In Mishnah Sanhedrin 4.5, presumably from the second century of our era, the basic oneness of human nature is contrasted with the extraordinary variety of people:

The die or seal used for the “first person” produces a different image each and every time, yet there was but one die, used an infinite number of times. Furthermore, the “original” behind the biblical pronouncement in Genesis 1.27 (So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.) is inaccessible. In contrast, ancient mints needed to change their dies frequently because they wore out quickly and had to be replaced. And yet the coins were very similar. In fact, the evenness and authority of this stamp mattered more than the coin’s metal value. The similarity of the coins and all kinds of fiduciary money, in turn, made and makes the task of governing and controlling people that much easier. In contrast to this attitude, the unrepresentable divine agent is said to be more willing to relinquish control of representation and have images of self which can be very different from each other, and have value in and of themselves.

In Mark 12.17, the same elements are at play: a divine agent, earthly kings, a coin, and the business of images. Jesus is at the temple in Jerusalem, confronted by Pharisees and Herodians, the government critics and government representatives of the time. They flatter him for making no differences between people (however different they are: οὐ γὰρ βλέπεις εἰς πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπων; cf. Deuteronomy 10.17, Leviticus 19.5, etc.), as the torah demands. They have arranged to ask him a trick question: “Is it lawful to pay the census to Caesar or not?” In response, he requests a silver coin, which he lacks, because of poverty or religious piety which required that no money (and certainly no images) be used in or even near the sacred precinct (it is precisely this renunciation to the ease of transactions that made it sacred). He then asks whose image and inscription the coin bears: Τίνος ἡ εἰκὼν αὕτη καὶ ἡ ἐπιγραφή. When he is told they belong to Caesar (without being given any of the disturbing details the inscription would bear, like “son of divinized Augustus”), he answers: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” a famous answer often used in the past to support various degrees of separation of church and state. The immediate point of the answer, however, is that there are limits even to the powers of a Caesar. His apparatus of coercion could have his name and picture printed on only so many thousands of metal coins or stone statues, whereas the divine imprint could be detected everywhere, beyond the great variety of nature and human beings. Two different types of claims on people and their labor.

We live in a world where the power to print or coin images on matter, and claim and appropriate the product for oneself, is more extensive than ever before, reaching even into the plant, animal and human domains. We live in a world not so different from that of antiquity, in that this wondrous power is being abused, just as it was in ancient times. It is not intellectual exploration itself that is at fault, but how it is controlled and used. Modern institutions and corporations are putting their own image and brand even on the stuff of life, which one would have thought could never be owned again. We are buying these images. So, as a result, one can imagine oneself working as hard as ever, one’s whole life, and paying a large part of one’s salary for health, genetically engineered and patented foods, software, energy, education. How are we going to respond to this situation?