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.” 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.
That’s why Jesus’s “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.
It is also why his so-called “Cleansing of the Temple” was not only a religious statement but also
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It makes sense that pacifist Jesus would oppose the revolting, disgusting, sickening, ugly, obscene, horrific, barbaric, evil practice of animal sacrifice.
But there’s no indication that he objected to animal sacrifice. He objected to commerce taking place in the Temple. In all the Gospel accounts, he says “Do not make my father’s house a den of robbers” or some such wording. In none of them does he say “Do not make my father’s house an abattoir” or “a slaughterhouse.”
Animal sacrifice was an absolutely essential practice in almost all ancient Mediterranean religions, with only a few exceptions, and so far as I recall Jesus doesn’t express any disapproval of that practice in any of the sayings attributed to him. We find animal sacrifice revolting, and all the other adjectives that you use, certainly, but ancient religious views were very different from ours in that regard (as in many others).
It seems to be commonly believed that the money changers were needed to exchange the coins of those without graven images, but my understanding is that this is not actually true. The coin that the priests required for payment was the Tyrian Shekel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_shekel) which actually has an image of Baal on it. So it definitely did have a graven image. Even when the Tyrian mint had been shuddered the Judeans were permitted by the Romans to continue to mint the same coin so that it could be used for temple payments but the romans required them to continue to have the same image of Baal on it. The alternative explanation of why a Tyrian Shekel was required is that it had a higher silver content and was not debased like other coins, such as Denarius. So people would have to exchange their lower value coins for higher value Shekels so that God received full value of the temple tax of 1/2 shekel per adult male.
Thanks. I believe the standard line now is indeed that it was used because it was less debased. I need to look into the question of Baal.
If we think that this incident has the famous historical core we might surely think that the actions may not have been all that dramatic – he knocked over a couple of tables and shouted at someone carrying ‘equipment’ then left before anyone could intervene, as it appears he must have done. Mark doesn’t think that Jesus was accompanied this time by any followers – unusual for him
What is the likelihood that Jesus acted in the way described and it started a bit of a riot?
Little likelihood I’d say. Otherwise we’d hear from Josephus about the event (since he records a number of these things) and more important, Jesus would have been arrested on the spot.