New Testament Gospels
Doesn’t Jesus’ “Cleansing of the Temple” Show He Wanted a Military Uprising?
Did Jesus support of an armed uprising against Rome? Yesterday I re-posted some comments I had made years ago on the blog about Aslan's popular book Zealot, which advances that thesis. I won't be dealing with the entire book this time around: I'm just interested at this point in dealing with this vital question itself Now I want to show how two data that are crucial for the “zealot hypothesis” actually make better sense with this apocalyptic understanding of Jesus. The two data involve the temple cleansing and the crucifixion itself. If one wants to establish – as Aslan very much does want to do – that Jesus favored violence, there is no better scene to focus on than the disruption he caused in the Temple upon arriving in Jerusalem in the last week of his life. According to the earliest accounts, Jesus enters the temple, overturns the tables of those exchanging money, and drives out those who were selling sacrificial animals. In our first account, Mark’s, Jesus actually shuts down the operation of the [...]