Jesus v Moneychangers: Dawn of Exaggeration

Was the Cleansing of the Temple really a big deal?

The image of Jesus rampaging through the Temple courtyard, turning over the tables of the moneychangers and sellers of animals is one of the most enduring visions of Holy Week. This happened, we are told in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), on Monday, the day after Jesus came into Jerusalem. He went hard from day one, it seems. But what’s the truth about this story that has been used by many - including me! - as an excuse to behave aggressively and shittily?

The story goes like this: Jesus comes to the Temple in the days before Passover and sees people selling animals for sacrifice and moneychangers and he freaks out. He starts yelling, he tosses tables over sending coins flying and he whips livestock, making them run out of the Temple grounds. He delivers one of his most famous lines here:

My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. 

(That’s what he says in the Synoptic Gospels. In John he says the much less interesting 

“Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”

Just doesn’t have the same energy)

The story of Holy Week presents this moment of outrage and confrontation as a pivotal one leading to Jesus’ death on Friday - this is what really made the authorities decide they needed to take this guy out. In fact the Gospels say the chief priests wanted to take him out that very day, but the crowd was seemingly on Jesus’ side, and they didn’t dare. 

So what made him so upset? And how big of a moment was this?The answer to the first question is less obvious than you might think. 

It’s important to note that there was only one Temple at the time of Christ. There may have been synagogues or meeting houses elsewhere, but there was just the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was the center of the faith - not least because the Temple included a room where God lived. Only the High Priest could go into that room, and he could only do it once a year. God doesn’t like being disturbed. 

Because the Temple in Jerusalem was such an important place, and so close to God, most Jews tried to make a pilgrimage there to make required sacrifices. The thing is that for many of these pilgrims it just didn’t make sense to bring the animals they would sacrifice - if you’re on the road for three weeks you don’t want to be dragging along a goat you’re just going to kill. As a result, the selling of animals began to flourish at the Temple. 

The other thing you might do at the Temple was pay your Temple tax. This was a tax levied by God way back in Exodus, and it went to the upkeep of the Temple and its complex. That’s why there were moneychangers at the Temple - the authorities only accepted one kind of coin. The rules laid out about the Temple tax said the coin needed to be high quality silver, and it turned out that only the coinage of the city of Tyre was high enough quality. The coin had an image of a pagan god on it (Baal! Cue devil horns and head banging), which would normally have been a problem, but the Temple authorities decided that the quality of the coin superseded the graven image. So you’d come to the Temple to pay your tax and you would exchange your local coinage for the Tyrian shekel. When you hear about Judas Iscariot being paid thirty pieces of silver, this is what they’re talking about. 

Both of these services feel like necessary services for pilgrims coming to the Temple. In fact it’s likely that Jesus’ own family took part in these services when they came to Jerusalem when he was 12 (he ditched his family and stayed in the Temple to argue with his elders. His family didn’t realize this until they got halfway home (!) and had to return to get him). Jesus himself paid his Temple tax, although in the most unlikely way possible.

In Matthew we are told that Peter runs into Temple tax collectors and they ask if his master will pay the tax. Peter goes to Jesus to see what he has to say, and Jesus is pretty dismissive about the idea but says that rather than make a fuss they’ll just pay it. But get this: he tells Peter to go catch a fish, and that the fish he catches will have a coin in its mouth sufficient to pay both Jesus’ and Peter’s tax. One of the sillier miracles, if I do say so myself. You have to wonder why Jesus didn’t just pull it out from behind Peter’s ear.

Anyway, these were pretty necessary services. My guess is that Jesus was mad about these businesses being inside the Temple perimeter; had they been outside the Temple he might not have minded. This leads us to ask what Jesus would think of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a cathedral in Jerusalem erected over the supposed site of his crucifixion. A magnificent place, you exit through the gift shop. Can’t imagine he would approve. 

Was the “cleansing of the Temple” a huge deal? Probably not, even though our visions of the event have Jesus chasing all the moneychangers and vendors from the property. The truth is there is no way this happened - it’s simply impossible, and with good reason. The Temple was big. 

When I say big you might not be thinking big enough. When I say big I do not mean a football field in size, I do not mean six football fields. I mean 25 football fields. That’s the entire complex, to be fair, and there were subcomplexes within it. The Temple itself was huge, but the space around the Temple, where the moneychangers and the vendors would have been, was vast. Like a giant flea market. There’s simply no way that Jesus could have gotten everybody out of there. 

Most likely he made a minor disturbance; imagine a fight on the opposite side of the arena where you’re seeing Metallica. Enough to get attention from the right people, but certainly not enough to really make a major scene. It’s like a guy trashing a booth at the other end of the neighborhood farmer’s market - you’ll hear about it on NextDoor but you may not be aware of it in the moment. 

It’s likely that the Gospel writers had never been to the Temple, which was destroyed in 70AD, before most, if not all, of the Gospels were written. They also likely had never been to Jerusalem at all (maaaaybe Mark had been to Judea, but his geography is a mess, indicating that he did not have first hand knowledge of the region). Then, over years, the whole scene got kind of expanded upon in tradition and in our minds. What was probably really The Scuffle in the Temple Courtyard became The Cleansing of the Temple, much more impressive sounding. 

By the way, the Synoptic Gospels place the Cleansing of the Temple in Holy Week and thus the end of Jesus’ ministry, but John, ever going his own way, says it happened right at the beginning. He places it immediately after the changing of water to wine at the wedding in Cana, which the evangelist says is his very first miracle (none of the other Gospels include this story at all). Yet again this points out the hazards of trying to harmonize the Gospels, although that hasn’t stopped folks, including folks who say that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice. It shows that maybe it’s good to accept these stories as sometimes taking place in their own little Elseworlds.