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The narrative of Jesus and the Money Changers occurs in both the Synoptic Gospels and in the Gospel Of John , although it occurs close to the end of the Synoptic Gospels (at , , and ) but close to the start in John (at ). In the episode, Jesus is stated to have visited the Temple In Jerusalem , Herod's Temple , at which the courtyard is described as being filled with Livestock and the tables of the Money Changers , who changed the standard Greek & Roman money for special blessed Jewish & Tyrian money, which was the only coinage allowed in Temple ceremonies. According to the Gospels, Jesus took offence to this, and so, creating a Whip from some cords, drives out the livestock, scatters the coins of the money changers, and turns over their tables, and those of the people selling Doves . In John, this is the first of the three times that Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the Passover , and John says that during the Passover Feast there were (unspecified) miraculous signs performed by Jesus, which caused people to believe in him, but that he would ''not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men''. A few Catholic scholars have argued that John may have included this latter statement, about knowing ''all men'', in order to portray Jesus as possessing a knowledge of people's hearts and minds (Brown et al. 955), and hence have attributes that would be expected of God . NARRATIVE DETAILS Jesus' criticism According to the synoptics, Jesus justifies his actions by quoting from the Book Of Isaiah and the Book Of Jeremiah : My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a den of thieves The quote from Isaiah comes from a section which instructs that all who obey God 's will, whether Jewish or not, are to be allowed into the Temple so that they can Pray , and therefore converse with God. The quite market-like atmosphere of money changers and livestock would seem somewhat at odds with the Temple being a place of prayer, and ''den of thieves'' may be a reference to excessively over-inflated pricing. The synoptics then state that the crowd were in awe of Jesus, which concerned the leading Sadducees and Pharisees . Luke and Mark state that the leading Pharisees and Sadducees were so concerned that they began to plot against Jesus' life, to which Luke adds that the crowd were so in awe with Jesus that no-one could be found to Assassinate him. Matthew deviates by stating that the leaders of the Pharisees and Sadducees merely questioned Jesus if he was aware the children were shouting ''Hosanna to the Son of David'', and that Jesus responded by quoting ''...from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise'' from the Book Of Psalms (). The Gospel of John presents a quite different exchange. Jesus is described as angrily criticising the occupants of the temple for turning it into a market, and the disciples are described as at some point (either after or during the incident) remembering the quotation ''zeal for your house consumes me'' (). The word in Greek is ζηλος/zelos/ Strong's G2205 , from which Zealots is derived. Jesus' authority The synoptics and John state that Jesus left the temple after the incident with the money changers, but returned to the Temple courts a day later (though Luke is unspecific how many days had passed), and begins teaching. The priests, teachers, and elders, are described as coming up to Jesus, and questioning his authority to do the things that he is doing; John makes it clear that they are referring to his actions in scattering the livestock and overturning the tables of the moneychangers, but the synoptics imply that it is in reference to his teaching. The synoptics recount that Jesus tricked them by first asking them to say whether John The Baptist was giving Baptism from heaven or just as a man. They are implied to not believe in John having any divine authority, and so wanting to answer that he was just baptising as a man, but this would run into conflict with the people, who are described as believing in John's authority. This leaves them unable to answer truthfully, and so they are forced to claim that they ''don't know'', making them look incompetent, and Jesus is able to respond that in consequence he won't tell them what his authority is. The Gospel of John, which throughout presents John the Baptist as having no independent following, instead gives a quite different challenge and resolution of Jesus' authority. In a passage that has been interpreted as the first example of Anti-semitism in John, John recounts that Jesus was asked to perform a ''miraculous sign'', but Jesus replies ''destroy this temple, and I shall raise it again in three days''. The Gospel of John explains that Jesus had meant his body, and that this is what his disciples came to believe after His Resurrection . To most scholars this shows a clear split between Judaism and the community surrounding the Gospel of John, and the suggestion that the people should destroy the temple would have been highly offensive to the Jewish people. It is also notable that John refers to the people as ''the Jews'', distancing both the intended audience of his Gospel, and Jesus, from any Jewish roots. By the time most scholars think that John was written (c. 95-110 AD), the Temple had already been destroyed by the Romans, and so John can be understood to have been deliberately trying to portray Christianity itself as a replacement - a ''new Temple''. The post-Temple-destruction community of Essenes , associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls , also speaks of the community itself as a temple, and the concept was evidently one that had been circulating (Brown et al. 954). ACCOUNT DISCREPENCIES The differences between John and the synoptics, particularly the fact that the synoptics have the incident at the opposite end of the narrative, has lead some scholars to insist that Jesus must have fought with the money changers twice, once near the beginning and once near the end of His Ministry . More critical scholars are inclined to instead suggest that there was only the one episode, but that John relocated the story, perhaps to imply that Jesus' arrest was for the Raising Of Lazarus (), not the incident in the Temple (Brown et al. 954). REFERENCES
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