Jesus's Cleansing of the Temple
Excerpt from my forthcoming book on the historical Jesus for paid subscribers!
Jesus, like many other Jews before him, around him, and after him, stood in a line of those who had a complaint and critique of the temple and its priestly establishment. He engaged in a dramatic and provocative demonstration during that fateful week of Passover. The Marcan and Johannine accounts read:
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began driving out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he threw over the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not permit anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? [Isa 56:7] But you have made it a ‘cave of bandits” [Jer 7:11]. (Mk 11:15-17 [trans. MFB].
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” [Zech 14:21]. His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me” [Ps 69:9] (Jn 2:13-17 [NRSVue]).
Jesus’s action most likely transpired in the outer court, known in modern parlance as the “court of the Gentiles,” or else began in the southern plaza adjacent and made its way up to the royal porticoes where the money-changers were probably set up, before spilling into the outer court. There are good arguments for the historicity of the action and the accompanying saying, above all, it was this provocative action and prophetic aphorism that explains why the priestly authorities sought Jesus’s demise. In any case, plausibility is enhanced when we remember that what Jesus attempted was not an occupation of the temple, much less an insurrection. What happened was probably a short sharp dramatic gesture, lasting only a few minutes, with Jesus making a ruckus as he moved along with his disciples behind him, annoying some and scandalizing others.