rationalskepticism.org

Sorry, but I can't think of any "credible, mainstream scholars" who makes such a silly argument. We have no idea of the scale of the demonstration in the Temple.

E.P. Saunders has estimated that approximately four hundred thousand pilgrims crowded into jesusalem for passover. he says ancient sources put the number much higher. "The Historical Figure of Jesus" page 249

to quote him, "the temple area was far too large and the number of pilrims far too great for jesus to have done more than display his displeasure by a limited attack." he also claims, "pilate probably acted on his own accord, with the backing of caiaphas. [...] it is entirely probable that the trial before jewish authorities was a fiction"

according to bart ehrman, "the temple would have had the density of jfk airport at christmas...people 50 feet away from jesus never would have seen any commotion. he would not have been conspicuous" (from "who framed jesus?")

so, its unlikely that if the event even happened, and was not added as a metaphor by christians who still saw themselves as jews trying to understand the destruction of the temple and the death of jesus, it still seems unlikely his temple tantrum would have been noticed. and if it wasn't noticed, he wasn't turned into to caiaphus for this reason, as john says he was.

now lets say jesus was detained and tried by the sanhedrin. how would anyone know? jesus died the next day and so obviously didn't tell anyone where he was taken. how would the gospel writers have known what happened to jesus? we only know roman soldiers took him. it's not like the roman soldiers told his followers were they were taking him. it's not like the sanhedrin told his followers what happened to jesus. no one knows what happens to jesus between his arrest and his crucifixion, or at least not the gospel writers.

so since we can dismiss the gospel stories about caiaphis, we have no reason to assume he or the priests played any role. occam's razor tell us the least suppositions is that roman soldiers took him and killed him for disturbing the peace. no?

and to repeat a point i made eariler that was not addressed, the gospel of john has the temple tantrum happening three years earlier. so why wasn't he detained then by the priests? he was just as big a threat then?

simply turning up in Jerusalem while being hailed as the Messiah would do the trick any way.

but not if nobody noticed. and if they noticed jesus, they knew his messiahness (word?) was not like that of theudas or the nameless egyptian. it was not a kingdom of this world. jesus says he will detroy and rebuild the temple "not with his hands" (somewhere in john's gospel). he even says he will "resurrect the temple in three days", so obviously the temple is a metaphor for him and his kingdom that is not of this world

you don't seem to understand Jesus' apocalyptic message at all. He was not a mellow hippy preaching about how to go meekly to heaven. He was a blood and thunder preacher of an immanent end of the world where the high and mighty (that's the Sadducees) and the unrighteous before Yahweh (that's the Romans, amongst others) were going to be cleansed with fire and armies from heaven.

could you give us the gospel passages. i know he like to threaten the pharisees with hell. but he was talking about the blood and thunder in the next life, not the worldly life. am i misunderstanding "my kingdom is not of this world"?

Still can't see why they would want to nip him in the bud before Pilate did what he and other Prefects tended to do with these kinds of kooks and their followers? Still can't see why they would want to prevent a bloodbath in their streets at Passover time.

wow. dude. you seem as hostile as jesus in temple, here. i just dont think anyone would compare jesus to theudas or the egyptian. they had different messianic messages. they made claims to being kings on earth, not in heaven. and no, i dont see why caiaphus would bother with jesus if he knew pilate would take care of it. pilate only had 3000 troops with him. there are 400,000 pilgrims. he is not about to start indiscriminately killing, risking a huge riot he couldn't control, because caiaphus is all hot and bothered over someone talking about rebuilding a metaphorical temple. and i dont think jesus' little disturbance at the temple would have been brought to his attention. in john's gospel, the temple tantrum doesn't get him in any trouble.

You don't seem to have properly grasped the implications of his message. He was an apocalypcist - not some mellow hippy.

im hear to learn. can you instead elaborate on his message as an apocalypcist? is that the same as a millenialist? i thought the idea was that jesus was saying the world is going to end withing the lifetime of his followers. but since all the poor and weak are blessed and get the kingdom of heaven, he does seem a little hippy. but from what i understand, paul is the real hippy, and jesus actually has little to say about love.

You don't seem to understand the socio-religious context here at all.

very possible. though you dont seem to understand that you might be inflating the importance of jesus in his context.

if anything the gospels down play it (the temple tantrum)

i ask again, what are you basing this on? and what plausible reason do you have to suspect some relative unknown from the outskirts who's overturning a few tables and preaching hell and fire is going to be noticed in a crowd of tens upon tens of thousands by an obviously preoccupied priesthood? and it was kristi copeland of princeton (i knew it was a female).

but not to confuse things here. we started with you asking why i would write "it seems unlikely it had anything to do with caiaphus". my answer was that the story of caiaphus seems to have been written after the destruction of the temple, so as to shift blame from the romans to the jews. we know this because (a) it is completely unprecedented protocol for them to have done so (there were never trials at night, on the sabbath, or during a festival) and (b) jesus was too insignificant to have been (i) noticed or (ii) worth worrying about

i think you made a good argument to question b(ii). however, it seems whenever a messiah pops up it is not the priests who much care but the procurator or the governor. and if it's a question of geography, why does jesus get in to it with the sadduccees long before the temple incident with nothing happening? but even if (b) is wrong, we still have (a) (hence the line about the supreme court meeting on christmas eve), and we still have differing accounts from gospel to gospel (does jesus only meet with caiaphus, does he meet with herod, does he meet with the sanhedrin, etc?).

since only pilate has the authority to put jesus to death, and since we can all agree pilate did not give a crowd of jews the chance to free jesus instead of barabas, it is likely that pilate had good reason to execute jesus, and i dont think talk of destroying a jewish temple and crazy ramblings of a seeming lunatic about sinners burning in hades would have gotten pilates attention. there were real, armed, threats of insurection, like barnabas.

and we are still left with the whitewashing, as you put it. jesus probably didn't say "render unto ceasar", and he probably didn't talk about the destruction of the temple. both were probably added later for the benefit of the early church. so if he didn't talk about the destruction of the temple, and if telling the money changers to leave the house of god wouldn't have attracted much attention during the hububaloo (sp?) of passover, there is no reason for him to meet with caiaphus anyways. and since it is doubtful a trial even took place, we have to ask why jesus was killed. and it seems much more likely the romans had him killed, without the jews having much to do with it, so to speak. at least no culpability

and on the question of the temple tantrum, it does seem less likely that this was a pure invention, a simple literary metaphor for the coming destruction of the temple that was already a fact at the time of mark's gospel. but we still have reason to doubt it happened, and more reason to doubt it mattered much even if it did happen. he needed to do more to get much attention in the temple at passover.

i have given clear evidence why the Temple priests would be happy to hand Jesus over to the Romans for execution to avoid a wider reprisal. The gospels downplay the Roman responsibility for his execution as part of an attempt to distance Jesus from Jewish radicalism, but to go the other way and pretend the Jewish leaders would have play no part and had no incentive for handing him over doesn't make sense in the context of what we know

no, i think you've made the case they had plausible incentive (though i saw no evidence to indicate they would do it to avoid reprisals). as i said at the very beginning, it just "seems unlikely". it seems more likely it was pilate or even harod, or even the pharisees. this seems much more plausible. caiaphus being the driving force still seems implausible.