The arrogant tone of Dave the tax gatherer won’t lead to reconciliation

Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans and sinners’.

Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans and sinners’. Publicani were the Roman imperial equivalent of ‘Dave’ Hartnett, the permanent secretary at HM Revenue and Customs who has been widely condemned as a bad character after a radio interview in which he denied that £2 billion of miscalculated tax, which will result in additional demands on 1.4