Vorkosigan

The Online Journal of Biblical Studies, an e-journal, has this interesting and accessible article:

Jesus and Nehemiah

Yup. It never happened.

Cubeless Academian

Why do you conclude that it never happened? One possibility is that the gospel writers made up the story and were influenced by Nehemiah. But it's also possible that the incident really happened and that Jesus himself was influenced by Nehemiah.

Vorkosigan

A few threads ago I posted the famous story that Ron Reagan used to tell. The one about the B-17 bomber pilot who went down with a stricken plane just to comfort the radio operator who couldn't get out. RR told it as a true story, but a historian showed that it was exactly the same as a sequence from a WWII film.

Knowing that this close genetic relationship exists, why would you believe that it was true?

Another reason is that, as Robert Price, Paula Fredriksen and others have pointed out, the Temple was absolutely gigantic and it is highly unlike that Jesus could have had any effect on it, any more than a fisticuffs during a football game could affect the fans in the stadium (well, at least before the era of TV!). The moneychangers were well-guarded, with Roman troops on call nearby, and they were performing, not robbery, but a needed service.

In other words, we have a story that is (1) derivable from the OT and (2) describes an event that could not have happened, and (3) describes an event for which the motive given is absurd.

There is no reason to withhold judgment here.

Vorkosigan

DMB

Thanks for an interesting link, Vorkosigan.

Steven Carr

You mean Jesus didn't stay in the Temple healing the blind and crippled, with the children crying 'Praise to God's Son'? (which Jesus apparently related to Psalm 8)

Of course, there could well have been a demonstration in the Temple. Perhaps there were even two, as the Gospellers recount two.

But this is all could-have-been. Where is the methodology which will tell us if there was 0, 1 or 2 cleansings of the Temple?

Rick Sumner

Paula Fredriksen has been doing a much better job of arguing the same thing for years. She didn't convince me either.

Incidentally, your Reagan analogy is flawed. We simply don't use WWII movies the same way Jews used Hebrew scripture.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

What's your position, then? That Jesus entered the Temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers? If so, how do you know?

That's not a relevant consideration. The revelant consideration is -- when we can derive one story from another, what reason is there to imagine that the derived story is historical?

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

I'd give it a pink bead, to steal a phrasing once issued to me in correspondence. I'm not terribly interested in perusing it very far here, because the slippery slope from a "Was there a temple incident" to "Yet Another Jesus Myth thread" is far too treacherous for me to attempt to navigate. The former interests me, the latter doesn't.

Certainly it's a relevant consideration. Jews read current events in the light of scripture--that is, their recounting of events, events that actually happened, was often influenced by scripture.

We don't do that with WWII movies.

When dealing with ancient Jewish texts, we are left exactly the question already mentioned--what came first, the chicken or the egg?--and arguments need to be tendered for or against. You don't have a secure default position, which is what you're trying to go behind.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

On Paula Fredriksen: see this thread this post.

Rick: the cleansing of the Temple is physically impossible as described. Is it your position that "something" happened that was blown up into this story? How close did it come? What is your basis for thinking that something happened?

Why do you find Fredriksen so unpersuasive?

And I see no reason for this to get into the JM hyposthesis.

Rick Sumner

I find Fredriksen, in the main, to be extremely persuasive--the keynote of her argument isn't necessarily that there was no temple incident (though it's a part of it), it's that Jesus didn't die for the temple incident. I'm persuaded that she's correct on the latter (in contrast to the sizable majority of scholarship), I'm not so sure on the former.

Other than driving people out (which I certainly wouldn't call anything other than redaction), there's nothing impossible about it. Flipping tables wouldn't have been that difficult to do. It wouldn't have attracted a great deal of attention, because not many people would have seen it, but that doesn't render it impossible.

I'm unaware of any evidence that moneychangers had guards stationed nearby. I'd be interested in a cite on the existence and function of such guards. Fredriksen, to my recollection, doesn't mention any.

Ever the optimist.

Regards,
Rick Sumner