The Moneychangers

I do not care what Church you attend so let me phrase it this way.If you went to church and in the parking lot you found hawker and tradesmen and and a flee market set up interfering with the business of your church, would you not be offended. I would and many of you would as well. Now if like Jesus, you were a Rabi, or a priest etc. Would your anger not be even larger. Would you not ask these disrespectful people to move along.
Simple good taste is what I call the actions of Jesus.
Further Shriner's, Knights of Columbus members of any and all social groups, would you enjoy your functions to be desecrated by uninvited hawkers. Same answer I hope.Regards
DL

Well, He didn't just "ask them to move along":

quote:

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Joh 2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;

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Whipping people is "good taste"? I thought priests and rabbis were supposed to be less angry.(I might go so far as to say Jesus sinned when He drove the moneychangers out of the temple.)

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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.

This is the part that seems bogus to me: Misuse of the "graven images" law propped up their Temple Bucks monopoly.

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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.

I read "give to Caesar and give to God" this way.Jesus was aware that man possesses two sides to his nature, the political side and the spiritual side, Responsibilities to the state must be met as well as responsibility to God. He wanted that fact to be known more fully.More than one religion tries to have their adherents not focus on any physical representation of their faith. Praying to a blank wall etc.
The intent here is to have us think of the philosophy of the religion instead of fixating on the more material.God has no face and wants to keep it that way.Regards
DL