And as they came near Jerusalem, to Bethany and Bethphage and the Mount of Olives, the large crowds coming for the festival spread their cloaks in front of him on the road, and some people spread brushwood that they had cut in the fields. And those who walked in front of him and those who followed shouted, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; praise God in the highest heavens!”
And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, wondering who he was. And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”
And he entered the Temple and looked around at everything; but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.
And every day Jesus would go to the Temple to teach, and at night he would stay on the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning he would go back into the Temple, and all the people gathered around him, and he sat and taught them. And they listened to him with delight.
festival: Josephus mentions that the Romans made special preparations to forestall disturbances at Passover:
The usual crowd had assembled at Jerusalem for the feast of unleavened bread, and the Roman cohort had taken up its position on the roof of the portico of the Temple; for a body of men in arms invariably mounts guard at the feasts, to prevent disorders arising from such a concourse of people.
(Jewish War, in works, vol. 2, trans. H.St. J. Thackeray, Harvard University Press, 1927, p. 411)
when he entered Jerusalem: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is followed in the Synoptic Gospels by the so-called “cleansing of the Temple” (immediately, according to Matthew and Luke; the next morning, according to Mark; according to John, it happened two years before). I have omitted this incident be cause, while it may have some basis in actual events, its details and significance are impossible to determine from the accounts that we have.
How could one person have overcome the resistance to which this action would obviously have given rise? Or, if we suppose that Jesus was assisted by his followers, why did the Temple police or the Roman garrison do nothing to preserve the peace (contrast Acts 4:1ff.), and why was the matter not raised at Jesus’ trial? And how did Jesus gather an audience (Mark 11:17) which included those responsible for the desecrations of the Temple? Perhaps the most we can say is that while some definite historical incident may well underlie the story, St. Mark’s account is too brief and imprecise to enable us to be sure what it was, or to tell exactly what was in the mind of Jesus.
(Nineham, Gospel of St. Mark, p. 301)
As for Jesus’ intention: if he meant the action as a protest against current Temple practices, and if the apostles and the other Jewish-Christian disciples knew that, why did they continue in their daily attendance at the Temple, quite contentedly and “of one mind” (Acts 2:46)?
Professor Sanders offers some useful cautions:
[Many exegetical comments on the “cleansing of the Temple”] are doubtless intended to distinguish the Temple ordained by God—which Jesus did not attack—from the Jewish “abuse” of the divine institution—which Jesus did attack. The way in which the distinction is made, however, implies that it is just the trade itself—the changing of money, the purchase of sacrifices, and probably also the charge for their inspection—which is the focus of the action. The assumption seems to be that Jesus made, and wanted his contemporaries to accept, a distinction between this sort of “practice” and the “real purpose” of the Temple. This seems to owe more to the nineteenth-century view that what is external is bad than to a first-century Jewish view. Those who write about Jesus’ desire to return the Temple to its “original,” “true” purpose, the “pure” worship of God, seem to forget that the principal function of any temple is to serve as a place for sacrifice, and that sacrifices require the supply of suitable animals. This had always been true of the Temple in Jerusalem. In the time of Jesus, the Temple had long been the only place in Israel at which sacrifices could be offered, and this means that suitable animals and birds must have been in supply at the Temple site. There was not an “original” time when worship at the Temple had been “pure” from the business which the requirement of unblemished sacrifices creates. Further, no one remembered a time when pilgrims, carrying various coinages, had not come. In the view of Jesus and his contemporaries, the requirement to sacrifice animals, their inspection, and the changing of money. Thus one may wonder what scholars have in mind who talk about Jesus’ desire to stop this “particular use” of the Temple. Just what would be left of the service if the supposedly corrupting externalism of sacrifices, and the trade necessary to them, were purged? Here as often we see a failure to think concretely and a preference for vague religious abstractions.
(Jesus and Judaism, p. 63)
The last word on this incident belongs to Blake, as reported by the deliciously obtuse diarist Henry Crabb Robinson:
Christ, he said, took much after his mother, and in so far was one of the worst of men. On my asking him for an instance, he referred to his turning the money-changers out of the Temple—he had no right to do that. He digressed [sic!] into a condemnation of those who sit in judgement on others. “I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.”
(The Portable Blake, ed. Alfred Kazin, Viking Press, 1946, pp. 692f.)
This is the prophet Jesus: There were probably messianic rumors as well.
sources: Mark 11:1, 8, John 12:12; Mark 11:9f.; Matthew 21:10f.; Mark 11:11; Luke 21:37, John 8:2; Mark 12:37b