Several aspects of Jesus’s actions in the temple – the so-called “Cleansing of the Temple” – have long puzzled scholars.
As I indicated in the previous post, in all four Gospels – with some important differences among them – Jesus enters the temple compound, is angered by what he sees, overturns the tables of those who are changing Roman currency for temple currency to allow people to purchase sacrificial animals, drives out those who are selling (and even buying) the animals, prevents (in one account) anyone from carrying anything needed for the sacrifices though the temple, and forcefully declares that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all the nations” but that “you have made it a den of robbers” (quoting Isaiah 56:7).
Most critical scholars agree that this cannot be construed as an attack on Judaism per se, since Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and stood in the line of Hebrew prophets who opposed the activities of the temple. But that’s where the puzzlement begins to arise. The temple was built on the order of God himself, originally under Solomon nearly 1000 years earlier, and then rebuilt after the Babylonian exile, again on the authority of God. And the sacrifices that were performed there were explicitly demanded in the law of Moses.
So how can Jesus be opposed to it?
One might think he wasn’t opposed to the temple and the sacrifices per se, but to the business enterprises of monetary exchange and the selling of sacrificial animals. That certainly can make sense. On the other hand, if God ordered sacrifices to be performed, how could that happen without these commercial activities?
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It is important to recall the situation on the ground. As I indicated, these commercial activities were being carried out not in the holier inner areas of the temple, but in the “Court of the Gentiles,” where not only Jews but also interested visitors could come to observe and probably gape in awe at the splendid temple compound, with its enormous walls, giant gates, white stone, gold facades, all spread over something like 38 acres. This court was large and spacious –distant from the Holy of Holies where God dwelt within the sanctuary itself and from the place of sacrifice where not even Jews could go if they were not Priests or their assistants, the Levites.
The court of the Gentiles would have been a thriving kind of place – kind of like Jerusalem in modern times with the busy-ness of tour groups flocking through. Crowds of people, talking, looking around, enjoying the sites, marveling at the construction.
In this space there were people exchanging money and purchasing sacrificial animals. And how could it be otherwise? The law of Moses, written in stages by different authors at different times, presupposes that Israel was a relatively small nation; that Jerusalem was a relatively small city; that the temple was a relatively small place, and the worshipers in the temple were a relatively small number.
Now, centuries later, Jews have been scattered throughout the world from Babylon to Spain, from North Africa to what we would call Southern Europe. Those who could attend the Passover festival would of course come from areas nearby such as the Judean countryside, Galilee, or further north up in Syria etc. But they would also come from Egypt, Asia Minor, and Rome. They were coming to commemorate their ancient faith, thousands of them, many (possibly most) for the one time in their lives. They were coming to perform the sacrifices to God set forth in their sacred scriptures. And how, practically, were they supposed to do that?
Someone taking a caravan up from Egypt, or walking down from Antioch, or getting there by land or sea from Ephesus could not very well load up their sacrificial animals and bring (carry?) them to the holy city. One of the major points of going was to sacrifice, but the sacrifices had to be available. And so the temple could scarcely function for Jewish visitors without the buying and selling of animals. And purchases certainly could not be made with sacrilegious currency of, say, the Romans, with the image of a divine being stamped on it.
The activities that Jesus appears to be objecting to were completely sensible and even necessary for these Jewish pilgrims to practice the religious rituals prescribed by God himself in the Scripture. So what is his point?
That’s a thorny issue that scholars have long wrestled with.
- The age-old Christian view is that Jesus hated Judaism and wanted to get rid of it; he came to die for the sins of the world in order to save Jews (as well as non-Jews) from the false religious practices that had led them astray. As I’ve argued that is almost certainly wrong.
- Another common view, as I’ve suggested, is that Jesus thought the entire thing had become a money-making racket and was incensed at it. I do think that may be part of the issue. For those who don’t see how he could think so, since these practices were necessary for the sacrificial system to work, I’d suggest that a lower-class rural peasant may well have been taken aback by what was going on in the name of religion, just as many Protestant Christians I know are deeply disturbed at what they find in the Vatican or in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. For others, it all makes sense. There are and always have been lots of forceful protests against institutions that have grown up out of perceived necessity and make perfect sense to others.
- A new view of the matter was put forth in by one of the great New Testament scholars of the end of the 20th century, E. P. Sanders, in his now classic study, Jesus and Judaism (Fortress Press, 1985). Sanders agreed that the temple event was historical, even if the Gospel accounts hugely exaggerated it. But Jesus did create some kind of ruckus in the temple. It was not, however, to push for reform. Jesus was not pushing for a social revolution – for example, by making sacrificial animals free for anyone who needed one, or to move the commercial activities outside the temple compounds. He was performing a symbolic act completely commensurate with his mission and message.
Jesus believed a day of judgment was coming. A divine figure he called the Son of Man would soon arrive from heaven. The enemies of God would be destroyed – including) leaders of the Jews, along with their beloved temple. Jesus was enacting a parable of the coming destruction.
The idea of an “enacted parable” is that an action can instruct just as well as story. An activity can demonstrate and reinforce a message. You can verbally condemn a political leader but you can also burn him in effigy. You can verbally malign the racist founder of your community or you can pull down his statue. Or both.
It is worth nothing that the prophets of Scripture often enacted their messages. And so, for example, Isaiah was the first “streaker” of the Bible (Isaiah 20) (the more famous one among Christians is the naked young man of Mark 14); a particularly odd military figure was Ezekiel, who laid siege to a brick (Ezekiel 4).
I agree with Sanders: this is probably the sort of thing Jesus was doing. Throughout the Gospels (see for example Mark 13:2; 14:58; 15:29) Jesus repeatedly indicates the temple would be destroyed in the coming judgment. His violent action is a symbolic act that illustrates his message.
Here again Jesus is not promoting social reform, political change, or military action. He is anticipating what is soon to happen on the coming day of judgment. To the chagrin of many of his followers then and now, Jesus did not believe in trying to change the system. He believed the system would be overthrown in a cosmic act of God.
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Do you think Jesus would still have considered the temple unnecessary even if he hadn’t viewed its leaders as corrupt (or even if they had embraced his message and genuinely repented) given his belief that the permanent arrival of the kingdom of heaven would ultimately make the temple superfluous?
I don’t know. But since God had commanded the constructoin of the temple and the sacrifices, it seems unlikely.
Yes it is lmao. Have you read the NT? Jesus does away with Pharisees and the Temple, there’s a ton of stories about this, including this story, the Cleansing of the Temple. Jesus replaced the temple with His body, Jesus is the temple now. Jesus kicked out not just the merchants, but the priest-merchants, which were the Jewish priests. Jesus’s sacrifice is enough and replaces any other physical sacrifices for the future – they are not needed. The physical temple is not needed. When Jesus dies the curtain of the temple breaks in half – another symbolical story that the temple is done for. I have serious suspicions about people who would say otherwise or give an ambiguous answer or just avoid to answer by saying “we don’t know”, these must be biased Jewish by ethnicity scholars or academic professors paid by Jewish organizations. Just read your Bibles. In fact, autonomy of a particular temple and a localized ethnic priesthood class is what made Christianity to spread in the first place.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment. Personally, I think the book of Hebrews makes a compelling theological case for understanding Jesus’s sacrifice as a once-for-all atonement.
At the same time, I’m trying to put myself in the mind of a secular historical scholar who doesn’t share those theological convictions and doesn’t necessarily assume that Jesus’s teaching was in lockstep with the later canonized epistles or reliably recorded in everything that happens in the Gospels.
Even from that perspective, though, I would have guessed Ehrman’s reconstruction of the “historical Jesus” would lead to the conclusion that Jesus considered the temple ultimately superfluous (and I’m surprised by his answer). We have evidence from Qumran (for example, the Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice) that some apocalyptic Jews conceived of heaven itself in terms of a heavenly or spiritual temple. If we apply that framework to Jesus, who Ehrman himself believes taught the imminent arrival of a heavenly kingdom on earth, it seems plausible that Jesus would have understood the earthly temple, even though commanded by God, as provisional.. something that would ultimately give way to the heavenly order that was about to arrive.
I think it’s significant that first-century Judaism wasn’t monolithic. There was real opposition within Judaism to the priesthood. The Essenes viewed the priesthood as illegitimate and ritually polluted; they withdrew into the desert to preserve purity, anticipating an apocalyptic resolution much like the judgment you describe. The Pharisees leaned toward the prophetic tradition — the conviction that God desired justice, mercy, and faithfulness to Torah over sacrifice. The Sadducees, by contrast, were the aristocratic group from which the priesthood was drawn, and had every reason to defend the sacrificial system.
Your approach here as a historian seems to land close to how Mark himself understood the action. Matthew’s Jesus leans more toward the Hillel wing of the Pharisees. Luke’s Jesus has made something like peace with the Pax Romana. And John has left horizontal eschatology behind entirely: the kingdom is already present, from above.
Do you think Mark’s portrayal comes closest to the historical Jesus here? And do you think this characterization of what Matthew, Luke, and John are doing with this same pericope holds up?
I do think the other Gospels alter and magnify Jesus’s actions in the temple. Mark’s too is exaggerated though — the idea that Jesus could keep anyone from carrying any vessels or instruments through the temple compound seems highly implausible.
I’ve heard other New Testament scholars argue for dating the composition of Mark to around 70 AD, largely on the basis of Jesus’ predictions concerning the destruction of the temple. You, however, believe that Jesus really did predict the temple’s destruction (and even symbolically enacted it in the so-called cleansing of the temple). So what are your reasons for favoring a date around 70 AD if you don’t regard the temple destruction predictions as evidence of a post-70 composition?
There is nothing inherently implausible about the Gospel of Mark having been written before AD 70. Ancient biographies were not necessarily composed generations after their subjects’ deaths; authors such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plutarch wrote about figures who belonged to the recent past and, in some cases, to their own lifetime. Tacitus’s Agricola, for example, was written only a few years after Agricola’s death, while Suetonius wrote biographies of emperors whose reigns overlapped his own lifetime. So, if Jesus died around AD 30, a Markan bios written in the 40s, 50s, or 60s would fall well within the chronological range demonstrably possible for ancient biography.
So what criteria or evidence are you using to arrive at a date around AD 70?
It seems pretty clear to me that Mark knows the temple has been destroyed; the Parable of the Vineyard is good evidence of it (predicting Jesus’ death by the Jewish leaders, Gods anger about it, and the handing over of the “vineyard” to “others” (Mark 12:1-11)
I don’t see how one can avoid the idea that Mark portrays Jesus as rejecting, with some anger, the faith and cult of the Temple, whilst claiming of course to preach the pure version of the Scriptures. The whole collection of stories and sayings – the fig tree, the rejection of Davidic ancestry, the wicked husbandmen, the sequence in which the devouring of widows’ houses is mentioned, a widow’s house is then devoured while Jesus looks on, the prophecy of the Temple’s end – all symbolise or parabolise or just state that God had rejected what had been his house. There is no hint anywhere of a resumption of the former Temple’s work: it’s over. Mark’s interpretation of Jesus’ theology amid the post-70 agonies. In the Cleansing, Jesus states, I think very plainly, that the non-Jews had not been properly welcomed to the Temple and armed militants and their skeuos welcomed too much.
In history, an angry man overturning a few tables might not really have caused much remark or reaction. John makes the scene more terrifying since Jesus wields a lethal weapon. His objection is now centred unambiguously on commercialism
Dr Ehrman
When you were an evangelical, how did you explain Matt 27:46 “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” ?(KJV). Considering that “Jesus is God”, how did this statement make sense?
We never thought of him as the only God, the Father. All the Gospels are very clear that he and the Father are different beings. When early Christians said he was “God” they never meant he was the God that he himself prayed to (e.g., in the Garden of Gethsemane).
Given that it was the gospel authors who told us Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple after the fact, can we believe that Jesus really made those predictions himself? Assuming Jesus actually did ‘cleanse the temple’ and made the associated statements about it, isn’t it difficult to promote an intent on his part other than what is stated in the text?
There are reasons for thinking Jesus really did predict this. It is repeatedly found in independent sources. There is nothing unusual about it as a prediction (if someone predicts that Russia will win the war, and it happens, it’s not particularly remarkable). Also, Mark Goodacre has a very interesting argument: anyone who wants to demonstrate that a person they are writing about knew what will happen in the future emphasizes the predictions KNOWN to have come true. Not ones that did not or that only kinda did. The fact that the prediction is so widely attested in so many sources suggests tht it’s because the writers knew that on this one, at least, he got it right.
There are reasons for thinking Jesus really did predict this. It is repeatedly found in independent sources. There is nothing unusual about it as a prediction (if someone predicts that Russia will win the war, and it happens, it’s not particularly remarkable). Also, Mark Goodacre has a very interesting argument: anyone who wants to demonstrate that a person they are writing about knew what will happen in the future emphasizes the predictions KNOWN to have come true. Not ones that did not or that only kinda did. The fact that the prediction is so widely attested in so many sources suggests tht it’s because the writers knew that on this one, at least, he got it right.
Dear Bart,
I have an alternative theory on this through the POV of Mark’s gospel.
As the Holy Spirit entered into (εἰς) the body of Mark’s Jesus (in contrast to the other gospels, where it went upon (ἐπ’) his body), Mark’s Jesus probably believed his body was the new Temple of God. We see this hinted at in Mark 14:58, 15:29-30. As such, it is reasonable to suppose Mark’s Jesus probably believed his body now possessed the agency of the Jerusalem temple.
If this is so, then the Jerusalem temple’s agency to forgive sins would now be in the custody of Jesus, so those selling doves for purification from sin would be selling ‘dud doves’ – the doves wouldn’t work! As it was the poor who purchased these doves for purification from sin, then these traders would have been literally robbing the poor (ala den of theives/robbers), and would explain Jesus’ righteous rage.
Notably, Mark’s Jesus specifically singles out dove traders during passover. Why would he do that when lamb traders would be much more prominent? Perhaps because the doves were used for the purification from sin?
What do you make of this theory?
Doves were by far cheaper and so were used far more often. Only the rich folk could afford the four-leggeds.
Interesting idea, but the temple didn’t have authority to forgive sins; the priests did.
I don’t see how 14:58 indicates that Jesus is going to commit suicide or that 15:29 would refer to Jesus killing himself.
On the question of 14:58 and 15:29 being seen as predictive suicide, we have:
1. Mark says the witnesses in 14:58 were false, meaning something about their accusation was off.
2. Mark explains Jesus often privately offered an interpretation of his parables to his disciples (4:34).
3. We see Jesus privately explaining to his disciples that he will die and rise again after three days (8:31, 9:31, 10:34).
4. The same three-day motif is found in the temple destruction and rebuilding parable. It is therefore likely the private predictions of his fate were explanations of his temple parable.
5. As the private explanations have Jesus being killed (not suicide), then the public parabolic teaching probably approximated what we find in John 2:19, where Jesus invites others to destroy the temple, rather than threatening to destroy it himself.
6. Indeed, the disciples came to believe Jesus wasn’t predicting the Jerusalem temple would be rebuilt, but instead “he was speaking of the temple of his body” (John 2:21).
R. T. France claims that Mark 14:58 & 15:29 are references to the death and resurrection of Jesus and “a Christian reader, even without knowing Jn. 2:19–22, could hardly fail to recognise [this]” (France2002:607).
(off topic)
Bart, a few months ago, or maybe more, the issue came up as to why the so-called Pauline epistles were preserved by and in early Christendom. Why were they chosen to be copied and recopied. I think you wrote that this was a very important issue that the blog needed to get back to. Is there a rough estimate on when we will be dealing with this issue. Let me know your thoughts, and thanks for all your work.
Ha! I don’t remember that. But probably I wrote that while I was doing researchy on my canon book, planning on continuing to do research on it, before deciding to turn to a different writing project first! So I probably won’t get back to it till I have time to look into the question more.
But how is a disturbance in the Temple any more likely historically than a Triumphal Entry? At such a time of heightened Roman presence, not to mention the Temple Guard being on alert for just this kind of trouble, how could Jesus have “acted out” and escaped the Temple grounds unmolested?
Isn’t it more likely Mark invented this episode in keeping with his theme of associating the destruction of the Temple with the sacrifice and ultimate triumph of Jesus?
I’d say it’s likely Jesus did arrive in Jerusalem and it’s likely he did overturn some tables in the temple. Both have been hugely exaggerated.
“it’s likely he did overturn some tables in the temple.”
Why didn’t the Temple Guards arrest Jesus (or throw him out of the temple) for overturning money changer tables?
It seems that the guards would have been right there where the money changers were doing business.
I’d assume it was just a small tussle in the very large area of the court of the Gentiles, not a widely noticed event.
It is. Jesus is described as all the prophecies from the Scriptures (the 5 books of Moses) fulfilled in his persona. In the Scriptures there are several (not just a few) prophecies of prophets cleansing the temple. You may find these with an AI, ask chatGPT. In fact, many of them are quoted in the Cleansing of the Temple story, including the “den of robbers” expression. As a new religion, this had to be expected. So the episode is not historical. It’s an allegory. However, this doesn’t go well with the “Historical Jesus” proponents – because it goes against them. This story as interpreted by them makes a good case for their product that they’re peddling. Bart himself mentioned that the courtyard was 38 acres. Security officers everywhere. What could be the chances to actually cause a public ruckus? None. There’s an article on this on the blog: against heresies 5 wordpress dot com.
The Synoptic Gospels were written for consumption by Jerusalem local residents. They are fabrications by “former” Essenes (Messianic Essenes?); but even fabrications required the accurate portrayal of actual events to anchor the fabrications to reality. The first is the Triumphant Entry. The second is the cleansing of the Temple. (The third is the midday darkness. The fourth is the crucifixion. The fifth is the EMPTY TOMB.) Jesus “engineered” his own crucifixion. Cleansing of the Temple was POLITICAL THEATER!!! It was not the result of heated passion. It was cold calculated posturing.
Who are these Messianic Essenes? They wrote Revelations, 2nd Timothy, 1st & 2nd Thessalonians, 2nd Peter, Jude, and an insertion into 1st Peter to emulate Paul’s Ephesian letter. They invented the Bethlehem Nativity, the teaching tradition of the Return of Jesus, all references to Satan and demons, and the grand miracles that were not public such as walking on the water, calming the storm, Mt. Transfiguration, turning the water into wine, etc. (The public miracles were actual events. Feeding the multitude, healing the cripple on the Temple steps, raising Lazarus from death, etc. ) These Messianic Essenes were the first Gnostic Christians.
I have always wondered about the sourcing of all the sacrificial animals. Some entrepreneurs were making good coin for raising all these animals and selling them off as worthy sacrificial stock at the appropriate times. The Pharisees, as apparent regulators of these sales, might have been involved with as purchasing managers with the breeders.
Are there any in-depth research studies on this multi-transactional business model? I wonder if the Romans somehow were able to gain a piece of this action (e.g.; an exchange or sales tax)….
There probably are, but I don’t know of them. Why do you think Pharisees were involved?
I think they were involved because all of the sources I have read show confidence that the Pharisees had (at least some) influence over these sacrificial events. I am aware that E. P. Saunders argues for a somewhat lessor Pharisaic role in those activities, but he does not claim there was no involvement. Additionally, according to the Mishnah, there was a rule that laypeople were not allowed to be involved in these transactions. Not very many reasonable options are left. Regardless of the degree of direct involvement, it seems extremely probable that the Pharisees would have ways to game the sacrificial system processes to benefit them or their friends. If we add in Jesus’ distrust of the ‘viperous’ Pharisees, that only seems to increase the odds that a Pharisee or two might have not always managed these transactions in the best interests of all the visitors. Where there is money and power involved, one will almost always find some corruption. But while the Pharisees had some harsh criticisms against them, there does not seem to be ‘direct’ accusations of this specific action in any relevant literature. Is there a more likely option?
I’m not sure what sources those would be. The Pharisees played little or no role in the temple cult. That was run by the priests many (most?) of whom were Sadducees. The great bulk of Jesus’ encounters with Pharisees are in Galilee before heading to Jerusalem, and these would not have been among the “chief priests” who in the end were Jesus’ enemies in Jerusalem.
Thanks, I get it now. I was giving too much credit/power to the status of priestly Pharisees and intermingled their various roles with tasks that were officially controlled by the Sadducees. The Pharisees still had some powers of influence, but there is no record of any Pharisee being directly involved with merchant selection, moneychanger activities or other process-related decisions for Passover tasks and rituals. I’ll happily move my earlier statement over to the well-worn ‘unproven conspiracy theories’ bin…!
I’m glad that Dr. Ehrman wrote that he believes that Jesus did physically protest the “money-changing” at the Temple. It also occurs to me that when Jesus told his followers that God was going to very soon get rid of the Romans and restore the Jewish people and religion to its proper place in society, that God was going to send the “Son of Man” down from heaven to kill the Romans, raise the dead from their graves and restore them to life, and that the Son of Man would also restore the 12 tribes of the Hebrew people to an elevated rank, above everyone else on earth. He also told them that he would die, but would return as the Son of Man who caused all this to happen, and that God had selected him to rule the world after the Romans had been eliminated.
When the Chief Priest and the wealthy Jews who were high church officials learned that this is what Jesus was saying to his followers, they knew they had to rush to Pontius Pilate (the Roman Governor) to tell him this so he would have Jesus arrested and crucified.
Bill Steigelmann
I think he was against power systems, period. The mocking of Pilate’s entry with his own, this incident, his two most important commandments plus love thyn enemy, then the beatitudes and the teaching prayer. He was thumbing his nose at it all saying get our own lives together. Not denying being a different kind of king of sorts to the authorities…in all areas he’s saying the power systems and their followers have true Shalom all wrong. Adding the apocalyptic bent, adds the urgency. He was selling it and it cost him his life.
Jesus is said to have seen Herod as a hypocritical tyrant- given Herod’s role in building it, I suspect Jesus wanted to destroy the temple of the guy who killed his mentor (John the Baptist)
The Herod who had played a big part in building the Temple was the father of Antipas, who was responsible for John B’s death but was never in charge of the Temple or of the Jerusalem area. He was in charge of Galilee in John’s and Jesus’ time
Thank you as always. This is superb, it seems plausible, on the historical level. On the allegorical level, the meaning of the violence at the Temple was pointed out by Meister Eckhart in his 6th sermon. It is the need for cleansing the “soul” symbolized by the temple, of impurities and of lower (animal) desires, so that “God may be there all alone.” Eckhart talks about the barter system – represented by the buying and selling – as of a lower way of dealing with God. Even on the historical level, it seems to me possible that Jesus was inferring this meaning- the apocalypse Bart speaks of also symbolizing – at least from the mystical viewpoint – nothing less than the destruction of the old self, for the new self , transformed in absolute union with God.
I think the enacted parable idea is indeed part of the reason for Jesus’ action. I’m also swayed by Jodi Magness’ view that the Tyrian shekels required for the annual Temple tax were a real hardship for most Jews in Jesus’ day, and that this helped to fuel his anger at the Temple authorities.
The only evidence that the Tyrian shekel was the required payment of the tax comes in the Mishnah, some 180 years later than Jesus. Josephus doesn’t say it and no archaeological find demonstrates it. So I’m dubious. I think even Jodi says that there is no evidence that peole were required to use it.
Interesting. Is there any evidence that either you or Jodi knows of that Tyrian shekels were maybe melted down later for their high silver content, like other gold, silver, and copper artifacts from the ancient world that did not survive? I’m reminded of either the foresight or the luck of King Gudea of Sumer many centuries before, who’s surviving statue is carved out of diorite instead of metal.
My larger point in thinking about Jesus’ action in the Temple is that it had to be done out of anger. He wasn’t overturning tables because he had come to a rational decision to enact a parable, like an actor on a stage. He may have had this idea somewhere in the back of his mind upon entering the outer courtyard, but I think his violent actions have to be seen first and foremost as a result of anger.
I don’t know! Good question.
One final question – do you know whether Jesus could have known that the Temple tax was something that was originally only a one-time payment required of men when they reached maturity? In Jesus’ time, it became an annual tax. Do you think this might have contributed to his anger in the Temple, provided of course that he knew the history of the tax?
Some have suggested it, since it was a point of objection among the Essenes; but nothing he says indicates that was his concern; instead it was teh commercial practices in the temple (not the annual payment).
The church I grew up in- what ever organization didn’t believe what they believed in
God were not a Church. so I wondered then why Jesus didn’t renounce the Temple & let it be!