All right, we're talking about Matthew the Tax Collector, the guy who wrote the book that we're looking at right now, as the repugnant cultural other, the character in society that is just different enough from all of his neighbors and also just

close enough in proximity that he is revolting he's disgusting to them he is the

absolute worst the thing that you wouldn't want to be and for you and me we got to dig into that a little bit to fully understand why for the original audience like one word got it done publican tax collector

that theoretically most people still don't like paying taxes that much and I understand

that there's been more of a cultural political divide lately where some people are like no taxes

are the way to a good society more people should pay more taxes and then we can use that

money through the efficiency of government my biases are showing there

to make everything better for everyone I'm not sold on that like just full disclosure

I have a bias against what Matthew was doing because I'm not a huge fan of taxes.

I think probably some taxation is a reasonable thing in society, but when you take things

from people without consent, I don't know, it gets into some pretty sticky territory.

Well, the Romans took a lot of things from people without their consent, like the entire Mediterranean world.

They went on a gigantic conquest

expedition that started when they defeated their neighbors, the

Carthaginians, way back in the Punic Wars. That's the second century BC, a couple hundred years

before the time of Jesus, and they just didn't quit after that. Carthage was

like the Czech, the Soviet Union to the 1980s, United States, who kept Rome in the Western part of the Mediterranean

instead of letting them leak into the more Greek part of the Eastern Mediterranean.

But once Carthage was out of the way, with the famous battles that you've heard of,

like the Battle of Zama and the famous characters

you've heard of, like Scipio Africanus

and Hannibal, the great Hannibal, who fought

...