and eidos in the manu-scripts’. Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 817.

28 Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 818.



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Marcus’s commentary is full and rich, but bafflingly he says here: ‘[Jesus] appears deliberately to ignore the fact that the inscription and portrait … link Caesar with God’.29 Exactly the opposite is the case: having deliberately drawn attention to that linking, Jesus’ reply rejects it emphatically. Some other commentators see this clearly, for exam-ple Witherington: Jesus ‘can only be repudiating … Caesar’s claims to divinity. Divine honours belong to God alone’.30

There is nothing that is clearer from Jesus’ statement than that—but is this the main point of his answer? Many have pointed out that, while the dichotomy between Caesar and God is total, the two parts of Jesus’ answer are not in balance. Jesus’ agenda, the coming of the reign of God, means that what matters immeasurably more than anything to do with Caesar is what is owed to God. The emphasis in Jesus’ response is strongly on the second half: ‘Render … to God what is God’s’.

But what is owed to God? This is where reading the passage against the background of the parable, indeed in the context of the Markan ‘sandwich’, really assists us. It does so in two main ways.

First, Jesus has, by means of the coin, pulled the issue at stake back on to the same agenda as the parable: the coming of God’s reign and whether the leaders and people can see, can identify, God’s king, the vineyard owner’s son. The contrast between the ques-tioners’ easy recognition of Caesar, a so-called deified son, and their non-recognition of Jesus is striking. What is owed to God? To see the vineyard owner’s son, the messianic son, the son of God; to recognise him and to respond to the coming of God’s reign. The emphatic second half of Jesus’ answer is directed back to the Sanhedrin, through their covert agents. It presses on the leaders the same challenge that the parable has just made.

This first point comes out of the drama over the coin—it is this that enables Jesus to make identity/recognition the main issue. But the second point focuses on a connection between Jesus’ answer and the parable. Above I have used the traditional term ‘render’ to translate α

, πόδοτε. But I noted at the start that more literally it means ‘give back’.

Close attention to this verb is justified not only because it happens to be used in Jesus’ reply but because, according to Mark, it is not the same verb as Jesus’ questioners used. They ask: ‘Is it lawful to give (δοʋ̑ ναι) tribute to Caesar?’ Indeed, in 12:14, this verb is used three times. But Jesus elects to use a compound, α

, πόδοτε, ‘give back’ (plural imper-

ative). All three Synoptic Gospels are consistent here, with the questioners using δοʋ̑ναι and Jesus using α

, πόδοτε. This linguistic difference is striking; it is unclear why many

commentators pay it little attention.31

‘Give back to Caesar—mere Caesar—the things of Caesar, and to God the things of God!’ I have argued that, through the drama of the coin, Jesus has pulled the issue back on to his own agenda. I suggest that, by using α

, πόδοτε, he takes this further. Via their

29 Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 825.30 Witherington, Gospel of Mark, p. 325.31 Some recent translators have done odd things with these verbs. The NRSV makes the ques-

tioners’ verb ‘pay’ and Jesus’ verb simply ‘give’. The original NIV did the same, but the 2011 revision amended Jesus’ answer to make it the literal ‘give back’. In his Mark for Everyone, Tom Wright uses ‘give’ for the verb in Jesus’ reply (London: SPCK, 2001), p. 161.




agents, he is still speaking to the Jerusalem leadership, against whom he has told the Parable of the Tenants. This was all about the fruit that the tenants owe to the vineyard owner but refuse to give him. The tenants reject the messengers, kill the beloved son, and, presuming the owner is dead, claim the vineyard—the inheritance—for themselves.32 But the owner is still living. Jesus now emphasises, ‘Give back … to God what is God’s’. The second half of his response to the tax question communicates exactly the same mes-sage as the parable.

While Witherington has drawn attention, following Myers, to the relationship between the parable and the controversy stories on either side of it, he gives surprisingly little attention to how they are related in his exegesis of the three passages. But he does, in concluding, make that connection: ‘[I]n the parable we saw those who were not prepared to render unto God, the owner of the vineyard, what was due to God, and here Jesus exhorts them about such a gross neglect of duty.’33

What is the new way of reading the exchange about tax which the article’s title prom-ised? In one sense it is to take seriously what we might learn about this by seeing it as inherently connected with the Parable of the Tenants. I put it like this because I have focused on these two passages, but not the first in the Markan ‘sandwich’. But, in a wider sense, what is relatively novel is to take seriously the observation that the three parts of the text from 11.27 to 12.17 do form a literary unit.

Let me sum up the main connections I have pointed to between the second and third parts of this ‘sandwich’. First, through Jesus’ dramatic action with the coin, he turns the question about tax into what, for him, is the immeasurably more important issue of iden-tity and recognition of the vineyard owner’s son. This is another moment in his own practice of (in)visibility. Who do they see? Second, by Jesus’ choosing to use the verb ‘give back’, he presses home the point that what really matters is how the religious and political leaders respond to the challenge of the parable.

But what about the first of the three passages, the exchange about Jesus authority, when he doesn’t really answer the question? How is this related to the following two? Addressing this adequately is beyond the scope of this article, but I shall make one point.34

If Jesus did not answer the question about his own authority to begin with, the parable that follows goes a very long way towards doing so. For readers of Mark, this is very

32 Following Jeremias, Witherington among others points out that the tenants could naturally have interpreted the son’s coming as implying that the original owner was dead, in which case, ‘if the son were killed, the land would be ownerless and subject to being claimed [legally] by the tenants’ (Gospel of Mark, p. 322).

33 Witherington, Gospel of Mark, p. 326. At the end of a discussion of the exchange about tax that is largely focused elsewhere, N. T. Wright connects it with the parable: ‘If Tiberius Caesar is, according to the coin, the son of the divine Augustus, Israel is, according to scripture, the son of the creator God YHWH. And, in the context of the [parable of the tenants], the son of the landowner is, more specifically, the Messiah himself… Jesus saw himself as the true Messiah, leading the true kingdom movement; Israel’s true response to YHWH would be to acknowledge him and follow his kingdom agenda’, Jesus and the Victory of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: SPCK, 1996), pp. 506-507.

34 Wright points to connections between the question about authority and the parable: ‘[T]he par-able dovetails exactly into the riddle about John. In one sense, Jesus is the last in the prophetic



Townsend 89

obvious—and for at least some of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem, those with ‘ears to hear’, it would have been clear enough; this is why he speaks in parables. Going further, once we see that Jesus has turned the question about tax into the bigger issue already at stake—of recognition of the divine son—is it too much to say that Jesus’ statement at the end of the tripartite passage answers the question at the beginning, about his authority, with shocking clarity? ‘Give back to Caesar merely what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’. It is God, far above Caesar, who authorises the vineyard owner’s son, regardless of whatever authority the Sanhedrin, the tenants, might suppose they have. Jesus’ apho-rism is so sharp that it is bound to get back to those who have him under surveillance, who asked him that first question, and who last heard him tell the parable against them.

Through the two elements of Jesus’ response in the exchange about tax, his action with the coin and his actual statement, he presses this question: the leaders may have him under surveillance, but do they have eyes to see what is before them? Jesus has long known that for him to make certain kinds of open affirmation would only provoke his immediate silencing. From the entry into Jerusalem onwards, his practice of (in)visibility has to become even more careful than earlier.35 This concept gives a lens through which we can see, not only the great dramatic actions of entering the city and cleansing the temple, but also the narrative development through the three related passages I have focused on. His initial refusal to answer a direct question avoids such immediate provo-cation, but in responding by way of the parable, the drama with the coin, and the apho-rism, he continues to practise that skill, simultaneously maintaining and revealing the messianic secret. Of course, that week went on: within days, as Stoddart says, Jesus, who ‘knew [surveillance’s] gaze, suffered its harsh consequences’.36

‘Should We Pay or Not?’

You might be wondering: but what about the tax? Did Jesus’ statement mean they should pay the tax, or not? Some scholars whose readings have similar elements as that I’m proposing argue that Jesus doesn’t give any clear answer to this question, for example Richard Cassidy, Ched Myers and, more or less, N. T. Wright.37

Relatively speaking, the question doesn’t matter; we can certainly say this. But I think Jesus does answer it. Jesus’ verb, α

, πόδοτε, implies obligation, just as ‘give back’ does in

English, and therefore one to Caesar as well as to God.38 Moreover, commentators tell us

line, coming to Israel to ask for fruit from the vineyard. In another, John was the last in the line; after the last messenger comes the son’ (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 497).

35 Of course we cannot attribute this concept to Jesus’ mind. Rather this concept is a way of referring to ‘what we intuitively know’ about one of the ways we act (Stoddart, quoted in n. 12). This practice can be conscious or unconscious.

36 Stoddart, Surveillance Society, p. 171.37 Richard Cassidy, Jesus, Politics and Society (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978), pp. 58ff.; Myers,

Binding, p. 314; Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 502-507.38 There is no serious dissent from what Cranfield expresses: α

,πόδοτε conveys ‘to give back or

pay back something which one owes as a debt’. C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to St Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 372.




that coins bearing an image were presumed to belong to the figure whose image they bore.39 They were Caesar’s coins. Relative to God, Caesar is only a side-show, but what Jesus seems to say is: ‘Dismiss the idolatrous claim on these coins, because it’s false. See them for what they are. These things are merely the currency of Caesar’s role, so let him have them. What really matters is what you owe to God!’

This answer makes sense not least because of the implausibility of the opposite answer, that Jesus was saying, ‘Don’t pay’. If this had been his answer, it would have given the Sanhedrin what they were looking for in sending agents to trap him. It would surely have been pressed when Jesus appeared before Pilate days later. But it is only Luke among the four Gospels who mentions the allegation (Lk. 23:1-5), and there Pilate dismisses it. If Jesus’ answer had been ‘No, don’t pay’, it would have brought ‘swift retaliation’, as Pilgrim puts it.40 When we read this text in the context of his trial so soon afterwards, the claim that his statement advocated non-payment is not credible.

While Myers’s discussion was, in one way, the catalyst for this article, his reading of Jesus’ answer on tax is not fully convincing. Rightly emphasising the sharp dichotomy between Caesar and God, Myers falsely draws an inference that allegiances to Caesar and God can only be opposed: ‘There are simply no grounds for assuming … that Jesus was exhorting his opponents to pay the tax.’41 I have briefly referred to some such grounds and, while more could be said, they seem sufficient.

Conclusion

I began by referring to the schematic distinction made by some scholars of three main, contrasting kinds of interpretation of Jesus’ statement: ‘two kingdoms’, ‘God against Caesar’ and ‘God way above Caesar’. To the extent that what I have proposed is a novel way of reading this text, it is one that generates support for the third of those.

Breaking the rule that one should not make a new point when concluding, this way of reading Mk 12:13-17 has the clear strength that it meets the test which faces any pro-posed interpretation of this text: it explains the final words in v. 17. In Jesus’ two-part response to the question about tax—the action with the coin and the sharp aphorism—he did all of the following. He made the moment highly dramatic. He shifted the issue on to his own agenda. He rejected outright Caesar’s blasphemous claim. He reissued the chal-lenge of the parable: to see what God is doing by his ‘beloved son’, and to give back the vineyard. Arguably, he gave an answer to the initial question about his own authority (11:28). He implied that, while Caesar didn’t matter much, he was due the tax. Mark says, ‘And they were utterly amazed at him’.

39 See for example H. StJ. Hart, ‘The Coin of “Render unto Caesar…”’, in E. Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (eds.), Jesus and the Politics of His Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 241-48, at p. 242.

40 Pilgrim, Uneasy Neighbors, p. 68.41 Myers, Binding, p. 312.



'Surveillance and Seeing: A New Way of Reading Mark 12:17, “Give back to Caesar…”'

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