Everyone who has read the New Testament remembers the story usually called "Jesus" Cleansing of the Temple" in Mark 11:15-18 and its parallels in the other Gospels (Matt 21:12-17; Luke 19:45-48; John 2:13-22). In a number of important studies in the last generation, NT scholars have clarified many of the problems connected with the famous story, or at least they have identified the arguable options for understanding it. (1) There are, however, several points left that need more discussion. As it turns out, these points are anything but marginal; they will, in the final analysis, determine the understanding of the event itself. Can we reconstruct what "really happened" historically in that event? Or has Christian interpretation so strongly shaped the brief narrative that we are unable to recover the historical facts? What kind of facts can we hope to identify, if we have only interpretations, especially since the Gospel writers themselves give us very different interpretations of what they thought happened? Further, as commentators have pointed out, it is difficult to imagine such an act taking place at all. (2) How could one person disrupt the extensive business conducted by many merchants in the wide outer courtyards of the Temple area? (3) In the real world, we expect, the merchants would have quickly stopped Jesus' action, protected their merchandise, and called in the Temple guards. If the merchants did none of this, the action must have been insignificant. But flit were insignificant, how could it have attracted so much attention? Some commentators have argued that in order to be effective, Jesus must have entered the Temple together with an excited mob of followers; in other words, the event was a revolutionary mob action. In this view, Jesus was a leader of a band of militant insurrectionists who actually occupied the Temple. (4) Such ideas, however, are mostly modern constructs. (5)
