Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §15.3
ware of the easy assumption that he was following out a clearly thought-through
strategy), 118 the act could hardly have been understood by the priestly authorities
as other than critical of the Temple in its present form or operation. 119 Here we
need to bear in mind that the Temple was the principal focus for economic and
political power as well as for religious power. 120 An act seen as critically or pro-
southern wall of the Temple {Jesus 117-18). But J. Ädna, Jerusalemer Tempel und Tempelmarkt
im 1. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999) dismisses the suggestion: there was
storage space there for materials used in sacrifice, but not for living sacrificial beasts (126-28).
V. Eppstein, 'The Historicity of the Gospel Account of the Cleansing of the Temple', ZNW 55
(1964) 42-57, has raised the possibility that shortly before Passover Caiaphas had permitted a
more extensive market to be set up in the court of the Gentiles (55); but the sources appealed to
are late (see further critique in Ädna, Jesu Stellung 328-30).
118. Chilton (Temple of Jesus 100-11) in particular has developed an elaborate theory to
explain why Jesus 'occupied' the Temple: the 'occupation' was designed to prevent the sacrifice
of animals acquired on the site; money-changing was not an issue (110-11) — that feature
is likely fictional (130); Jesus was seeking to realize the Targum of Zechariah's prophecy of the
kingdom coming when offerings were directly presented in the Temple (without the intervention
of middlemen) by both Israelites and non-Jews (Rabbi Jesus 197-200). Chilton notes a
halakhah attributed to Hillel that offerings should be brought to the Temple by the owners for
sacrifice, against the Shammaites' insistence that an animal might be handed over directly without
the owner laying hands on it (Temple 101-102), and deduces that Jesus similarly regarded
the offerer's actual ownership of what was offered as a vital aspect of sacrifice (109, 128). Following
Eppstein (n. 117 above), Chilton suggests that Jesus was protesting against a recent innovation
of Caiaphas to permit such trade within the precincts of the Temple (107-109). Similarly
his Pure Kingdom 115-23.
119. In the debate about the significance of Jesus' act occasioned by Sanders, Jesus dill
(followed by Fredriksen, Jesus 207-12), see R. Bauckham, 'Jesus' Demonstration in the
Temple', in Law and Religion: Essays on the Place of the Law in Israel and Early Christianity,
ed. B. Lindars (Cambridge: Clarke, 1988) 72-89; C. A. Evans, 'Jesus' Action in the Temple:
Cleansing or Portent of Destruction?' CBQ 51 (1989) 237-70, revised in Chilton and Evans, Jesus
in Context 395-439; also 'Jesus' Action in the Temple and Evidence of Corruption in the
First-Century Temple', Jesus and His Contemporaries 319-44; Bockmuehl, This Jesus ch. 3,
particularly 197-99 n. 27; H. D. Betz, 'Jesus and the Purity of the Temple (Mark 11:15-18): A
Comparative Religion Approach', JBL 116 (1997) 455-72; P. M. Casey, 'Culture and Historicity:
The Cleansing of the Temple', CBQ 59 (1997) 306-32; K. H. Tan, The Zion Traditions and
the Aims of Jesus (SNTSMS 91; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1997) 166-81; Ädna, Jesu
Stellung 335-76 (on the historicity of the episode 300-33). In contrast, D. Seeley, 'Jesus' Temple
Act', CBQ 55 (1993) 263-83, cannot find sufficient explanation at the historical level and
deduces from the way Mark has integrated it into his Gospel that the episode is better seen as a
Markan composition. The Jesus Seminar agreed on the likelihood that 'Jesus precipitated some
kind of temple incident by his aggressive criticism of the commercialization of the temple cult'
(Funk, Acts of Jesus 122). Holmen sees the decisive clue in the allusion to Jer. 7.11 in Mark
11.17 ('a den of robbers'), but observes that not just the sellers but also the buyers were expelled
according to Mark 11.15 (Jesus 310, 317, 323-26).
120. See above, §9.5a.
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