The Moneychangers

My understanding of the Temple money changers (based on very old research) is that the arrangement worked like this.-- The money changers and merchants operated with the approval of the Temple authorities (priests). They needed permits to be there.-- The money changers were agents for the Temple. Profits from the booths went to the Temple treasury.-- For holy days the population of Jerusalem swelled to 2-4 times its normal size. This crowd of pilgrims included Jews from all over the world.-- Pilgrims often needed to buy doves and other sacrifical animals after they arrived. It was hard to transport these animals over long distances.-- Torah prohibitions against 'graven images' meant that none of the world's currencies were legal tender on Temple grounds.-- Pilgrims wishing to buy sacrificial animals at the Temple had to use special 'Temple coins' that bore no images.-- The money changers were the people pilgrims had to meet first. They took the pilgrims' regular money and gave them the special Temple money.-- The same Temple authorities that refused all other currencies were also the only source of Temple currency and the sole authorities for setting the exchange rate.It was a scam and everybody knew it.The story of the money changers is like a lot of things in the Gospels: cultural contexts come into play that tend to be lost on all the modern goyim.The analogies I've seen so far on this thread aren't really analogous. A modern church is not much like the Temple, functionally speaking. And the volunteers who run a gift shop in the basement of a modern cathedral aren't doing the same thing the first-century exchangers were doing.The squeeze they put on the devout amounted to more than marketing hype. It was more like like installing pay toilets at a ballpark.__Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Sure. They had the devout squeezed. The whole arrangement was corrupt.Of course, some responsibility for definition comes into play as soon as a law exists. If your law reads 'make no graven images, or any likeness of any thing' someone has to rule on when the line is crossed. Is an image on a coin forbidden? An image on a flag? (This issue actually arose during Pilate's term of office, according to Josephus.) Cartoon characters on your kids' pajamas? And what happens when your country is annexed by another country that throws graven images around like candy? Over time the rulings add up.It's a point Yeshua makes over and over, doesn't he? The way legalistic rulings, by failing to address character, soon turn righteousness on its head. Here you have religious authorities being punctilious about images but fleecing the people who come to worship. Straining out gnats and swallowing camels, once again.To me the racket suggests the systemic corruption you get with any kind of one-party rule. One-party rule is gang rule by definition. Human nature makes it so. It's just too many resources and too much conflict of interest gathered in one locus.BTW, the 'graven images on coins' question provides the subtext when Yeshua holds up a denarius and asks whose image is on it. Roman taxes had to be paid in Roman money. Yet devout Jews resented having to carry that money around. The question hit a sore point.Yeshua characteristically transcends the whole problem. He tells his audience to give Caesar that which bears his image, and God that which bears his image.__

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ArcherAll species are transitional.