How Unclean Were Tax-Collectors?

Abstract

The ideas that tax-collectors were unusually unclean and were regarded as incapable of repentance derive from misreadings of passages in the Mishnah and Talmud. These ideas sometimes form part of a general mistaken thesis that first-century Jewish society was riven by purity-based divisions. In fact, Jewish purity laws did not lead to social demarcation, since impurity was permitted except when entering the Temple, and purification when required was available to all, including tax-collectors. Disapproval of tax-collectors was on moral, not ritual-purity grounds, since they acted corruptly and oppressively. The case of the repentant tax-collector Zachaeus and his offer of reparation can be fully understood through rabbinic parallels.