Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

When Jesus entered Jerusalem as Messiah and representative of the reign of God, to proclaim that reign in the capital city as a climax to all his work in Galilee, he could not avoid the temple. The ancient principle obtained: the king, or the ruler, is responsible for the temple.⁷ So the action in the temple associated with the entry into Jerusalem is no accident. The proclamation of the reign of God in Jerusalem also affected the temple and its surroundings; in fact, it applied to the temple above all. Therefore the temple action almost had to follow. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels it occurs immediately after the entry into the city, and in Mark’s gospel it is closely associated with it. Mark relates it as follows:

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. (Mark 11:15-18)

Obviously all this took place neither in the priests’ court nor in the courts of the men or of the women. It happened on the edges of the gigantic “court of the Gentiles” surrounding the central part of the temple. There, on the south side, in the “royal hall,” stood the booths of those who sold doves and changed money. The doves were sold to the poor who could not afford a sacrificial animal; the money changers for a fee exchanged coins for Tyrian double drachmas and tetradrachmas, the only money with which one could pay the annual temple tax.⁸ The extensive court of the Gentiles, however, was not only populated by those visiting the temple; it was also crossed by people looking to avoid walking the long way around. They used the temple area as a shortcut into the city or between its different quarters.

It is completely impossible that Jesus could have “cleansed” this huge area. Consequently, interpreters prefer to speak now of a “temple action” by Jesus. He must have demonstratively overturned tables and booths and scolded people carrying loads who took shortcuts over the temple mount. He could only establish a sign. And such a sign demanded also a word of interpretation. What did he say? Currently, biblical scholars are increasingly convinced that this interpretative word was Jesus’ so-called temple saying. What does that mean? According to Mark, when Jesus was being interrogated by the Council, “false witnesses” came forward and asserted, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’” (Mark 14:58). In that form it is an incredible saying. It contrasts the gigantic temple, probably the greatest in the world at that time, with another temple not made by human hands, that is, established by God. And Jesus himself will build it. We can understand that even the authors of the gospels were alarmed by that saying. Mark attributes it to false witnesses. But they did not agree, and so their statements were useless. Luke, in depicting the interrogation, simply omits the scene with the temple saying (Luke 22:66-69). Matthew softens it; in his gospel the false witnesses do not assert that Jesus said he would tear down the temple but that he could do it (Matt 26:61). Finally, John interprets the saying as referring to the “temple of his body,” that is, to Jesus’ resurrection (John 2:19-21).

Apparently, then, the early church had problems with the saying, and understandably so, since, after all, it was the Romans who destroyed the temple, and it was not rebuilt. But even the attempts to come to terms with the difficult temple saying and interpret it correctly show that there must have been such a saying. We cannot reconstruct it precisely. It must have referred to the temple of the end time. The Old Testament—and especially the book of Zechariah—had already assumed that at some time there would be such a temple in the midst of a Jerusalem gleaming with holiness.⁹ It is also clear that this eschatological temple is ultimately God’s creation. But Jesus must have said that the rebuilding of the final temple was already beginning with him. That, at any rate, would correspond exactly to his idea of the coming of the reign of God and the role he himself was to play in it. The temple action would then be an indication, a sign, in fact the initiation of this new building of the temple of the end time.¹⁰