In Jesus’ times, most Palestinians were farmers, and fishermen; then there were craftsmen, shepherds and lastly traders.
At that time, due to overpopulation, drought, infertility of land, poor trading and heavy taxation, the majority of the people were unemployed and lived in poverty. Beggars were everywhere. The richest people were the nobles, the priests, the landlords and the tax-collectors.
One of the reasons why the Jews lived in poverty was heavy taxation. Besides the taxes to the temple, Jews had to pay taxes to the Roman government. The census would be done every 14 years in order to collect property and personal tax which could be paid in cash or in kind and would be collected by the Roman government officials. Tariffs were the taxation of goods collected by the Jewish tax-collectors who then submitted to the Roman officials. Every year, rights of tax-collection were open for bidding. The Romans granted the rights to the highest bidder, who in his turn granted the rights to smaller tax-collectors, who tried to squeeze as much money as they could from the people using all sorts of immoral means and kept the surplus as their own profit. These Jewish tax-collectors were hated by the people for obeying a foreign authority and for robbing the poor. That was why they were considered ‘public sinners’.
Currency in the time of Jesus
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Denarius Shekel
Unskilled workers' daily wage is a "Denarius"
300,000 "Dana" = one "Talentum" and
one " Talentum " = 3,600 "Shekel"
Jesus was born into a poor carpenter’s family and lived a simple life. He saw that money bound and deceived people’s hearts and stifled the words of the Lord. Jesus pointed out that one could not serve God and money at the same time.
﹙ Matthew 6：24﹚
Jesus never despised money. He accepted invitations for banquets from the rich. Sometimes people even accused Jesus of enjoying eating and drinking. Jesus
accepted financial support from women and did not refuse the gift of expensive
oil. It is evident that Jesus kept his internal freedom in front of both riches and poverty.
With this freedom, Jesus preached the kingdom of heaven and preached the gospel to the poor; he even invited many tax-collectors who were regarded as recognized sinners to follow him. As St. Paul’s Apostle said: “The Lord Jesus Christ was rich, but he became poor for you, so that you may become rich because of his poverty.”
(2 Corinthians 8：9﹚
