See Definition for telwnhv 5057
See Definition for arcitelwnhv 754
The Roman system of collecting taxes, especially the teloi, in
their provinces, included ordinarily three grades of officials. There
was the highest, called in Latin publicanus, who paid a sum of
money for the taxes of a certain province, and then exacted that and as
much more as he could from the province. This man lived in Rome. Then
there were the submagistri, who had charge each of a certain
portion of territory, and who lived in the provinces. Then there were
the portitores, the actual custom-house officers, who did the real
work of collecting the taxes. The N.T. word telwnhv is used to
describe one of the portitores; it is the lowest of these three
grades. It does not correspond to the Latin publicanus, and the
word publican used to translate it in A.V. and R.V. is apt to be
misleading; tax-collector would be better.
arcitelwnhv, only occurring in Lu 19:2:, evidently describes a
higher official than telwnhv, and is probably one of the
submagistri, the next higher grade.
