Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

source, a speech found in the book of Acts, at the martyrdom of Stephen, false witnesses again arise to say that they heard Stephen claim that “this Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and revamp the customs that Moses gave to us.” Even the Gospel of Thomas chimes in with a similar saying, as Jesus there says, “I will destroy this house and no one will be able to rebuild it” (Gospel of Thomas 71).

Thus the tradition that Jesus spoke about the destruction of the Temple is widespread. The idea that he would personally destroy the Temple does not, of course, pass the criterion of dissimilarity: Christians who considered him the all-powerful Lord may well have given the sayings that twist in order to show that after his death, he “got even” with Jews by destroying their Temple. Neither does it do well by the criterion of contextual credibility: it is hard to imagine Jesus as a one-man wrecking crew able to demolish entire buildings. Similarly problematic is the notion, found only in John, that when Jesus talked about the Temple being destroyed and raised in three days, he was actually speaking of his body (John 2:21).

Did Jesus then speak at all about the coming destruction of the Temple? One might be tempted to push the criterion of dissimilarity a bit further and claim that since the Temple was in fact destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, none of the predictions of Jesus can be safely trusted as actually going back to him—that is, that later Christians put predictions of its destruction on his lips to show his prophetic powers. Most scholars, though, consider this an extreme view since the predictions of the destruction on one level or another pass all of our criteria: (a) they are multiply attested (Mark, John, Acts, and Thomas); (b) in one respect at least, the earliest form of these sayings appears to pass the criterion of dissimilarity since Jesus’s claim in Mark that not one stone will be left upon another did not in fact come true, as you can see yourself by visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem today; if anyone actually knew the details of the destruction, they wouldn’t have invented this verse; and (c) just as important, the sayings are contextually credible. For we know of other prophetic figures throughout the history of Israel who maintained that the Jewish people had so strayed from God that he would enter into judgment against them by destroying their central place of worship. Jesus too may well have predicted some such destruction when the Son of Man arrived in judgment on those who stood opposed to God.

That, of course, is a radical teaching, that the Temple of God and the sacrifices taking place in it, sacrifices prescribed by the Law of Moses itself, are in fact opposed to God. It is no wonder that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem took offense and saw Jesus as a potential troublemaker.

The offense may have been sparked by one of the best attested incidents in Jesus’s life. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus spends his entire preaching ministry in Galilee, and then during the last week of his life he makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast. This is completely plausible, historically. The trip can be understood in light of Jesus’s apocalyptic mission. He appears to have thought that the end was coming soon and that Jews needed to repent of their sins in preparation for the coming of the Son of Man. After taking his message around the countryside of his homeland, Galilee, he came to Jerusalem, also to proclaim his message, as our Gospels agree in saying he did, once he arrived in the city. Why Jerusalem? It was the heart of Judaism. Why at Passover? That was the one time of year when there were the biggest crowds in the city, as the place swelled in size with pilgrims arriving from around the world to celebrate the feast. This was the best venue for Jesus to make his apocalyptic message known.

When Jesus arrived in town, according to our early reports, he entered the Temple precincts and caused a disturbance. Our earliest Gospel, Mark, indicates that it was a massive disturbance, that Jesus single-handedly shut down the Temple operations (see Mark 11:15–16). That is completely implausible; the Temple complex was immense, encompassing an area roughly 500 yards by 325 yards, large enough to accommodate twenty-five American football fields, including the end zones. There would have been hundreds of priests doing their work and many hundreds of Jews participating. That one man could bring the entire operation to a grinding halt by turning over a few tables and uttering harsh words defies the imagination.

But Jesus may well have caused a small disturbance there, as is multiply attested (Mark and John) since this tradition coincides so well with his proclamations about the corruption of the Temple and its coming destruction. And it explains especially well why the local authorities, the Sadducees and the chief priests in charge of the place, decided to have him rounded up as a troublemaker.

The early accounts indicate that Jesus drove out those who were selling sacrificial animals and overturned the tables of those exchanging money, quoting the words of Jeremiah that I alluded to earlier: “Is it not written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it into a den of thieves” (Mark 11:17). These sellers and money changers have had a bad reputation among Christian readers of these accounts over the years, but their importance to the Temple cult should be obvious. If Jews were coming to the Passover from around the world, they could not very well bring sacrificial animals with them on their long journeys. The Temple staff had to make animals available on-site. But it would not make sense for Jews to purchase these animals with Roman currency. Roman coins had an image of the