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In the popular imagination, the biblical stories of Jesus’ clearing of the Temple and withering of the fig tree represent, at best, humorous, bizarre events in the life of Jesus, and, at worst, evidence that Jesus was irrational and prone to anger. As an example of the former, one internet meme features a picture of Jesus chasing the moneychangers from the Temple, paired with the text, “If anyone ever asks you ‘What Would Jesus Do?,’ remind him that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities.” Another image parodies Westboro Baptist Church protesters with a sign that reads, “God Hates Figs. Mark 11:12-14.” An example of the latter attitude is found in Bertrand Russell, who uses the story of the withering of the fig tree to argue that Jesus lacked virtue and wisdom. On the basis of the fig tree story alone, he argues that Jesus should be ranked below such luminaries as Buddha and Socrates.[1]
Though these
stories are treated more soberly in the world of biblical studies than they are
in pop culture sources, they have nevertheless often appeared equally
mysterious to Bible interpreters. Among many smaller issues, three major areas
of disagreement confront scholars in the interpretation of the stories of the clearing
of the Temple and the withering of the fig tree. First scholars disagree on
whether the clearing of the Temple should be thought of as a cleansing of the Temple
space by Jesus or as a symbolic pronouncement of judgment on the Temple and a
prediction of its ultimate destruction. Second, there is disagreement on the
reason for Jesus’ actions in the Temple. Scholars in both the “cleansing” and
“prediction of judgment” camps have proposed and held multiple views regarding
Jesus’ motivation. Finally, the question arises of how the story of the withering
of the fig tree ought to inform the interpretation of the story of Jesus’ clearing
of the Temple.
All four gospels
contain the story of Jesus clearing the Temple. However, only Matthew’s and
Mark’s gospel accounts contain the story of the withering of the fig tree. In
addition, of all four gospels only Mark’s story of the Temple clearing contains
all the following elements: the sellers driven out, the buyers driven out, the
tables of money-changers overturned, the seats of dove-sellers overturned, and
the prohibition of carrying vessels through the Temple court.[2]
Because of this, and in light of Mark’s intercalation of the Temple clearing
story inside of the fig tree story, Mark’s account of the Temple clearing will
be the focus of what follows. This paper will attempt to answer the question of
what Mark is trying to teach about Jesus’ clearing of the Temple by showing
first that Jesus is indeed symbolically prophesying the Temple’s destruction,
second that there are several plausible reasons for Jesus’ action but the
primary focus is on the failure of the Temple to bear fruit as a “house of
prayer for all the nations,” and finally that Mark’s framing device of the fig
tree story supports both these conclusions.
The Temple Clearing: Purification or Prediction of
Destruction?
The
most popular view on Jesus’ clearing of the Temple in Mark 11:15-19 is that
Jesus was purifying the Temple of some wicked practices. For this reason most
treatments of this passage title it the “cleansing” of the Temple. However,
beginning in the latter part of the 20th century, some scholars, most
prominently E. P. Sanders, began to view the event as a prophetic action
signifying the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Sanders argues against the idea
of cleansing by noting that, on the whole, there was not a great deal of
recognized corruption in the service of the priests at the Temple. Josephus
points out a few corrupt priests by name, but this is because they stand out
among their faithful fellows.[3] He
likewise points out that in Jesus’ many tirades against the religious leaders,
He never specifically attacks the Temple worship or the priesthood as an
institution. If he had been interested in reforming corrupt practices in the Temple,
he would have talked about it. However, Jesus is recorded in Matt. 24, Mark 13,
and Luke 21 predicting the destruction of the Temple.[4]
Sanders believes that in clearing the Temple of the moneychangers and animal
sellers, Jesus was performing a symbolic, prophetic action like those of the
prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel in the Old Testament.[5]
Sanders,
however, finds Jesus’ quotation of Jeremiah 7:11 to be problematic. Mark
presents Jesus as saying of the Temple, “…you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17
ESV). Though he acknowledges that he has no definitive proof, Sanders doubts
that this saying of Jesus is authentic. Rather, he believes that it was
conveniently added by the author in order to make Jesus’ actions seem
apolitical and unthreatening, the words of a simple moral reformer.[6]
He believes that what Jesus actually said was a direct threat against the Temple.
“We cannot know precisely what Jesus said. I shall assume that he threateningly
predicted the destruction of the Temple.”[7]
While Sanders’s view of the clearing of the Temple has
become more prominent in recent years, there are commentators and scholars who
maintain that Jesus’ action was a cleansing or purification of the Temple. One
early critic of Sanders is Craig Evans who rejects his idea of the Temple
clearing as a portent of destruction. Most of Evans’s critique of Sanders
centers on Sanders belief that the “den of robbers” quote in Mark 11 was added
by the writer to avoid the implication that Jesus is prophesying the Temple’s
destruction. Evans rightly points out that, if Mark had qualms about the notion
of Jesus predicting the Temple’s destruction, he certainly wouldn’t have
included Jesus lengthy discourse on that very topic in chapter 13! Evans
writes:
“It seems to me that the tendency of the tradition would be
exactly the opposite of what Sanders has proposed. Had Jesus’ action indeed
been designed to signify the temple’s impending doom, we should expect that the
evangelist Mark, if no one else, would have interpreted his actions as
portending exactly that meaning. If he is willing to present Jesus’ explicit
prophecy of the temple’s doom, why would the presentation of Jesus’ symbolic
action in the temple, an action that only implied the temple’s destruction, be
such a cause of embarrassment that he felt it necessary to reinterpret it as an
act of cleansing?”[8]
Evans goes on to argue that in the passion narrative Mark
shows an even more strident anti-Temple motif culminating in the Temple veil
tearing down the middle at Jesus’ death.[9]
In fact, many commentators who reject the idea that Jesus is predicting the
Temple’s destruction do so specifically because of Sanders’s inability to deal
with Jesus’ quotation of Jeremiah.[10]
In summary, Sanders argues strongly for the idea that
Jesus’ clearing of the Temple should be understood as a portent of destruction,
but simultaneously argues that the author of Mark purposely leads the reader
away from this interpretation by attributing a spurious quotation to Jesus in
order to avoid the impression that Jesus was a radical of some sort. Evans
quite rightly criticizes this idea, pointing to numerous places in which Mark
portrays Jesus openly condemning the Temple. In Evans’s view, if the Temple
clearing was meant to be a prophecy of destruction, then Mark would have made
that fact clear. In the absence of such evidence, Evans argues that the
traditional reading of the event as a cleansing is preferred.
What both sides fail to take into account here is the
context of Jesus’ quotation from Jeremiah 7. The “den of robbers” phrase in
Jeremiah comes in the middle of an extended condemnation of the fact that the
Jews are committing injustice and taking refuge in the fact that they have the
Temple. “Do not trust in these deceptive words:
‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’”
(Jeremiah 7:4 ESV). Rather, Jeremiah points his listeners to the former
place of the tabernacle at Shiloh as an example of what God would shortly do to
the Temple at Jerusalem.
Go now to my place that was in
Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it
because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done
all these things, declares the Lord,
and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I
called you, you did not answer, therefore
I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you
trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did
to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my
sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
(Jeremiah 7:12-15 ESV)
So the quotation from Jeremiah 7:11 that Jesus utters when
He clears the Temple, far from depoliticizing the Temple clearing, explicitly
points to the destruction of the Old Testament Tabernacle at Shiloh and to the
destruction of Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem. Far from needing to explain this
quotation away in order to view the Temple clearing as a portent of destruction
as E. P. Sanders does, this quotation is actually good evidence that the Temple
clearing does in fact point to the destruction of the Temple. Mark Horne
writes:
Jesus,
then, is by one reference invoking both the judgment that fell on the
Tabernacle…and the judgment that fell on Solomon’s Temple…Just as the
Tabernacle was replaced by a greater sanctuary, Solomon’s Temple, and just as
Solomon’s Temple was replaced by a greater sanctuary, so Jesus is claiming that
now the contemporary Temple will be destroyed and replaced by yet another
greater sanctuary.[11]
The
Reason for Jesus’ Actions
By far the most popular view is that Jesus was angry at the
very fact that animals were being bought and sold and that money was being
changed in the Temple precincts. An article in The Journal of Markets and
Morality exemplifies this common view. “The temple was sacred; the market
was secular…each Christian needs to be personally vigilant to keep the secular
from invading and destroying the sacred.”[13]
Aside from the question of whether ancient Jews would have drawn this
particular sharp distinction between “secular” and “sacred” with regard to
selling animals for sacrifice, there are many reasons to assume that Jesus was
not upset about the selling of animals and changing of money simpliciter.
N. T. Wright points out that the money changers and sellers performed an
essential function in the practice of Temple sacrifice. People traveling from a
long distance would all buy animals for sacrifice at the Temple and all
worshipers would have to change their money to the Temple currency in order to
pay the Temple tax. “The sacrificial system, and with it the reason for the
Temple’s existence, depended on money-changing and animal purchase.”[14]
Thus it could not have been the mere existence of these activities to which
Jesus was responding. There are three major options left for Jesus motivation.
If He was not reacting to the fact of the selling of animals and moneychangers,
then He could have been responding (1) to the location in which these
activities were happening or (2) to the manner in which they were happening.
Alternately He could have been responding (3) to something else entirely.
In support of the first view, that there was a problem with
the location of the selling and moneychanging, Hans Betz agrees that these
things were necessarily part of the operation of the Temple, but says that,
“The problem that apparently irritated Jesus was that the merchants and the
bankers had moved inside the sacred precinct to conduct their business. This
situation brought about a conflict between business and worship, with business
increasingly disturbing worship...”[15]
However, he states that this is “clearly” the case without arguing for his
position. The text of Mark nowhere states either explicitly or implicitly that
Jesus was responding to the fact that these activities were occurring inside
the Temple walls. In order to demonstrate that this was the target of Jesus’
ire, one must first demonstrate that this state of affairs was in some way
novel and not part of the Temple’s original purpose.
William Craig does argue for the novelty of the
moneychangers and sellers in the Temple in Jesus’ day. He argues that there is
no evidence for these activities occurring in the Temple prior to around A.D.
30. He writes that according to the Mishna there were four traditional markets
located on the Mount of Olives, but that these were not under the direct
control of the High priest. Thus “…the
sale of animals in the Temple forecourt was an innovation of recent date,
introduced by Caiaphas, who wished to set up a market which would be in
punitive competition with the traditional markets on the Mount of Olives.”[16]
While this does support the idea that Jesus may have been angered by the
location of the moneychanging and selling of animals, it also points to the
next common reason given for Jesus actions, namely the greedy manner in which
the trade was conducted.
The idea that “the priesthood undoubtedly had a financial
stake in the temple trafficking”[17]
is another popular reason given for Jesus’ clearing of the Temple. In this view
it is not the presence of the commercial activity in the Temple, but the
rapacious way it was conducted that drew Jesus’ ire. James Edwards, for
example, argues that the text gives no reason to think that the location of the
commerce was offensive to Jesus, but he notes that “…the immense volume of
trade and exchange in the Court of the Gentiles was crucial not only for the
maintenance of proper worship but also for the financial gain of the Sadducees
and Sanhedrin.”[18] There
seems to be good reason for holding the view that greed and rapacity were part
of Jesus’ motivation for clearing the Temple. After all, while there is nothing
specific in the text that argues in favor of the location of the moneychangers
and sellers being the problem, Jesus does specifically quote Jeremiah in saying
that the Temple has become “a den of robbers.” On the surface Jesus’ quotation
makes this interpretation of Jesus’ motive more appealing.
However, there is a third interpretation of Jesus’ reason
for clearing the Temple that doesn’t directly involve the location or manner of
the moneychanging and animal selling. This interpretation states that the
Temple has failed to fulfill its God-given purpose, and Jesus is thus judging it
for its failure. This position finds its support from the two prophetic
passages Jesus quotes in Mark 11:17, “My house
shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations,” from Isaiah
56:7, and “you have made it a den of robbers”
from Jeremiah 7:11.
As this paper has already introduced the quotation from
Jeremiah, it will be discussed here first. The question of why Jesus quotes
this particular passage of Jeremiah in relation to the Temple clearing hinges on
one word, λῃστῶν. This word, translated
“robbers,” has traditionally been taken at face value for its English meaning
of “thieves.” This is how most older commentators interpret the word.[19]
However, in more recent times commentators have attempted to see the word λῃστής in light of its historical context. Evans argues
that in the context of Jeremiah 7, the “robbers” are literally “violent men” in
the Temple. Thus, he argues that in Jesus’ day, worshippers were actually being
mugged in the Temple precincts.[20]
While Evans’s attempt to honestly deal
with the context of Jesus’ Jeremiah quote is commendable, there are other
scholars who have found a different way to interpret Jesus’ use of the
prophet’s words here. As mentioned above, William Lane argues that the
marketplace at the Temple was an innovation in Jesus’ time. However, he goes on
to say that the presence of this marketplace in the Temple court actually
prepared the way for the Temple to become a stronghold of zealots. He shows
that the word λῃστής was used by both the writers Josephus and Strabo to refer
to revolutionaries involved in “anti-government guerilla warfare.”[21]
This view of the meaning of Jesus’
quotation of Jeremiah has been championed most famously by N. T. Wright, who
lays out the idea, with some caveats, that the “robbers” mentioned in the New
Testament were violent revolutionaries and precursors to the distinct Zealot
party which emerged in the years to come.[22]
“It is in this context that Jesus’ dramatic action in the Temple makes perfect
sense,” he writes, “it was an acted parable of judgment, of destruction.”[23]
The attractiveness of this interpretation
is obvious. While E. P. Sanders made a good argument for Jesus’ actions in the
Temple as a prophecy of judgment rather than an act of moral reform and
cleansing, he stumbled over Jesus’ quotation of Jeremiah, and thus concluded
that it was not authentic. This was the basis for many scholars’ rejections of
Sanders’s interpretation of the clearing of the Temple. What N. T. Wright
brings to the conversation then is a compelling interpretation that engages
both the Old Testament context of the Jeremiah passage, as well as the cultural
situation of Jesus’ day without dismissing any of the evidence as inauthentic.
Because of this, many scholars today follow this interpretation of Jesus’
words. R. T. France specifically argues for the “λῃστής = insurrectionist”
position,[24] and
Mark Horne goes as far as to affirmatively state, “The sin of the Temple then
was zealotry.”[25] In
his more recent, popular commentary on Mark, N. T. Wright is even more firm in
his identification of the term λῃστής as “the word…for the revolutionaries,
those we today would call the ultra-orthodox, plotting and ready to use
violence to bring about their nationalist dreams.”[26]
The meaning then that this interpretation
of Jesus’ use of Jeremiah indicates is that Jesus was, to some extent, angry
that the Temple was becoming a place of Jewish nationalist sentiment. This
position is summarized very clearly by Joel Marcus: “…there is a clear
connection between the Markan citations and the exclusionary, anti-Gentile
policy of the temple-occupying Zealots. In Mark’s eyes, however, the Zealots,
far from removing pollution from the temple through the anti-Gentile policy…,
themselves defiled the sacred precincts…”[27]
With this interpretation in mind, it is
possible now to turn to Jesus’ other reference from the Old Testament, that of
Isaiah 56:7. Here it will be possible to see whether the interpretation of “den
of robbers” as referring to Jewish zealots fits with Jesus’ overall statement
of his purpose. In Mark 11:17, Jesus says, “Is it not written, ‘My house
shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?” For the context of
Jesus’ Isaiah quote, it will be helpful to see Isaiah 56:6-8 together:
‘And the foreigners who join
themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.’
The Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
‘I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered.’ (Isaiah 56:6-8 ESV)
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.’
The Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
‘I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered.’ (Isaiah 56:6-8 ESV)
This passage concerns
the LORD bringing Gentiles into his presence to worship and sacrifice at the
Temple. However, as Mark Horne points out, “At the time of Jesus, the Temple
had a barrier that kept out the Gentile God-fearers (cf., Acts 21:27-29). This
barrier was an offense against God. Jesus is clear that the Temple was for
all the nations.”[28] Focusing on the
exclusion of Gentiles in this way, and seeing Jesus’ main motivation in the
clearing of the Temple as a prophetic judgment in condemnation for the failure
to allow Gentiles into the Temple and the use of the Temple as a safe haven for
Jewish nationalists actually allows one to embrace parts of both the other
proposed motivations for Jesus’ actions. R. Alan Cole who holds to the idea
Jesus was angry because these markets should not have been in the Temple still
focuses on Gentile exclusion: “…the supreme blasphemy was that this place,
which was to have been in God’s purpose a place of prayer for non-Jewish people
of every nation, instead of being exclusively a Jewish national sanctuary,
should have become a business-house…”[29] James R.
Edwards, another commentator who focuses on the location of the marketplace as
the offense that Jesus was attacking, likewise targets the exclusion of
Gentiles by saying that the messiah was
expected to purge the Temple of Gentiles, but that Jesus purges the
Temple for Gentiles.[30]
In short, the explanation of Jesus’ motive in clearing the
Temple that makes the most sense of the event itself, the historical context of
the event, and the Old Testament scriptures quoted by Jesus is that Jesus was
targeting the exclusion of Gentiles from the inner parts of the Temple and the
presence of Jewish nationalist zealots in what was meant to be God’s house or
prayer for all nations. Having examined the arguments for seeing Jesus’ actions
in the Temple as a prophecy of destruction against a Temple that has failed to
fulfill its purpose by drawing in the Gentile nations, it is now possible to
look at the story of Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree in order to see how it
supports this conclusion.
The Meaning of the Fig Tree
The story of
Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree has mystified many commentators over the years.
The story was a thorn in the side of liberal scholars at the height of the
first quest for the historic Jesus. These 19th century commentators
were concerned that Jesus’ withering of the fig tree and cleansing of the Temple
made Jesus look unreasonable or irrational. “For these exegetes, Jesus was a
moral hero, an ethical giant cast in an essentially nineteenth-century heroic
mould, the proclaimer of the Kingdom of God as a lofty, universal, spiritual
‘idea’, and above all – a gentleman!”[32] Why
would such a man expect fruit from figs, especially as Mark specifically
informs the reader that “it was not the season for figs” (Mark 11:13)? William
Telford traces the history of the interpretation of the fig tree story from
those commentators up through modern times. From attempts to show that the
entire story was added later to quasi-scientific explanations of how figs could
be rationally expected even when it was not the proper season for them, the
concern has mostly been to show that Jesus was not irrational.[33]
On the other hand,
R. T. France points out that the “expert testimony” on fig trees found in many
commentaries varies widely and probably should not be trusted. After all, how
many theologians are experts on fig trees?[34] Rather
we should look to an Old Testament antecedent to Jesus action in Micah 7:1. In
Micah 7, God is coming to Israel in search of fruit, but finds “no first-ripe fig that my soul
desires” (Micah 7:1, ESV). This, argues France, is the context to Jesus’ action
with the fig tree. Acting prophetically, He was coming to the Temple hungry for
fruit, but found none.[35]
Jesus was not actually looking for figs from the fig tree but using the fig
tree as an object lesson to explain the clearing of the Temple which was to
follow. Mark’s intercalation ensures that the reader understands this
significance. It is interesting to note that the idea of Jesus’ cursing of the
fig tree as prophetically symbolic existed long before the 19th
century obsession with rationalizing the event. In fact, the earliest extant
commentary on Mark, written by Victor of Antioch (5th Century),
interprets the cursing of the fig tree as an enacted parable of the judgment
that would fall on Jerusalem and the Temple.[36]
As the story of the fig tree both echoes
God’s coming to his people to seek fruit in Micah 7 and sandwiches the story of
Jesus coming to the Temple and clearing it, this traditional interpretation
explains the text on its own terms far better than any investigations into the
botanical qualities of Middle Eastern fig varieties. Jesus destruction of the
fruitless fig tree is meant to inform His disciples regarding the meaning of
his clearing of the Temple.
Conclusion
In conclusion this paper has shown that
the best interpretation of Jesus’ actions in clearing the Temple is that Jesus
was symbolically prophesying the Temple’s destruction. This is seen from his
quotation of Jeremiah 7 which prophesied the destruction of the original Temple
using the Tabernacle as example and from the intercalation of the story of the
withering of the fig tree, itself a symbolic destruction of the Temple. Despite
popular and scholarly confusion about these stories, Mark weaves the two events
together in such a way as to point the reader clearly to the intended meaning
of the event. Finally, while multiple reasons have been suggested for Jesus’
action in clearing the Temple, Jesus’ own words from Isaiah point to the
purpose of the Temple as a place for Gentiles from every nation to come and
worship. The quote from Jeremiah, taken together with the current political
climate of Jesus’ day, points to the Temple as a rallying point for
anti-Gentile Jewish nationalists. Jesus came to the Temple looking for its
fruit, people from all nations worshipping the Lord, and instead finds and
indifference and hostility toward non-Jews. Thus Jesus enacts a symbolic judgment
on the Temple pointing to its final destruction in A. D. 70 when the Zealots
made the Temple a headquarters in the siege of Jerusalem. The fig tree has not
born the desired fruit, and must wither and die.
[1]
Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1957), 19.
[2] For a chart comparing the elements of the Temple
cleansing story across all four gospel accounts, see footnote 6 in Clinton
Wahlen, “The Temple in Mark and Contested Authority,” Biblical
Interpretation, 15 (2007): 249.
[3] E. P.
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin Books, 1993),
42.
[4] Ibid,
255-256.
[5] Ibid,
253.
[6] Ibid,
258.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Craig
Evans, “Jesus’ Action in the Temple: Cleansing or Portent of Destruction?” Catholic
Biblical Quarterly, 51 (1989): 239.
[9] Ibid,
241.
[10] In addition to Craig Evans, P.M. Casey argues
specifically that Sanders has to see this as predictive of
destruction because he rejects Jesus’ own explanation in v. 17. see P. M. Casey, “Culture and Historicity: The
Cleansing of the Temple,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 59 (1997):
306-332.
Brian Dennert likewise rejects the portent of destruction view due to Sanders’s failure to deal with the passage itself. see Brian C. Dennert “Mark 11:16: A Status Quaestionis,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 5 (2010): 1-7.
Brian Dennert likewise rejects the portent of destruction view due to Sanders’s failure to deal with the passage itself. see Brian C. Dennert “Mark 11:16: A Status Quaestionis,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 5 (2010): 1-7.
[11] Mark
Horne, The Victory According to Mark, (Moscow: Canon Press, 2003), 152.
[12]
Sanders, 261.
[13]
Jonathan E. Leightner, “‘Stop Turning My
Father’s House into a Market’: Secular Models and Sacred Spaces,” Journal of
Markets and Morality, 16, no. 7 (2013): 429.
[14] N.
T. Wright, Mark for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
2004), 152.
[15] Hans Deiter Betz, “Jesus and the Purity of the Temple
(Mark 11:15-18): A Comparative Religion Approach,” Journal of Biblical
Literature, 116, no. 3 (1997): 461-462.
[16] William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark,
New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1974), 403.
[17]
Richard Niswonger, New Testament History (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988),
162.
[18] James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark,
Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 341.
[19] For
example, Cranfield writes, “The reference here is no doubt to the swindling and
extortion practiced in the Temple mart and by the moneychangers.” in C. E. B. Cranfield,
The Gospel According to St Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 358.
[20] Craig A. Evans, Mark 9:27-16:20, Word Biblical
Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 175.
[21]
Lane, 407.
[22] N.
T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1996), 157.
[23]
Ibid, 334.
[24] R.
T. France, The Gospel of Mark, New Greek
Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 446.
[25]
Horne, 153.
[27] Joel
Marcus, “No More Zealots in the House of the Lord: A Note on the History of
Interpretation of Zechariah 14:21,” Novum Testamentum, 55, no. 1 (2013):
27.
[28]
Horne, 154.
[29] R. Alan Cole, Mark, Tyndale New Testament
Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 252.
[30] James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark,
Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 343.
[31] T. Shepherd, “The Narrative Function of Markan
Intercalation,” New Testament Studies, 41, no. 4 (1995):
522.
[32] William R. Telford, The Barren Temple and the
Withered Tree: A Redaction-Critical Analysis of the Cursing of the Fig-Tree
Pericope in Mark’s Gospel and Its Relation to the Cleansing of the Temple
Tradition, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 2.
[33]
Ibid, 2-8.
[34]
France, 440.
[35]
France, 441.
[36]
Edwards, 339.
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