Posted: Apr 02, 2010 1:17 pm
verbal pocketplay wrote:i guess i just dont see how anyone would have really noticed jesus amidst the 400,000 people, or taken him seriously, what with his seemingly non violent ways and seemingly crazy ramblings.
Yeah, but you seem to be presuming that Jesus had a kind of temporary freak-out and decided just to tip over a couple of tables on the spur of the moment, the kind of action - agreed - that wasn't likely to have echoed down the ages. If we presume that the action was a deliberate and premeditated political statement, though, that involved a quite violent remonstration against individuals officially connected to the Temple, then that's the sort of thing that's probably going to be remembered.
As for the 400,000 figure, presuming it's accurate (and I have my doubts considering other studies I've read put the total population of Jerusalem in those days at around 25,000), I'm not really sure if that's going to have any impact on whether or not someone would get noticed for upsetting the harmony in the most important building in the nation. I mean, I'm pretty sure there are more than 400,000 people in Washington DC, but I still think I'd turn a few heads if I wandered into the White House and started tipping everything over.
verbal pocketplay wrote:tim: given that the gospels almost certainly play down what Jesus did in the Temple, we can't know how "limited" it was. And to pretend that we can know it would have gone unnoticed by the Temple priesthood is fanciful.
wait. actually, i would really like you to address this one point. why do you say "almost certainly"?
Not to speak for Tim, but the act certainly does seem to be softened from gospel to gospel. The Markan account is:
Mark 11:15-19
And [Jesus] 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 all 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. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.
The Matthean account is:
Matthew 21:12-17
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Note that the line about "not allow[ing] anyone to carry anything through the temple" has been excised by Matthew (because it makes Jesus seem more indiscriminately forceful: he's taking his anger out on everyone rather than merely the market-people) and the account has been softened by the "healings" afterwards. The Jewish authorities are now not angry at him because he - effectively - desecrated the temple (which seems pretty justified to me!), they're angry at him because the people love him so much.
Luke then sanitises the account even more blatantly, compressing it into four verses and omitting basically all details:
Luke 19:45-48:
Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’
Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.
John, in this case, appears to be preserving an older tradition (as with basically all the other material gJohn shares in common with the synoptic gospels, it appears to have been derived from a basically Markan tradition) but he places the story right at the beginning of his gospel (Jn. 2:13-22), removing the implication that this episode might have (almost justifiably, one might be moved to say) led to Jesus' eventual execution.
(By the way verbal, I'm not making a deliberate policy of replying to only your posts. I'm picking out posts I think I might be able to comment intelligently on, and they just all happen to have been made by you.
)