Jesus Overturned the Tables of the Money Changers as They Sat in the Temple

I'm not a preacher or a philosophy student, but one day I was reading my bible and I had a sudden enlightenment. It came as I was reading the New Testament account of Jesus' apparent rage during a visit to the temple. You may not agree with my reasoning, but I think it holds together well.

In the New Testament, we are given at least three accounts of this event; Matthew, Chapter 21, Mark, Chapter 11, and Luke, Chapter 19. Jesus entered the temple and cast out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers. Okay, I can understand, and so can you, why these people might have been objectionable to him. He even said it to them at the time. This is supposed to be a house of prayer, but you have made of it a den of thieves. If you or I had to wade through a flea market every Sunday before we could find a seat, I am sure that we would both be a little put off by it. Now, this is not to say that we can't have special fund-raisers, or fish-fry Fridays, or any of that. But what if, while we are inside trying to worship, all of the flea market was still going on all around us? You or I might turn over a few tables ourselves after enduring a few weeks of it.

I never had a problem understanding why Jesus did what he did, but I always wondered why these people were in the temple to begin with. Did the priests exercise no control at all over what went on in the temple? And, why were the priests so upset that he had set things right? I never understood that part of it until I had read, really read, some of the Old Testament books. I didn't just skim over the boring parts, all those "begats" and all of the stuff about doves and rams and bulls that we usually just skip past. I found that, in Old Testament times, people made atonement for their sins by bringing live animals to the priest for sacrifice. If you did "this thing" you would present a dove, if you did "that thing" you brought a lamb, or an ox, or whatever. The priest would prepare it in a certain way and sacrifice it. There was even a provision to make atonement for those who had sinned, but didn't realize that they had sinned.

Well, this is all well and good for a people who were nomadic herders of sheep and goats and cattle, so it worked fine. If your penalty was a lamb, but you only had goats, you could work out a trade with the guy who had lambs and meet your obligation. Eventually though, these nomadic Hebrews became the city dwelling Jews of the New Testament. What then? What if I make my living by weaving? I don't have any animals to offer for sacrifice. Sure, there were still people who had sheep and goats, but they lived outside of town. Now, if a man needed a lamb he had to go outside the town, work out some kind of deal, bring the animal back to town, and then present it to the priest. I can see where this would get to be a pain after a while, and I can see where those shepherds who were closest to the town would get all of the business, or at least be able to make the most beneficial deals. Why walk five miles to buy a goat if you can get one only a mile away? From this, it's easy to imagine that someone got the idea that, if he brought his lambs into the town on temple days, he could sell them to people more readily than the guy who lives a mile outside of town. Also, the closer you were to the temple, the better off you would be. Who wants to carry a goat from the town gate when you could buy one just outside of the temple, or better yet, inside the temple itself?

It is not so hard for me to believe that some priest, either for the sake of the penitent or for his own gain, eventually allowed someone to sell his cages of doves within the temple. Once the precedent was set, it was a small step to allow everyone to do likewise. You also have to remember that this was an international land by this time. It was controlled by the Romans, but it had been occupied by many other peoples in its history and, if you were an Egyptian wanting to travel into Asia or Europe, you were likely to pass this way. You brought with you the coinage of your own lands and the merchants you dealt with would no doubt want to rid themselves of this cumbersome foreign currency as soon as possible. What better place than the temple, where there was all of that buying and selling of animals going on? All of this might even have started out as a good thing; an honest and righteous priest wanting to save the people from the difficulties involved in obtaining their sacrificial animals. Still, I can see where it could turn into something bad over the course of a couple of centuries. Indeed, by the time Jesus arrived, it might well have been the den of thieves that he said it was.

Of course, by this time it was an arrangement that was a great benefit to many and was accepted custom. It may even be that the temple and the priesthood got some gain from it. If such were the case, it is not difficult to understand why the priests would not take kindly to a disruption in business. Maybe I'm wrong in some of this, maybe more than some of it. I don't claim to have received any divine revelation, but it makes sense to me. What do you think?