I remember that when I was a new Christian I heard someone mention that the temple was cleansed twice. He said something like, “They didn’t learn the first time.” I don’t remember if I said anything, but I remember my reaction being something like, “No way!”
I admit my reaction is a bit subjective and aesthetic. Cleansing the temple doesn’t seem like something you would do twice. It loses its impact. And, since Jesus probably came to Jerusalem more than twice, one would think he would have felt impelled to cleanse it every time he went there. I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie The Incredibles when Mr. Incredible says the following:
No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for… for ten minutes!
Apart from aesthetic considerations, none of the gospel authors report the temple being cleansed twice. It would seem that if it happened twice it might be something they would consider important. While perhaps they shared my aesthetic judgment, I doubt such a judgment would override the importance of giving a truthful account.
However, recently I’ve been reading a book called Mirror or Mask by Lydia McGrew. I am enjoying this book hugely. In it she grapples with skeptical scholarship that argues that the gospel authors felt free to use what are called “literary devices” to enhance, correct or otherwise modify their understanding of what really happened. For example, John reports Jesus as saying, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Some scholars argue that he didn’t really say that, but John, in light of the resurrection, put those words in his mouth because that was what John thought of him.
These scholars argue that the gospel authors did this all the time. Practically every difference, no matter how small, is a result of these so-called literary devices that the gospel authors supposedly learned from Greek writing schools. McGrew argues against this at every point: it’s unlikely that the gospel authors went to Greek schools; even Greek historians valued accurate accounts; there are better explanations of variations between accounts; and (worst of all) if the “literary devices” theory is true, by the very definition of a “literary device” you could not know when the author was trying to use it and when he was giving an account of what he thought actually happened.
One of the things McGrew treats in her book is the question of whether there were one or two temple cleansings. She comes down firmly on the “two-cleansings” side. She dismisses, perhaps too easily, the argument that since no gospel author mentioned two cleansings it is likely that all the accounts reflect the same event. But she marshals considerable evidence on the two-cleansings side.
The alternative views seem to be as follows:
- The cleansing never happened — it was a fictionalization that all the gospel authors adopted. I disagree with this because I believe the gospel authors were honest reporters — and even witnesses. The view that the gospels are fictional is very common these days, but generally people who take this view are not believers.
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There was one cleansing
a. John used a “literary device” — “dyschronological” narrative — intentionally shifting the cleansing to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry to meet some theological agenda. I disagree with this completely.
b. There was “achronological” narrative on John’s part — John wasn’t really trying to be exact in his chronology. This was my default position for a long time. I felt that John grouped the account thematically, since it was followed by a “vetting” by the Jews, and this was similar to the “vetting” that happened to John the Baptist.
This would NOT be an error. It’s as if someone asked me, “What did you do on your vacation?” and I replied, “We saw a musical! It was so good! And we ate at a really nice restaurant. We also went hiking.” From this account, we could have easily gone hiking the first day, ate at the restaurant the second day and seen the musical the third day — or any permutation thereof. This is achronolgical narration.
c. John made an honest mistake. Since he was writing maybe forty or fifty years after the events, he may in his own mind have associated the incident with its “vetting” with the similar incident with John the Baptist. This is where I am leaning now. Note that this requires one to accept that the gospels aren’t “inerrant”. More on this later.
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There were two cleansings. McGrew gives some evidence involving dates to support this: the Jews said that the temple was built over a 46-year period; how would Jesus rebuild it in three days?
At first it seemed plausible that, accepting the chronology for Jesus’s birth, the reign of Herod the Great who financed the rebuilding of the temple, and other details, the account would not fit well with a later date. However, looking into it more it seems like the argument may not be that strong. After all, if I said “My house took ten years to build,” I could be speaking fifteen years after it was finished. So when the Jews mentioned 46 years it could have been some time after it was finished.
I also note that the Greek word for “built” is in the “aorist” tense, which treats an event as a whole. So, given my less than professional Greek knowledge, I nevertheless think that “46 years was this temple being built” would not be a correct translation. The alternative translation would be “46 years this temple was built.” But I admit that I could be wrong here, in which case her argument would be stronger.
If we put the accounts together it is interesting to note the similarities and differences.
Matthew 21:12-13: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Mark 11:15-17: And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.
And he was teaching them and saying to them, “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.”
Luke 19:45-46: And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.'”
John 2:14-17: In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
If we assume that these are all accounts of the same event, we can “harmonize” them as follows. Note that Luke is the shortest account and basically summarizes what is in Matthew and Mark.
Jesus entered the temple, finding people selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, along with money-changers. He made a whip of reeds (usually translated “cords” but literally long pieces of grass) and started driving out those who sold the sheep and oxen along with the sheep and oxen themselves.
He told the pigeon-sellers to take the pigeons away; this is where he said, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” Note that he didn’t overturn the pigeon cages themselves. But he overturned the tables of the money changers and poured out their money, and he overturned the chairs of the pigeon-sellers.
As a side note, he also stopped people from using the temple as a short-cut to carry things through.
After this he said to all, in a kind of lecture, “It is written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
I believe this composite account seems perfectly natural and covers everything. The “driving out” phase is more natural if he’s using a whip to shoo out the livestock. In the accounts of Matthew and Mark it mentions that he overturned “the seats of those who sold pigeons.” The point is that he didn’t throw the pigeon cages around — that probably would have injured them. When we think of it like this, the variation in detail is quite natural.
I note parenthetically that people advancing the two-cleansing view could make something of the difference between the presence of livestock in John’s account and the lack thereof in the later accounts; they weren’t as blatant after Jesus drove them out the first time.
If we turn to the aftermath we note some interesting points. John gives an account of how Jesus is challenged by “the Jews” — whoever is in charge of the Temple. They ask him for a sign and he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” This causes considerable confusion as they thought he was talking about the temple; they asked him how he could rebuild something that took 46 years to build in three days. Jesus (as far as we can see from the account) does not try to resolve their confusion.
However, when we look at the trial of Jesus, we note that in Matthew, and Mark (but not in John!) among Jesus’s accusers are those who refer to him saying that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. But from what incident could these accusations have come? None of the three synoptic gospels tell of Jesus saying he will rebuild the temple in three days.
There are two things this shows.
First, it would seem to indicate that John’s account was fresh in their minds. It would be less likely that they would remember the conversation from two or two and a half years ago. This argues for John’s account being around the time of the crucifixion.
Second, and perhaps more interesting, it gives evidence for the truth of John’s account. None of Matthew, Mark or Luke mention anything about Jesus saying he would rebuild the temple in three days. But Matthew and Mark report accusations of him saying that he would do so. It makes no sense in their accounts! But on the other hand, John’s account has such a statement by Jesus. That explains where the accusers could have gotten their accusations.
Update: Leon Morris, in his book Studies In the Fourth Gospel, makes the above observation. He also argues that the inability of the accusers to agree on their testimony is an indication that there were two cleansings, and the accusations are from the first, less recent cleansing, making Jesus’s statement dimmer in their memories. This is possible, though in my view less likely than the scenario I posed. I would explain the inability of the accusers to get the story straight as being due to their misunderstanding Jesus. It is hard to quote someone accurately when you misunderstand what he is saying.
From all the above, I conclude that Jesus probably only cleansed the temple once, and that John reported the event out of chronological sequence. This leads us to the question: achronological narrative or error?
As I look at Chapter 2 of John, I note some interesting things. V. 12 says, “After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.” The literal translation of the last phrase is “not many days.”
This is followed by Jesus going up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast and cleansing the temple. It says, “Now the Passover feast was near…” (v. 13). The flavor one gets is one of temporal uncertainty: an unspecified number of days at Capernaum, and an unspecified time before the Passover. The feeling I get is that John wasn’t trying too hard to pin down when all this happened. Maybe he wasn’t sure himself. And that would play into the idea that he forgot exactly when it happened, and remembered it in an entirely different context.
So I am leaning toward the idea that John misremembered when the temple cleansing occurred. This brings up the issue of the “inerrancy” of the Bible.
I believe that the Bible is reliable, a sure guide to faith and salvation and to understanding our relationship with God. But I do not believe that the Bible is “without error” in every aspect. Here is why I do not hold the view of inerrancy.
Even those who hold this view only say that the Bible is without error “in the original autographs.” That is, the original manuscripts as they came from the pens of the writers were, on this view, without error of any kind. The problem is that I have no access to those manuscripts. So I can’t look at them and say, “Oh, that clears THAT up,” or “I can see how the text got messed up over all these years.” Instead I am asked to adhere to inerrancy as an article of pure faith.
Now I DON’T believe that the Bible is riddled with errors, as some do. Nor do I believe that minor discrepancies like the accounts of the cleansing of the temple call into question the fundamental reliability of the Bible. Rather, I have long believed that discrepancies argue for the honesty of the gospel writers. They did not try to fix discrepancies. They just told the story as they understood it, as they saw it and as they remembered it.
God inspired FOUR gospels. He wanted four viewpoints on the life of Jesus. The authors are diverse — one of them is a Gentile — and have varying relationships to the events. At least one of them, John, directly claims to be an eyewitness. Another, Luke, claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses. Still another, Mark, is said to be telling the account from the memories of still another eyewitness, Peter. And Matthew was one of the disciples. He was an eyewitness to some of what he wrote, and close to those who knew the rest.
The differences in their accounts argues against collusion. The variations are, as many have pointed out, exactly the kind of thing you should expect from honest eyewitnesses. Careful reading may be called for. We have to be like the Bereans, who “searched the scriptures daily to see if those things were so” (Acts 17:11). The result will be to bring us closer to God, who has witnessed to his Son through the writings of those who encountered him.