The Philosophy Now Forum

I was going to post this in answer to a question asked in another post. I didn’t because it was not relevant to the OP. I proposed this argument a few years ago. So, I ask the forum, does it pose a logical enough answer to the mystery of why the Romans agreed to use the punishment, crucifixion, used on political enemies? I don't think there has been an accepted answer so far. At least as far as I know.

CHRIST AND THE GOLD COIN
It was predicted among the Jews that there would arise one who would bring them salvation from their oppressors. At the time of Christ, those oppressors were the Romans. I want to propose a possibility concerning that prophecy and the events that followed. Perhaps the threat Jesus presented to Rome was not merely religious. Perhaps it was economic.

Consider the familiar words of Jesus: “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
We normally understand these words as an instruction to pay taxes and obey the civil authority. But there may be another way to look at them. What if Jesus was saying, in effect, give Caesar his gold back, but do not make it the foundation of our own society?

The book of Acts later describes the followers of Christ as sharing their possessions and holding things in common.

“Give unto Caesar” could therefore be viewed as a remarkably simple expression of a much larger idea: Caesar may have his wealth, but you do not need it.
This raises another question. What if gold itself was unnecessary to the functioning of Jewish society?

Long before Rome's domination, people could obtain the necessities of life through direct exchange. The intrinsic value of food, clothing, animals, tools, labor, and other necessities was understood without requiring gold to serve as the measure of everything. Gold and jewels had value, but much of that value was associated with wealth, ornament, and the possessions of the rich. A society did not necessarily have to depend upon gold in order to function.

Wealth in gold creates envy. It can create dependence. More importantly, it can create power.
Rome's power depended heavily upon wealth. Gold flowed toward Rome through taxation, commerce, and the spoils of conquest. Soldiers had to be paid, armies had to be maintained, and the machinery of empire had to be supported.
Now consider what might happen if a conquered people simply stopped craving the wealth that sustained the conqueror.

If the Jews had chosen to do as Jesus exampled and collectively decided that Roman gold was unnecessary to their daily existence, they could have continued to trade among themselves, provide for one another, and conduct their lives without making Roman money the foundation of their economy. They would not have needed to accumulate Roman gold merely because Rome had declared it valuable.

This would have presented Rome with a problem very different from an armed rebellion.
A sword can be met with another sword. But what happens when the people you rule simply cease to participate in the economic system that gives you power?

If gold gradually stopped flowing from Israel toward Rome, Rome's ability to maintain its authority would eventually be affected. An army cannot exist indefinitely without the wealth necessary to support it. The Roman soldier followed the pay that Rome could provide. If the wealth diminished, the power supported by that wealth would diminish with it.

Under this interpretation, Jesus' message could be seen as proposing something remarkably radical. Freedom might not require a sword. It might require only the rejection of the thing upon which the oppressor depends. The gold coin could therefore have represented more than money. It could have represented a choice. Give Caesar his coin. But do not make Caesar's coin necessary to your life.

If that principle had been adopted widely enough, Rome could have been deprived of something more fundamental than a battlefield victory. It could have been deprived of economic dependence.
I am not claiming that this was the historical reason Rome crucified Jesus. I am proposing it as a possibility worth considering. The conventional explanation looks primarily at the religious and political threat posed by Jesus. But perhaps there was an economic dimension that deserves examination.

Perhaps the most threatening thing Jesus offered was not an army capable of defeating Rome. Perhaps it was a people who no longer needed what Rome possessed. The gold coin may have been a token of freedom. And perhaps the rejection of what that coin represented could have made Jesus a very real threat to Roman power. A threat enough for the Romans to do the Jews bidding and crucify him in the manner of other threats made against their rule.

So, what... they executed J 'cause he was talkin' folks out of applying for loans and buying crypto?

How much did the liquidity of roman money depend on the jews, though? What's it matter if a few jewish peasants don't have any money to buy shit?

Matthew 22:21 says “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. This answer is given to the question “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” The question was aimed at trapping Jesus into a dead end: if he answered “Yes”, he would have been considered an accomplice of Romans, who were oppressing Hebrews; if he answered “No”, he would have been accused of being a political subversive person, dangerous to the Roman establishment.

There are other similar traps posed to Jesus and they have a similar mechanism: they try to encage Jesus inside a mental frame and he breaks the frame by referring to another dimension of existence. This other dimension is external to that frame, points towards what, in Jesus’s perspective, is the real essential in human existence, is superior, deeper, vital and should work as the guiding reference point to deal with all the rest.

The question “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” aimed at trapping Jesus inside a mental frame that concentrates on social, political and economic problems. By answering “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” he breaks the frame by building a system of priorities, pointing towards who you are, what you are, what the meaning of your existence is, what you want to nourish your soul with. He makes an effort to make a jump, to transfer the fundamental and guiding perspective from an external one (social, political, economic) to the internal one (what is at the core of your inner life?). Jesus’ answer doesn’t clarify if the tax should be paid or not. He leaves this choice to you, but there is someone who, in your existence, is greater than Caesar and comes first, before Caesar. Deal with your relatioship with God first. This will guide and inspire you in making your personal political decisions.

Once we understand these dynamics, your hypothesis seems doing the opposite of what Jesus was trying to do. He tried to point people’s attention towards the world of inner life, of what is spiritually vital and is the essence, compared to practical and external problems. Your hypothesis moves Jesus words back into the cage he was trying to exit from: social, political and economical problems. It nullifies Jesus’s effort to point people's attention towards another dimension.

"The question was aimed at trapping Jesus into a dead end: if he answered “Yes”, he would have been considered an accomplice of Romans, who were oppressing Hebrews; if he answered “No”, he would have been accused of being a political subversive person, dangerous to the Roman establishment."

If i may, almost every bit of the political intrigue in the bible is made up. Given the enormous size of the empire, a single jewish peasant raising a fuss in one of its tiniest jurisdictions would hardly raise the attention of an emporer.

What happened to your homebody jesus was the equivalent of what happens to some random lower class petty criminal who makes the news for a day and then is forgotten about.

I will now take your questions.

I agree with you, what you said is simply how things actually were in that historical context. When I wrote “he would have been accused of being a political subversive person, dangerous to the Roman establishment”, I referred to the perspective of Jesus’ questioners, not the perspective of Romans.

... and had J actually caused an uprising, it would have been as revolutionary as the last group of protesters in your own city that got gassed and then went home. That's how concerned the Roman government would've been about that guy.

What if the entire story around this guy is made up? Couldn't believe it? Too many scholars and historians sayin' dis dat and the udda ting about corroboration and all that shit? That's part of the story, pal.

Of course this entire story can have been made up, this is the situation of the Gospels: we have no evidence about the historical reliability of most of its content. But I can’t see how this would make a difference in this discussion.

Oh well damn my bad then. I was just tryna say in another way, "disregard the problem being discussed."

But then what you guys wanna do is examine a problem that's presented in a fictitious story. You can totally do that. Let's pretend this is happening and examine what would come of it if it wasn't fiction.

I just thought yuns had some serious stake in the outcome and felt obliged to provide some relief by informing everyone of the matter's trivial and inconsequential nature.

When I posted this premise, I didn't post it with any intent to argue its validity. I merely presented as I saw the possibility of Jesus posing an action that would indeed have caused a major headache for the Roman's ability to rule a populace that rejected the use of Roman coinage. The number of Jews under their rule wasn't a few peasants as suggested above, it was in the millions. Consider what would happen if we rejected the paper dollar in this country. Of course, in this country we wouldn't have access to an alternate means of conducting exchange, but the Jews already had an alternative. They had temple money and barter for many years before the Romans ruled. So, my article makes the point, that when Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Ceasars, he was indicating that the Jews didn't need that medium of exchange, even to pay their taxes, they had a choice. They had the option of bartering for their goods, a system that had operated for a lot of years. My article only points out that a sword wasn't needed, an idea would have worked. Of course, the Roman tax had to be paid with Roman coinage, but it would have caused chaos in the Roman rule if the Jews stopped using Roman money for any Jewish transactions like goods or services. Like, what would the soldiers due with their Roman money they were paid in if nobody took it?