The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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Ben C. Smith
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The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

The fiscus Iudaicus has been brought up before on this forum, and it is the topic of Chris B. Zeichmann's article, available online, entitled "The Date of Mark's Gospel Apart From the Temple and Rumors of War: The Taxation Episode (12:13–17) as Evidence." Here is the abstract:

Abstract: It is difficult to determine a precise date for the composition of the Gospel of Mark, even if it is widely believed to have been written during the decade spanning 64-73 c.E. I suggest in this article that the academic disagreement is due to heavy reliance on Mark’s ambiguous temple־and־war passages (esp. 13:1-23), which can be read realistically in disparate historical contexts. I propose to supplement such work with an examination of the taxation episode (12:13-17), a pericope with subtle indicators of Mark’s historical context, including geopolitical administration, coinage circulation, and tax policies. I suggest that these data cumulatively indicate that the Gospel of Mark was not written earlier than 29 August 71 C.E.

The main argument hinges upon the Latinisms in the pericope:
  1. Mark seems to use the term Καίσαρ (Caesar) specifically of the Roman imperator. He does not use it in a generic sense for any authority, any time, any place. This is a Roman payment.
  2. Mark seems to use the term δηνάριον (denarius) to denote a particular denomination of money. Only a single denarius from before the War has been discovered in Galilee, and none has been discovered so far in Judea. Zeichmann writes, "This anachronism of coinage is significant because the denarius is absolutely essential to the pericope in Mark; the emperor’s portrait prompts Jesus' riposte to his opponents' challenge."
  3. Mark seems to use the term κήνσος (census) of a regular tax rather than, as usual for the term, of the actual capitation or registration of the citizenry. The best explanation is that Mark is using this term of a tax which was levied on the basis of a census.
A key paragraph follows this discussion of the Latinisms:

Chris B. Zeichmann, "The Date of Mark's Gospel Apart From the Temple and Rumors of War: The Taxation Episode (12:13–17) as Evidence," CBQ 79.3, pages 430-431: It is not immediately obvious which tax the Marcan Jesus discusses. The Gospel mentions three important features: (1) it was levied via census (κήνσος); (2) it was collected by coin (specifically a δηνάριον — but set aside that particular anachronism for the moment); and (3) it was paid to the reigning emperor (Καίσαρ). Phrased directly, no evidence suggests that any tax possessed all three of these features before the temple’s destruction. Mark locates the pericope in Jerusalem of Roman Judea, a province where a certain tax in Jesus’ time was collected vis-à-vis information gathered in the provincial census conducted in 6 c.e. In particular, a land tax (tributum soli; Josephus A.J. 18.1.1 §3) was exacted in the newly annexed province of Judea. Although this was not technically a capitation tax (tributum capitis), it is unlikely that the legal distinction entailed a salient difference for the terminology among most Greek-speaking provincial denizens. One could sensibly infer that various census-based taxes all fell under Mark’s term κήνσος. This tax, however — the tributum soli — was exacted in kind rather than via coinage in Judea; that is, it was paid in goods rather than money. Josephus makes clear that unsown land resulted in an inability to pay the tribute (A.J. 18.8.4 §§273- 75), and apparently produce was kept in stores for “Caesar’s corn” (Vita 13 §71). Only in cases of extenuating circumstances was this tax collected monetarily, such as the emergency collection at Agrippa II's behest in 66 c.e. (B.J. 2.17.1 §405). This collection policy was typical in eastern frontier provinces, where grain accumulated as tax might supply a nearby military garrison or be sold to other provinces. The fact that the Judean tributum soli was paid in harvested crops renders it moot for present purposes. Mark’s tax is explicitly paid with coin, a detail already noted to be essential to the pericope. The other taxes to which Judean denizens were subjected (e.g., tolls, duties) were sometimes collected monetarily, but they had no connection to a census. It is therefore unlikely that Mark would term them κήνσος. In fact, no monetary capitation taxes are known at all in the southern Levant before the war, much less any paid in denarii or equivalent coinage (e.g., didrachm). In short, there was no κήνσος that a resident of Judea or Galilee paid to Καίσαρ with a δηνάριον or any other coin for that matter at the time. Whatever tax Mark had in mind, it did not exist during the life of Jesus. .... It is common to suppose that Judeans were obliged to pay monetary taxes in the time of Jesus, a matter frequently asserted in the scholarly literature. Even cursory investigations of this claim, however, reveal that such arguments tend to be grounded in the taxation pericope in Mark 12:13-17 and its parallels taken as a historical reference to taxes of Jesus’ time. Udoh even quotes a number of prominent scholars of Roman imperial administration citing Mark 12:13-17 as their sole evidence for claims regarding Roman taxation (e.g., a one denarius poll tax under Tiberius in Judea). NT commentators in turn cite these very classicists to inform their interpretation of the pericope, leading to inadvertent circular reasoning.

So, if the tax in question did not exist, to the best of our knowledge, before 70, what tax does Mark have in mind here?

Chris B. Zeichmann, "The Date of Mark's Gospel Apart From the Temple and Rumors of War: The Taxation Episode (12:13–17) as Evidence," CBQ 79.3, page 432: The taxation episode might be productively contextualized in the period after the temple’s fall, particularly vis-à-vis a new capitation taxthe infamous fiscus ludaicus. Shortly after the siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian introduced this tax to replace the annual half-tetradrachm/one-didrachm tax that Jewish men had paid to the temple. Though they bore some superficial similarities, such as a roughly equivalent fee of two denarii, the differences between the temple tax and the fiscus Iudiacus were significant: the new tax did not support the cult of the Jerusalem temple but was collected by Roman officials to fund the Roman temple known as Jupiter Capitolinus.

The argument seems pretty good to me. As noted above, the article is available online; it is well worth a read. Did Zeichmann miss anything? Are there reasons to criticize his conclusion that Mark, as it stands, must postdate the implementation of the fiscus ludaicus?

(Full disclosure: I have communicated with Chris before on numerous occasions, and have hosted articles of his on my website for convenience.)

Ben.
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Jax
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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Very interesting. Thank you for that link. :)
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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No problem. :)
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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'Mark' might have goofed (again) then?
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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I don't understand perfectly. Is the author claiming that Mark was written probably around the 70? Or is he still open to the possibility that Mark was written - with equal probability - after Bar-Kochba?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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archibald wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:54 am 'Mark' might have goofed (again) then?
Engaged in an anachronism, yes. What does the "again" refer to, specifically?
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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Giuseppe wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:55 am I don't understand perfectly. Is the author claiming that Mark was written probably around the 70? Or is he still open to the possibility that Mark was written - with equal probability - after Bar-Kochba?
He is claiming 71 as the earliest possible date. The article does not deal with the latest possible date.
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:56 am
archibald wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:54 am 'Mark' might have goofed (again) then?
Engaged in an anachronism, yes. What does the "again" refer to, specifically?
Doesn't he make a few geographical errors, such as pigs in Gerasa jumping 30 km (horizontally) into the sea of Galilee, or Jesus passing through Sidon on the way from Tyre to the sea of Galilee (through the borders of the Decapolis)?
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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

I think there is nothing historical about Mk 12:13-17 (and all activities of Jesus in the temple after the "disturbance").
"Mark" invented the story in order to incite his Christians to pay tax to the Romans, as did earlier Paul (Ro 13:6-7), without knowing about details of taxation in Judea some 40 years earlier.

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Re: The census tax & the date of the gospel of Mark.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

archibald wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 10:09 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:56 am
archibald wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:54 am 'Mark' might have goofed (again) then?
Engaged in an anachronism, yes. What does the "again" refer to, specifically?
Doesn't he make a few geographical errors, such as pigs in Gerasa jumping 30 km (horizontally) into the sea of Galilee, or Jesus passing through Sidon on the way from Tyre to the sea of Galilee (through the borders of the Decapolis)?
Subject to the results of textual criticism (for the Gerasene swine) and certain easy assumptions about how a person would normally refer to a journey (for the trip through Tyre and Sidon), yes. Just asking.
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