The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

The Life of Jesus Mafa was a Roman Catholic missionary project in the 1970s that aimed to teach the gospel to inhabitants of Northern Cameroon, and help them relate it to their daily lives. François Vidil worked with Mafa Christian communities (who dressed up and enacted the scenes) to create an extensive series of paintings depicting Jesus and other New Testament characters as contemporary Africans.

We are shown a simple building with two men in it—one foregrounded, one backgrounded, both facing forward. The man in the foreground can be read as a ‘take-charge’ type. His eyeglasses may suggest intelligence, education, and privilege. He is dressed in white. Speaking to an implied audience to his left (outside the painted composition), he seems authoritative—pointing with his right hand as he places his left hand over his heart; referring to himself perhaps. He is the pharisee of Luke 18.

Standing at distance behind him is the other man in the story. He is dressed in blue, his shoulders stooping forward, his face contorted as he looks down at his plaintively cupped palms.

The artist has taken a liberty with the text, which has both men standing apart from each other and in prayer. They are not interacting with others. But this artist has the pharisee speaking to a nearby auditor or auditors. He seems an upstanding citizen and to know what he is doing.

And there is no harm in that, is there? That is Luke’s penetrating question. The pharisee pays his taxes. The collector carries them to their destination. Who wants to pay taxes to an oppressive occupier after all? Perhaps there were some dishonest tax agents on top of all that who earned them the double opprobrium of the populace, but in what governmental office is there no corruption?

Phariseeism is a method of scriptural interpretation. Collecting taxes is a livelihood—in this case, on behalf of a hated occupier. Comparing them is inane, or rather impossible. Perhaps the tax collector is also a pharisee. We do not know. But we do know that the one who pays taxes and the one who collects them from him are both working to prevent violence during a hated occupation with bloodshed being but a touch away. Who is to condemn either?

Medieval statues of Ecclesia and Synagoga (the Church and the Synagogue) tell the reception history of texts like Luke 18:9–14 which were interpreted as contrasting the penitent Christian with the proud Jew.

This pair was carved for the exterior of Strasbourg Cathedral, c.1235. Another pair is over the portico of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, c.1240. Comparably supersessionist imagery in many other artistic media has also functioned historically to convey the triumph of the Church over the Synagogue. Some of it is grotesque, as when Jews were depicted as demons. They tell us something of where Luke’s story about a supposedly self-righteous man—and others like it (e.g., Matthew 6)—led a self-righteous Church.

In these sculptures, Church and Synagogue are personified as attractive women. At Strasbourg, the Ecclesia is beautiful in her crown, her long flowing locks cascading over her shoulders, her cloak clasped by a fine brooch. Her right hand holds the stanchion of the church whose cross reaches above her head. Her left hand cradles a chalice to her body. She seems confident, looking slightly inquiringly down her nose at the Synagoga to her left.

This other woman, by contrast, is bareheaded, blindfolded, her head lowered and looking toward her left—away from the Church’s gaze. Her left arm extends downwards, its fingers—also extended downwards—barely retaining their hold on her Torah book. Her right hand holds the bottom half of a lance broken into four parts, its top leaning against her shoulder.

The two figures seem well aware of one another, one confidently watching, the other shamed as she is watched. Triumphant Christian pride and defeated Jewish shame teach those in the cathedral’s precincts what they need to know about Christianity and Judaism.

The text of Luke 18:9–14 intends to teach the reverse of the message in the sculptures, however. Humility is morally superior to self-confidence, and contempt is to be chastised. Yet the Church came to pride itself on this point. The tax collector and the pharisee came to represent the Church and the Synagogue as depicted by the sculptures rather than as the text would have it. Humility became a foundation of pride and shaming was prided.

It’s a catch-22. The Church is hoisted by its own petard as it proudly preaches about humility. This may not have been Luke’s intention, but it was the result.

This Byzantine manuscript illumination does away with the narrative setting, props, and staging of Luke’s story. We simply have two figures against a gold ground. The colourfully dressed pharisee lifts his gaze and extends his right arm towards a heavenly opening above him. His left arm is extended as if in invitation towards his companion. The tax collector is drably dressed, bent in half to suggest his humility, and without a head covering.

Contrary to the text, in which each man keeps to himself—perhaps even unaware that the other is in the building—here, the men face each other. The penitent’s plaintive eyes look up to the uplifted face of the pharisee and he reaches toward the pharisee’s extended hand. Although their hands do not meet, the energy in the composition flows from left to right then upwards, from the bent penitential back of the tax collector through his outstretched hand to the other man’s upwardly extending body and arm and finally to the opening above him.

Thus, unlike in Luke’s text, the figures facing each other are shown in relationship. The pharisee beseeching heaven seems to be sending the penitent’s prayers aloft as the priestly conduit of contrition.

Triumph and shame defy colourization. The one reaching to heaven is not an exemplification of the disgraced Synagogue as he was so frequently in the church-sponsored works of later artists. The agonized penitent is not the triumphant Church that the Strasbourg sculptor carved for his cathedral. The artist seems to have turned Luke around.