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Cleansing of the Temple

In all four canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament, the cleansing of the Temple narrative tells of Jesus expelling the merchants and the money changers from the Temple. The scene is a common motif in Christian art.

In this account, Jesus and his disciples travel to Jerusalem for Passover, where Jesus expels the merchants and consumers from the temple, accusing them of turning it into "a den of thieves" (in the Synoptic Gospels) and "a house of trade" (in the Gospel of John) through their commercial activities.


The narrative occurs near the end of the Synoptic Gospels (at Matthew 21:12–17,[1] Mark 11:15–19,[2] and Luke 19:45–18)[3] and near the start of the Gospel of John (at John 2:13–16).[4] Some scholars believe that these refer to two separate incidents, given that the Gospel of John also includes more than one Passover.[5]

(3rd century) is the first to comment on the passage: he denies historicity and interprets it as metaphorical, where the Temple is the soul of a person freed from earthly things thanks to Jesus. On the contrary, John Chrysostom (v. 391) defended the historical authenticity of this passage, but if he considered that Jesus had used the whip against the merchants in addition to the other beasts, he specified that it was to show his divinity and that Jesus was not to be imitated.

Origen

(in 381) – who answered, during the First Council of Constantinople, to the bishop Rabbula, accused of striking his clerics and to justify himself by the purification of the Temple – and Cosmas Indicopleustes (v. 550) supported that the event is non-violent and historical: Jesus whips sheep and bulls, but speaks only to merchants and only overturns their tables.

Theodore of Mopsuestia

(in 387) referred to cleansing of the temple to justify rebuking others for their sinful behavior writing, "Stop those whom you can, restrain whom you can, frighten whom you can, allure gently whom you can, do not, however, rest silent."[41]

Augustine of Hippo

(in 1075), quoting Pope Gregory I, relies on this passage to justify his policy against simoniacal clergy, comparing them to merchants. Other medieval Catholic figures will do the same, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who justified the Crusades by claiming that fighting the "pagans" with the same zeal that Jesus displayed against the merchants was a way to salvation.

Pope Gregory VII

During the , John Calvin (in 1554), in line with Augustine of Hippo and the Gregories, defended himself by using (among other things) the purification of the temple, when he was accused of having helped to burn alive Michael Servetus, a theologian who denied the divinity of Jesus.

Protestant Reformation

Andy Alexis-Baker indicates that, while the majority of English-speaking Bibles include humans, sheep and cattle in the whipping, the original text is more complex and, after grammatical analysis, concludes that the text does not describe a violent act of Jesus against the merchants.

[42]

In 2012, Andy Alexis-Baker, clinical associate professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago, gave the history of the interpretation of the Johannine passage since Antiquity:[40]

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, London)

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, Madrid)

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, Minneapolis)

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, New York)

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, Washington)

 – Different opinions that Christians have held about material riches

Christian views on poverty and wealth

Gessius Florus

Gospel harmony

Ministry of Jesus

. An Introduction to the New Testament, Doubleday (1997) ISBN 0-385-24767-2

Brown, Raymond E

. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall (1990) ISBN 0-13-614934-0

Brown, Raymond E

(1998). The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. with the Jesus Seminar. HarperSanFrancisco.

Funk, Robert W.

Miller, Robert J. The Complete Gospels, Polebridge Press (1994),  0-06-065587-9

ISBN

. Binding the Strong Man: A political reading of Mark's story of Jesus. Orbis (1988) ISBN 0-88344-620-0

Myers, Ched