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Thursday, October 22, 2020

Jesus' Temple Cleansings

Lydia McGrew recently posted a series of videos about Jesus' cleansing of the temple, which is recorded late in the Synoptics, but early in the gospel of John. She makes a lot of good points about the likelihood that two events were involved, meaning that John is discussing a different event than the Synoptics. Here are the parts in the series in their chronological order:

Four Different Ways Of Reporting Time
Temple Cleansing (Part 1): Uncanny similarity? Not really.
Temple Cleansing (Part 2): Beware Of A Priori History
Temple Cleansing (Part 3): "Destroy this temple…"
Temple Cleansing (Part 4): "How do we spin this one?"
Temple Cleansing (Part 5): Forty-Six Years
Temple Cleansing (Part 6): Theological Theories

4 comments:

  1. All 4 gospels record the feeding of the 5,000. Only Mark and Matthew also record the feeding of the 4,000. Imagine if Matthew and Mark only recorded the feeding of the 4,000, scholars would be arguing for a contradiction or discrepancy between GMark & GMatt vs GLuke and GJohn. Pointing out how they have different number of initial fish and loaves, and differing leftover baskets.

    I don't see why it's so difficult for some scholars to grant the possibility that Jesus cleansed the temple twice. Say, to mark the beginning and ending of his public ministry. When people know they're about to die, as Jesus knew He would be persecuted to death, they often return to something significant that they did in the past. Think for example of how president G.H.W. Bush, a former aviator in WWII, went skydiving near the end of his life.

    BTW, the skeptic James Randi just died. A famous magician, at Randi's retirement in 2015 he performed one last public card trick. This is such a common phenomenon, it's showcased in movies all the time. Think of the movie Tough Guys with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Their characters repeated in their golden years something they did in their youth that made them [in]famous. Hijacking a train to make a statement.

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    1. Sadly, I don't think Randi's eternity will be very magical. You have to wonder what his last moments were like.

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    2. I forgot to mention my most important point. Had GMark and GMatt only mentioned the feeding of the 4,000, some scholars would argue that it's unlikely that Jesus multiplied bread and fish to feed thousands twice. Similar to how some argue it's unlikely Jesus cleansed the temple twice. Any public speaker knows that it's common to repeat the same sermon on different occasions. Why is it unlikely Jesus could preach a similar sermon twice and have corresponding actions twice [i.e. cleansing the temple]?

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    3. Correction: Given the popularity of Markan Priority [which i myself lean to], the scenario I gave above would work better if only GMatt included the feeding of the 4,000.

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