Session 6: July 16, 2022

Scripture Reading: John 2:12-25 (and maybe John 3:1-8)

12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days. 13 Now the Jewish Feast of Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

14 He found in the temple courts those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting at tables. 15 So he made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple courts, with the sheep and the oxen. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold the doves he said, “Take these things away from here! Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will devour me.”

18 So then the Jewish leaders responded, “What sign can you show us, since you are doing these things?” 19 Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” 20 Then the Jewish leaders said to him, “This temple has been under construction for 46 years, and are you going to raise it up in three days?” 21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken.

23 Now while Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover, many people believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs he was doing. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them because he knew all people. 25 He did not need anyone to testify about man, for he knew what was in man.

How many times did Jesus cleanse the temple?

I want to address this question because this is one of the main texts brought up to show contradictions in the Bible. I don’t, however, want to spend most of our time on this (unless participants are interested).

I thought the dilemma was nicely laid out by a Christian website:

The second chapter of John explains that during the Passover, Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem, made a whip of cords, and drove out the money changers who were doing business there. He also poured out the money and turned over the tables (John 2:13–15). Jesus said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” (John 2:16).

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) also tell of Jesus entering the temple, driving out those who bought and sold, overturning their tables, and telling the crowd that they had turned the temple into a “den of thieves” (Matthew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46).

Some Christians believe these accounts describe the same event, but there is a problem. John describes the cleansing of the temple as occurring during the first Passover (of three) mentioned in his Gospel. Meanwhile, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe the temple-cleansing as taking place just days before Christ’s Crucifixion. Is this a contradiction and if so, who is right?

Did John intend to write chronologically?

As scholar Lydia McGrew points out, there are four ways to narrate about time (emphasis added):

(1) The author intends to imply or state a chronology and gets it right. That chronology corresponds to the way that things literally happened historically.

(2) The author intends to imply or state a chronology and gets it wrong by accident. The chronology does not correspond to the way that things happened historically, but the author does not know this. The document contains an ordinary error.

(3) The author intends to imply or state a chronology, it does not correspond to historical reality, and the author knows that. The author intends to change the chronology in the apparently realistic world of the narrative. I will dub this dyschronological narration.

Note that this definition of dyschronological narration is compatible with but does not entail an authorial intention to deceive the audience. The audience may or may not take the chronology seriously and be confused. The definition by itself leaves open either possibility. It would be possible under this definition for the audience to take the story’s chronology lightly (perhaps due to genre considerations) and hence not to be misled, though it is also possible that they take the work to be giving chronological information. All that this definition says is that the author intentionally changes the chronology in an invisible way in the story as narrated. Dyschronological narration could be attempted deception, but whether it is or not depends on other factors.

(4) The author does not intend either to imply or to state a chronology in the story concerning the event or series of events in question. If an interpreter thinks that chronology is intended, this is due to a misunderstanding. I will dub this achronological narration.

If John narrates using methods (3) or (4), perhaps there is no contradiction between the Gospels. But is method (3) compatible with biblical inerrancy? I will address these thoughts during the session.

Or maybe John does intend to write chronologically. Could there have been two temple cleansings? Here are Craig Blomberg’s reasons to consider that view:

1. The details of the cleansing given in John’s account are completely different from those given in the Synoptics (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke).

2. If Jesus felt strongly enough about the temple corruption to cleanse it once at the beginning of His ministry, it is not really too difficult to believe that He might do it again at the end of His ministry.

3. Since cleansing the temple was an overtly Messianic act, about which some of the Jews would have approved, it is not surprising that He could get away with doing this once at the outset of His ministry. However, when the Jews began to realize that Jesus was not really the sort of Messiah they were looking for, a second cleansing would have almost certainly sealed His fate (see Mark 11:18).

4. In the Synoptics, Jesus is accused of having said that He would destroy the temple and rebuild another in three days not made with human hands (Mark 14:58). But a similar comment by Jesus is only explicitly mentioned in John 2:19. Furthermore, since the witnesses in Mark’s gospel get the statement slightly wrong, and cannot agree among themselves (Mark 14:59), it may be a confused memory of something Jesus said two or three years earlier, rather than just a few days earlier.

5. Jesus’ statement in the Synoptics is more severe than that in John. Only in the Synoptics does He refer to the Gentiles’ need to pray at the temple, and only in the Synoptics does He refer to the Jews as “robbers”.

6. In John 2:20 the Jews refer to the temple rebuilding project having begun 46 years earlier. This would mark the date of the cleansing at around AD 27 or 28. But Jesus was almost certainly not crucified until at least AD 30. And it is most unlikely that John would have simply made up such a figure. Therefore, it is quite likely that John is describing a distinct (and earlier) cleansing from the one mentioned in the Synoptics.

Key Themes

I.            The Setting—The Temple

Here’s my edited version of an encyclopedia entry regarding the Temple:

The First Temple was constructed during the reign of David’s son, Solomon, and completed in 957 BCE. Josiah (reigned c. 640–609 BCE) established the Temple of Jerusalem as the only place of sacrifice in the Kingdom of Judah.

The First Temple was built as an abode for the Ark and as a place of assembly for the entire people. The building itself, therefore, was not large, but the courtyard was extensive. The Temple consisted of three rooms of equal width: the porch, or vestibule; the main room of religious service, or Holy Place; and the Holy of Holies, the sacred room in which the Ark rested.

The Temple suffered at the hands of Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylonia, who removed the Temple treasures in 604 BCE and 597 BCE and totally destroyed the building in 587/586. Jews were deported to Babylonia in 586 and 582.

Cyrus II, founder of the Achaemenian dynasty of Persia and conqueror of Babylonia, in 538 BCE issued an order allowing exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Work was completed in 515 BCE. There is no known detailed plan of the Second Temple, which was constructed as a modest version of the original building. It did not include the ritual objects of the First Temple; of special significance was the loss of the Ark itself.

During the Persian and Hellenistic (4th–3rd century BCE) periods, the Temple generally was respected, and in part subsidized, by Judaea’s foreign rulers. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, however, plundered it in 169 BCE and desecrated it in 167 BCE by commanding that sacrifices be made to Zeus on an altar built for him. This final act touched off the Hasmonean revolt, during which Judas Maccabeus cleansed and rededicated the Temple; the event is celebrated in the annual festival of Hanukkah.

In 54 BCE Crassus plundered the Temple treasury. Of major importance was the rebuilding of the Second Temple begun by Herod the Great, king (37 BCE–4 CE) of Judaea.

Construction began in 20 BCE and lasted for 46 years. The area of the Temple Mount was doubled and surrounded by a retaining wall with gates. The Temple was raised, enlarged, and faced with white stone. The new Temple square served as a gathering place, and its porticoes sheltered merchants and money changers. A stone fence and a rampart surrounded the consecrated area forbidden to Gentiles. The Temple proper began, on the east, with the Court of Women, each side of which had a gate and each corner of which had a chamber. The western gate of the court, approached by a semicircular staircase, led to the Court of the Israelites, that portion of the Court of Priests open to all male Jews. Surrounding the inner sanctuary, the Court of Priests contained the sacrificial altar and a copper laver for priestly ablutions. This court was itself surrounded by a wall broken with gates and chambers. The Temple sanctuary building was wider in front than in the rear; its eastern facade had two pillars on either side of the gate to the entrance hall. Within the hall, a great gate led to the sanctuary, at the western end of which was the Holy of Holies.

The Herodian Temple was again the centre of Israelite life. It was not only the focus of religious ritual but also the repository of the Holy Scriptures and other national literature and the meeting place of the Sanhedrin, the highest court of Jewish law during the Roman period. The rebellion against Rome that began in 66 CE soon focused on the Temple and effectively ended with the Temple’s destruction on 70 CE.

I.            The Reason for Overturning the Tables

Jesus says, “Take these things away from here! Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!”

In 2 Chronicles 7:11-15, the Lord explains the purpose of the temple as follows:

11 After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple and the royal palace and accomplished all his plans for the Lord’s temple and his royal palace, 12 the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: “I have answered your prayer and chosen this place to be my temple where sacrifices are to be made. 13 When I close up the sky so that it doesn’t rain, or command locusts to devour the land’s vegetation, or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who belong to me, humble themselves, pray, seek to please me, and repudiate their sinful practices, then I will respond from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. 15 Now I will be attentive and responsive to the prayers offered in this place.

In Matthew 21:12-13, Jesus affirms the temple as a place of prayer:

Then Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the temple courts and turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. 13 And he said to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are turning it into a den of robbers!”

Perhaps the problem was that the merchants were inside the temple courts, which should have been kept holy. Not only could this be a desecration of the temple, but it would have interfered with the worship of Gentiles. Gentiles were welcome alongside Israelites in the Solomonic temple but were excluded from the inner courts at Jesus’ time. Gentiles would have been trying to worship and pray in the midst of a busy market.

Perhaps the problem was the economic exploitation of the worshipers in the temple. There is little historical indication that such exploitation went on, but at a glance it seems to fit Jesus’ accusation in the synoptic gospels that the temple was turned into a den of robbers. Does it really fit though? Consider the passage that Jesus is alluding to, Jeremiah 7:8-11:

8 “‘But just look at you! You are putting your confidence in a false belief that will not deliver you. 9 You steal. You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known. 10 Then you come and stand in my presence in this temple I have claimed as my own and say, “We are safe!” You think you are so safe that you go on doing all those hateful sins! 11 Do you think this temple I have claimed as my own is to be a hideout for robbers? You had better take note! I have seen for myself what you have done! says the Lord.

Notice that robbers is not indicating financial crimes. It points to murderers, adulterers, and, most importantly, idolaters who thought were “in the clear” simply because they had the temple. I think this is the key to Jesus’ reaction. Personally, I think that the temple had not only become a market in the sense that merchants were there, but the whole attitude towards God had become transactional. Read the following description of the selling of indulgences (a medieval practice) and consider whether it is similar:

One particularly well-known Catholic method of exploitation in the Middle Ages was the practice of selling indulgences, a monetary payment of penalty which, supposedly, absolved one of past sins and/or released one from purgatory after death.

I.            The Solution—Destroy and Rebuild

Jesus responds to the Pharisees, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” An NET Bible footnote explains the verb tense of the word destroy. “The imperative here is really more than a simple conditional imperative (= ‘if you destroy’); its semantic force here is more like the ironical imperative found in the prophets (Amos 4:4, Isa 8:9) = ‘Go ahead and do this and see what happens.’”

It's a challenge filled with irony. The Pharisees effectively respond with a resounding no! “This temple has been under construction for 46 years . . . .” Yet they will destroy the temple. In three years they will crucify Jesus, on whom God dwells in an infinitely fuller sense.

And Jesus will be true to his prophecy. He will resurrect in three days.