Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Gist and Jesus and the Cleansing of the Temple written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken Teutsch it is virtually impossible to disentangle religion and politics when studying ancient sources. They were not separate entities, but tightly interwoven aspects of the same entity involving questions of authority, who wields it, how they should wield it, and how these authorities are authorized.
[00:00:31] Kings could be gods and vice versa. Priests were governmental officials and vice versa laws were divinely sanctioned. Opposition to the state meant opposition to the gods who supported it and opposition to the state gods meant opposition to the state.
[00:00:48] That's why Jesus religious views that God was soon to bring in a new kingdom and appoint him its ruler was seen as a political offense leading to his execution for insurrection.
[00:01:00] It is also why his so called cleansing of the temple was not only a religious statement but also a threat to the established order.
[00:01:09] The event is recounted in all four of our gospels, again with important differences in detail, particularly in John, but with the same gist.
[00:01:19] Mark provides our earliest account. Verse Mark 11:15 17 the day after arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus enters the temple compound and causes a major ruckus. He drives out everyone selling and buying sacrificial animals and overturns the tables of the money changers while quoting a text of scripture. My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers from Isaiah 56. 7 Most historical scholars agree for solid reasons this could not have happened as narrated in the Gospels. But it does appear to have some kind of historical grounding as an exaggerated version of something Jesus did. To explain, I need to provide a bit of background.
[00:02:05] The Temple was not a single building, but an enormous compound surrounded by massive walls, 10 stories high, encompassing a space large enough to accommodate 25American football fields. It was the location of the central sanctuary of the Jewish religion, a small building that had a room called the Holy of Holies. That is the holiest place where God Himself was believed to dwell. He was in heaven too, but this was his specific locus on earth.
[00:02:36] No one could enter the room except on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when only the high priest could go behind the thick curtain into God's presence, where he would perform sacrifices for both his own sins and the sins of the people.
[00:02:52] The regular sacrifices were performed just outside the central sanctuary on the surrounding altar, in a courtyard reserved for the priests and their assistants, Levites. Beyond that was a courtyard for Jewish men, then a larger courtyard for all men and women, and finally an even larger courtyard into which anyone Gentiles could congregate. It was in that outer court of the Gentiles that the sellers and buyers of animals and the money changers of the account would have been located.
[00:03:24] Knowing just this much about the temple compound shows why the Gospel account of Jesus actions are difficult to accept as historical. There would have been many thousands of people filling in an enormous area. Jews coming from around the world to celebrate the Passover feast, to perform sacrifices to God, to mingle, to talk, to revel in being the in the holy city, worshiping the God who had made them his chosen ones. With priests and Levites carrying on their business in the inner regions, performing animal sacrifices in the appointed spots, draining the blood of the sacrificial animals and disposing of it as required, carrying sacrificial tools and vessels all about.
[00:04:06] Even though the court of the priests is where the sacrificial acts were being performed, the outer parts were crucial as well, including especially the selling of the animals for sacrifice.
[00:04:18] A Jew coming from Rome or Ephesus for the occasion could not just put a lamb on his shoulders and walk to Jerusalem in order to sacrifice it. Animals had to be available there for that to happen. Roman currency could not be allowed. As we have seen, it had an image of the divine Caesar stamped on it. The temple did not obviously recognize Tiberius's divinity, and images were not allowed in general, let alone in the holy place.
[00:04:45] It's doubtful that the Greek speaking Gentile author of the Gospel of Mark had ever been to Jerusalem. But in his account, Jesus single handedly shut down the entire operation. In Mark's words, Jesus did not allow anyone to carry any instruments, vessels, equipment. The Greek word includes all these things through the temple.
[00:05:08] Sacrificial practices can't happen without large numbers of people carrying loads of things needed for the bloody tasks.
[00:05:16] Matthew goes a bit farther. Jesus drove out not just the sellers of animals, but everyone buying them. Presumably that means the vast majority of the thousands of visitors who came for just that purpose. In John, he does it with a whip.
[00:05:32] Two issues.
[00:05:33] How is that possible for a single man to do? It is not narrated as a miracle in the accounts. And equally important, why didn't anyone intervene?
[00:05:43] With respect to the second issue, it is important to recall that this is one time of the year when the Roman governor Pilate came into the city with his troops, stationing them around the city at the potential hot spots where mob uprisings might occur in this unusually incendiary time, Passover, the Jewish celebration of God's deliverance of his people from a foreign oppressor.
[00:06:06] There was no greater hotspot than the temple, and we know from Josephus that Roman soldiers would have been focused there. It is impossible to imagine someone, one person entering the spot, engaging in violent actions, overturning tables, driving everyone out with a whip, or even without one, without attracting the attention of the armed soldiers put there precisely to keep the peace.
[00:06:31] So nothing of this magnitude would have happened.
[00:06:34] But something probably did.
[00:06:36] The account is multiply attested coincides well with the numerous records of his opposition to the Jewish sacrificial system and the Jewish leaders who ran it. It ties in closely with his repeated claim that God would be destroying the temple, as I'll show in the next post. While seeming on the surface to run contrary to the Gospel writer's own emphasis on his non violent character, just as important it can also explain why Jewish leaders began for the first time to notice him, an otherwise unknown low class itinerant preacher from the boonies, leading eventually to his arrest and crucifixion.
[00:07:15] So what actually happened and how do we explain it?
[00:07:19] I'll discuss the matter further in posts to come.
