Baligomingo said
“Your entire argument is based on either believing everything the four gospels say about the arrest or none of it.  Neither option is logically tenable.  Jesus was arrested.  That’s a fact. And it would have been a tense moment.  In moments of tension, people do things they might not normally do.  And everyone remember such events differently–and may not clearly remember this or that person’s reaction.”

Soooo. No. That is not what my entire argument is based on.  My argument is based on 1) recognizing that the Gospels are deeply a-historical, 2) Admitting that – despite some excellent and frankly very fun scholarship – we don’t know who wrote them and therefore we don’t really know their intentions and 3) It therefore becomes very hard to Know with a capital K what if any of this is genuine memory – and if it is, how it has been altered by time and the Writer to suite his purpose.

“You never know what someone is going to do” is not really evidence based reasoning.  It is true, but doesn’t really answer any questions.   

They are no more ‘deeply ahistorical’ than other sources historians make use of.  Selective skepticism–leading to made up stories with no sourcing at all–is not to be taken seriously.  

Baligomingo said
As this thread shows, we are missing data on almost every point of the story – by which i mean not just the major characters, but background information like, “does the Temple have its own guards” (I vote that they have their own thugs, like Paul was, but YMMV). What rules were there concerning weapons (i’m guessing not friendly to non-Romans carrying them, but again, I can’t prove that). 

All that said, you are absolutely right – I am more inclined to believe that there was an incident at the Temple – because such an incident fits the underlying claims of Messiahship as we understand it from Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. As does armed followers. All speculation that they would have done xyz when Jesus was arrested is just idle speculation on our part. It is much easier to perceive the symbolic and narrative function of specific details – two things that drive their inclusion – than to evaluate their actual reality. 

But its true that the “cleasing” story may itself be made up. Or may be a tradition that was started because cleaning the Temple was one of the goals of Messianic Judaism, and so people attributed it to the Messiah. Or … it happened.   

And again I absolutely believe Jesus made a fuss about the moneychangers, and I think most people in the courtyard never even noticed.  (Ten football fields, remember?)  And there were no weapons of any kind involved.  Jesus flipped over a table or three, harangued some passersby, to make his point, to get noticed.  Some people noticed, and that gave him an opportunity to make his point about why he thought it was wrong to have people using God’s house to make money.  

Now they needed to have money-changers there, and you could hardly expect currency conversion services to be provided gratis.    Without being able to see what Jesus saw, I don’t know what he was objecting to–maybe, just maybe, he wanted to get people’s attention, so he could talk about the Kingdom.  To him, all this fol-de-rol at the Temple is just a distraction from what people ought to care about.  And remember, please, who had done much of the building of this structure.  The father of the man who executed his teacher.  I think Jesus had some excuse for thinking this manifestation of the Temple was corrupt.  

Creating a public disturbance, in itself, wasn’t usually a capital offense.  Not under Jewish or Roman law.  But it was enough to get the Temple authorities worried, if people were listening to him–responding to the theater.  He’s questioning their authority.  And since they are Rome’s proxies, he’s also, by extension, challenging Rome’s authority.  (Is how they’d put it to Pilate.)

But once he has an audience, there’s no quiet way to take him out of there.  Stephen says he thinks Jesus was a charismatic speaker–well, charismatic speakers know how to work a crowd.  Look what Mark Antony was able to do with a funeral oratory (and not just in Shakespeare).  

All any attempt to arrest him is going to accomplish is getting him a much larger crowd, and possibly a nice riot, and then maybe Roman soldiers will be coming in there, and they really don’t want that.  Josephus and Philo both recount a major rebellion against Pilate because some Roman standards with Caesar’s image were brought into Jerusalem.  Okay, who really believes you could bring Roman soldiers, with all their various Caesar-related paraphernalia into the Temple premises, at Passover, without the city going nuts?

The best explanation is that Jesus showed the Temple authorities that he could take over part of their turf, get people to listen to him, after basically saying their stewardship of God’s house was corrupt, and their authority was illegimate.  They couldn’t do a thing about it without risking sparking serious unrest.  So what would make sense?  Find some way to grab this guy when he doesn’t have a crowd around him.  

The more you look at Stephen’s story, the less sense it makes.  The more you look at the story the gospels tell–stripped of all its ornaments and flourishes added by storytellers–the more sense it makes.  

Nice dodge there, Bob!  😀

Let me be more specific–do you believe Jesus was arrested at the Temple courtyard, that the entire story of his arrest in all four gospels and Acts is a fabrication–and are you aware of a single major scholar who believes that?  

So you don’t know, and would rather not opine.  Fair enough.  Except I also asked you if to your knowledge even one mainstream scholar believes Jesus was arrested at the Temple courtyard.  And not answering that question is tantamount to saying no, you’re not.  

See, this is what I mean about people speaking different languages.  And I don’t mean Greek.

Which is me saying I don’t give a **** whether you answer me or not.  Good night.  

God helps those who help themselves, Robert.

But if I were you, I’d maybe go with professionals.  

(And thankfully, I am not you.)

😉

Going later this week, hopefully.  Need some root canal done.  

Be a nice change from reading your prose.

I work at a university, Robert.   If I ever need expert assistance, I know where to look.  And I’m sure the people working in that field would feel great sympathy for you.  

It must be nice to know more Greek than anyone on a lightly populated message board you have to pay to access.  

I know far more about the study of history than anyone here–frankly, the honor is wearing thin.  Which is why I’ll be gone by spring.  But while I’m here, if you want some pointers on how to write English, feel free to ask.

What you mean ‘we’, paleface?  😉