(Luke 19:1-10)19 Jesus was going through the city of Jericho. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus, who was a very important tax collector, and he was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because he was too short to see above the crowd. 4 He ran ahead to a place where Jesus would come, and he climbed a sycamore tree so he could see him. 5 When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down! I must stay at your house today.”
6 Zacchaeus came down quickly and welcomed him gladly. 7 All the people saw this and began to complain, “Jesus is staying with a sinner!”
8 But Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “I will give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I will pay back four times more.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Salvation has come to this house today, because this man also belongs to the family of Abraham. 10 The Son of Man came to find lost people and save them.”
Note that the principal feature of Zaccheus is the his absolute departure from the evil matter:
climbing a sycamore tree allegorizes the fact that, in order to see the Son of the Alien God, the man has to separate himself from the evil world created by the Demiurge.
A clue to the heretic Gnostic meaning of the sycamore tree is given by the command given by Jesus to Zaccheus in the our canonical proto-catholic versions: has he to give up only half of the his possessions? Surely not the same command given by Jesus to the young rich: give up all your possessions.
Clearly here is meant again an advise to separate himself absolutely (and not relatively) from the evil demiurgical world. By having still only half of the his possessions, Zaccheus is not that hater of the Demiurgical Creation as he was in the original story, after all.