A chreia about paying taxes

 Yesterday’s note on chreiai suggested that the basic form looks like this: “Seeing x” or “Being asked y,” the eminent person “said z.”

Readers who grew up on the Bible might think of Jesus’s sayings, many of which are in that form.

The usual example is about the time Jesus’s enemies asked him whether it was proper for God-fearing folks to pay taxes to Caesar. It was a trick question: If Jesus said yes, he alienated religious people who hated the oppressive state. If he said no, he got in trouble with the oppressive state.

In the chreia, Jesus asked for a coin. He then asked whose image was on it. Caesar’s, he was told. He said:

Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

Many people see Jesus as divine. But if that seems unlikely to you and you are wondering what to make of him, it’s possible to see in the chreiai preserved in the gospels a Jewish kid from the provinces who had absorbed a little Diogenes. Bits of Cynic philosophy were floating around in the Hellenic culture that was part of the Roman Empire.

• Sources: The chreia about Jesus and taxes is in the gospel of Luke: 20:21-25. I first came across the suggestion about the influence of Cynic philosophy in ancient Judea and Galilee in John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant; HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.