The following post is a draft chapter of a larger project focusing on all the times money is referenced in the events surrounding Jesus' arrest, crucifixion, death and resurrection. From Jesus' driving out the money changers from the Temple, to Judas' betrayal, and even the way the resurrection is later understood as a release from debt, money - and economic metaphors - are interwoven throughout the Gospel accounts of these cataclysmic events. My hope is to re-read the passion and resurrection as "a money story."
This final rebellion led to disaster rather than the re-establishment of an independent state. From 66-70 CE, Rome brutally and systematically crushed this rebellion and the newly completed Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by fire in 70 CE.[16] Still today, in the city of Rome, one can gaze at the Arch of Titus celebrating this tragic moment in Jewish history. Thousands of slaves were brought from Judea to Rome, and the arch’s reliefs depict the final time the Jerusalem Temple’s treasures were looted. The sooty reliefs depict Roman soldiers bringing a giant menorah and many boxes of treasure into the city of Rome, boxes that possibly carried the very coins that were exchanged in the courtyard of the Gentiles. In the Gospel of John, therefore, Jesus not only calls the Temple a marketplace but also predicts that the expanded temple would soon be destroyed and that he would raise up another in just three days (John 2:18-22).
The last week of Jesus’ life began with fanfare and songs of praise.
At the small, Spanish-speaking Episcopal church I attend in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Palm Sunday typically looks a bit like this : on that morning, a group of parishioners gather on the front steps of the church to hear the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We have to strain our ears to understand the Gospel readers over the traffic sounds of 4th avenue Brooklyn. Fr. Francisco Rodriguez then blesses the palms and we each take a few and begin our slow procession around the block. We are not a large or especially formal group. A high school student carrying a processional cross guides us as we walk and sing Honor, loor, y gloria while handing out green palms to the pious, the curious, and the mildly annoyed of Sunset Park.
My favorite moment of this Palm Sunday procession is when our ragtag procession - replete with a malfunctioning speaker strapped to a dolly cart - rounds the corner of 50th street and collides with the busyness of Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue.
On Sunday mornings, 5th avenue in Sunset Park is where the neighborhood does its shopping. On both sides of the street there are Mexican grocery stores, panaderÃas, discount shoe stores, convenience stores, and restaurants. There are banks, places to cash one’s check, and wire transfer spots for sending money back home. There’s a store that only sells leather belts and cowboy boots, another for phone repairs, and still another that sells white communion dresses. People have set up folding tables on the sidewalk to sell sunglasses, hats, and COVID masks. One year our procession had to briefly pause to let a man wheeling a cart full of birthday cakes lumber by.
It’s a colorful street but behind this vibrancy there are also signs of desperation. Earlier this year, I began noticing more and more immigrant men huddled together and sleeping on the sidewalk. They are part of the massive wave of immigrants being shipped to New York by the Governor of Texas as part of a cruel gambit, one in which refugees are treated as a political point. This has swelled New York’s shelter system and left many refugees - especially single men - homeless and on the street.
It is into this mix of color and cruelty that our procession slowly wades, a small group of 21st century Christians interrupting people’s weekly shopping and the daily violence of poverty. As we do this we proclaim something strange: that glory, laud, and honor is due to a man who lived and died two-thousand years ago. We are singing out the beginning of a weeklong story – an ancient tale in which a man is praised, arrested, and crucified within the span of a week, though his gruesome death was somehow not the end. Two thousand years later, we claim he still lives and we call him Prince of Peace and Good News for the Poor.
In gathering in this way, we join Christians around the world and across time to remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. For this is an ancient tradition. Elements of this service were first described by the pilgrim Egeria in the late fourth century. Similar to what still takes place at San Andres, Egeria described how Christians gathered on the side of the Mount of Olives, in a place called Bethpage, where together they read the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. They then walked to the Mount of Olives and down the hillside into the city waving palms and olive tree branches, singing psalms, and shouting “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”[1] I’ve little doubt that they too intersected with the bustling commerce of their day, had to pause as people carried goods by, and I’ve little doubt they encountered hunger and homelessness and the everyday violence of poverty.
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The Palm Sunday and Holy Week liturgies are among the most beautiful liturgies that Christians have. All together, they elaborate a story about a week that is both triumphal and tragic. As with every story, however, some parts become well-known and others are lost in the retelling. I’ve decided to undertake this project, therefore, to highlight all the parts that have to do with money, for as it turns out money is an absolutely essential part to understanding this story.
As far as I can recall, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is only rarely mentioned in the liturgies of Holy Week.[2] Despite this, many historians and biblical scholars contend that it was both Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the temple that led to his arrest and crucifixion. The historian Diarmaid McCullough succinctly captures the importance of these two events. Summarizing Jesus’ final week, he writes that immediately after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, “he provoked a disturbance in [the Temple], protesting at what he saw as its misuse for commerce and profit, and it was the goal of his last fatal public appearances. Then he was arrested in Jerusalem, put on trial and executed along with two common criminals on a hill outside the city, by the ghastly Roman custom of crucifixion.”[3]
When we gather on Palm Sunday, the liturgy reminds us how Jesus was arrested and crucified in part because the crowds jubilantly proclaimed him redeemer and king. But only talking about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is akin to beginning a riveting story and trailing off mid-sentence. We should add that immediately after his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus headed to the temple. He then entered the courtyard of the gentiles where animals were being bought and sold, and Roman coins were being changed to Tyrian shekels. He angrily disrupted the business of the temple, overturning tables and “driving out” the money changers and the animal sellers. In John’s Gospel, he even wields a whip of cords. Jesus laments that all this commercial activity had made his father’s house “a marketplace” and “den of thieves.”
Having driven out, Jesus then welcomes in. In one account, Jesus welcomes in and heals the blind and the lame, two groups of people who were previously excluded from the Temple; in another, he says the Temple was to be a house of prayer for all people. The incident concludes with the infuriated temple authorities seeking an opportunity to kill him, though they were frustrated in their attempts as the stunned people were hanging on his every word.
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In order to understand why Jesus’ cleansing of the temple caused both fury among the religious elite as well as people to hang on his every word, we have to go back and consider the significance of the temple itself. For when Jesus walked into the temple courtyard on that fateful day, he was disturbing a site that already had a long and turbulent history.
The idea of a national Israelite shrine was first conceived of by King David (c.1000), was built during the reign of his son King Solomon (c.970 - c.930 BCE), and held the Ark of the Covenant. Significantly, scripture records that treasure was always stored in the temple and on multiple instances this treasure was raided by both foreign rulers (1 Kgs. 14: 26) and dipped into by the Kings of Judah themselves (2 Kgs. 16: 8).[4]
In 597 and again in 586 BCE, Jerusalem was captured by King Nabuchadnezzar II of the Babylonian Empire.[5] King Nabuchadnezzar II first looted the temple in 604 and then again in 597 before destroying the temple completely in 586 BCE.[6] When the first Jerusalem temple was destroyed, the ark of the covenant was lost to history and Israel’s ruling elite were exiled to Babylon.[7]
The Jewish exiles’ prayers for a restored Israel were seemingly answered when Cyrus II of Persia conquered Babylon and issued a decree in 538 BCE allowing them to return to Jerusalem and build a second temple. This temple, built between 520-515 BCE, was modest compared to King Solomon’s but it managed to last for 500 years.[8] As there could no longer be an independent monarchy under Cyrus II and subsequent foreign rulers, the Second Temple and its priestly leadership became the focal point of Jewish identity and the primary institution in Jerusalem for the next half-millennium.[9]
A key to understanding Jesus’ actions in the Temple occurred when Israel was taken over by Greek overlords in the Seleucid Empire. During this period, the Greek King Antiochus IV - who humbly called himself ‘The Manifestation’ - looted the temple in 169 BCE and desecrated it further in 167 BCE when he commanded that sacrifices to Zeus be made there.[10] This looting and forced sacrilege became the impetus for the Maccabean Revolt, a costly but ultimately successful attempt wherein Jewish rebel fighters rose up and established independent rule. The significance of this revolt is too often overlooked by Christians as it would have been a large part of the “mental furniture” that Jesus, his followers, and the Gospel writers would have been carrying around with them in their time. For example, Luke’s Magnificat (1:46-55) and Zecchariah’s Benedictus (Luke 1:68–79) likely originated as victory songs composed to celebrate the success of the Maccabean Revolt.[11]
This brief period of being an independent Kingdom would be remembered as a kind of Golden Age. The newly independent Israel was led by the Hasmonean dynasty, and the descendents of the heroes of independence became the priests of the Temple. But this moment in the sun was short-lived. Fatefully, the Hasmoneans allied themselves with the Roman Empire so as to be better protected against their common enemy the Seleucids, but in 63 BCE Rome reneged on this allyship, Pompey conquered Israel, and Israel was ruled from here on out directly or indirectly from Rome.[12] In 37 BCE, the Romans displaced the last Hasmonean ruler and propped up a much-hated puppet king, Herod ‘the Great’, who began the costly and controversial expansion of the Second Temple. It was this expanded temple - with a new courtyard for money-changers and the buying and selling of animals - that Jesus entered on that fateful day.[13]
There is a moment from the Maccabean Revolt that strikes me as especially important for understanding Jesus’ cleansing of the temple. In a culminating event still commemorated annually as Hannakuh, Judas Maccabeus cleansed and rededicated the temple which had been previously defiled through sacrifices made to Zeus under King Antiochus IV. One intriguing way of understanding Jesus’ actions, then, is as a reenactment of this cherished moment, a cleansing of the temple of another form of idol worship and rededicating it as a house of prayer for all people (Mark 11:17).
A final point to consider is that the Gospel writers writing after 150 CE were well aware of a major event that happened about thirty years after Jesus’ crucifixion – namely, Rome’s destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. In 66 CE, a Jewish group styling itself on the Maccabean rebels attempted to throw off both their Roman oppressors and the Romans’ collaborators, the Sadducee elite.[14] Indeed, when the rebels took control of Jerusalem, they massacred the Sadducee elite whom they viewed as Rome’s collaborators.[15] This is important as the Sadducees were the high priests of the Temple in Jesus’ time.
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According to the Gospel of Luke, this was not the first time Jesus entered the Temple of Jerusalem. Luke 2:43-51 records a surprising incident in which Mary and Joseph lose track of their twelve year old son and find him teaching in the temple, or in his father’s house as he calls it, amazing the same type of religious leaders he eventually infuriate as an adult. More telling still is Jesus' first journey to the temple, made as an infant, when his parents purchased “two-turtle doves or two young pigeons” in the courtyard of the Gentiles in order to make the customary sacrificial offering of the poor (Luke 2:24).[17]
This detail - so briefly mentioned by Luke - is one of many in the Gospels that has helped biblical scholars locate Jesus’ family as among the 90% of the population who lived at, near, or below subsistence level poverty. Therefore, when Jesus enters this seat of religious wealth and power in his last week of life, he is entering as the son of a poor and powerless family.
The story of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is recorded in all four Gospels though there are significant differences between each account.[18] Most importantly, Matthew, Mark, and Luke place this event immediately after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem whereas John has this event take place at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.[19][20] As already noted above, the temple Jesus entered was in the midst of a major expansion but always remained continuously in use. Herod the Great had begun the temple’s reconstruction in 19 BCE and it was finally finished in 64 CE, therefore the Temple was under construction throughout the entirety of Jesus’ life. One should imagine, therefore, Jesus’ final action - and perhaps his entire ministry - as taking place against the backdrop of Herod’s costly building projects, a building program that placed great strain on country dwellers like Jesus and his family.[21] In The Early Christian World, Philip Esler notes, “The temple required enormous resources from Palestine, and Galilean wheat and oil supplied the on-going temple rituals. The wealthy high priests were involved in various kinds of business ventures—both private and temple-related.”[22]
Both Temple and Jerusalem were frequently represented as a fig tree, and so Jesus’ anger at finding no figs on a nearby fig tree during this kairos time - a season full of divine purpose - is an expression of his disillusionment with both.[23] Mark’s Gospel makes a particular point of this by sandwiching Jesus’ cleansing of the temple between two stories about the barrenness of the fig tree.[24]
In the cleansing of the temple itself, Jesus’ action occurs in the outer courtyard of the Gentiles which was where business transactions took place.[25] The money changers were located in this courtyard to convert Roman money into Tyrian shekels and the ‘selling and buying’ referenced in these passages refers to the purchase of animals for ritual sacrifice.
Significantly, all adult males were required to pay the temple tax of a half-shekel in the month preceding Passover, and the money-changers performed an important service in this ritual economy by exchanging the local Roman currency into the specific coinage accepted by Temple authorities.[26] As to why Roman currency had to be converted to Tyrian shekels, one of the reasons may have had to do with how this currency regularly proved more stable against inflation than other coins. This may be why Tyrian shekels were accepted despite the fact that there were pagan representations on the coins themselves.[27]
In the Gospel of Mark, considered to be the earliest Gospel account, Jesus entered the courtyard and began to ‘drive out’ those who were engaged in the buying, selling, and money changing and the verb for ‘drive out’ is the same word used for the many other times in Mark when he’ ‘drives out’ demonic forces.[28] In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus states that the commercial activity taking place in this outer courtyard have made his Father’s House into a ‘den of robbers’ – that is, a place where thieves gather and store their ill-gotten gains.[29] In doing so, Jesus “implicates Temple authorities for profiting at the expense of others.”[30]
The temple authorities implicated here were the Sadducees who, of all the Jewish factions at the time, were the most flexible and “had done well out of successive regimes, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and they continued to do well when the Romans were in charge.”[31] To call the Temple ‘a den of robbers’, then, was to call the Sadducee elite thieves, and the Temple a site of accumulated ill-gotten gains. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohbaugh in their Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels note, “It is no wonder that the elite (21:15) opposed Jesus and sought to destroy him. It is also no wonder that the people hung on Jesus' words.”[32]
Perhaps because Jesus’ ‘driving out’ is such a dramatic action, one frequently overlooked aspect of this story is that Jesus both drives out and then invites in. After Jesus has overturned the tables and called the temple a ‘den of robbers’, Matthew’s Gospel tells us “The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.”[33] Matthew appears to relish raising the question of who and what actually defiles the Temple, then, as the cleansing culminates in the welcoming of those who would have been ritually excluded from the temple on account of physical blemishes.[34] In Mark’s gospel, Jesus critiques the exclusivity of the temple by saying that this ‘den of robbers’ was meant to be “‘a house of prayer for all nations.’”[35]
Matthew, Mark and Luke all present this moment as a turning point. After Jesus denounced the temple as a den of robbers, the chief priests and scribes ‘became angry’ (Matthew 21:16) and ‘kept looking for a way to kill him’, though they were also afraid to act immediately as ‘the people were spellbound by his teaching’ (Mark 11:18 and Luke 19:47).
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In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great (c.540-604) surveyed the Church under his domain and lamented that it too had become ‘a marketplace’ and ‘den of thieves.’[36] A similar kind of transactionalism that Jesus denounced in his cleansing of the temple cropped up very quickly in the early Church as well. The first recorded Christian attempt is described in the Book of Acts. There we hear of a magician named Simon Magus who was so taken by the apostles’ conferring the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands that he offered to purchase this power from them (Acts 8:18-24). Peter replies: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God,” (Acts 8:20).
Though Simon repents for seeing dollar signs instead of grace, this form of transactionalism would come to be named simony in his dishonor and would at first primarily refer to the buying and selling of ordinations.[37] Like flies on manure, acts of simony began to congregate as the Church grew in wealth and power.[38] Canon 48 from the Council of Elvira (c. 305-306) prohibited the placing of coins in the baptismal shell “so that the priest does not seem to sell for money what he has received freely”, and Canon 2 from the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) denounces bishops ordaining for money as putting “to sale a grace which cannot be sold.”[39] But the temptation to affix a price on such things was too strong to resist. The buying and selling of sacred things had taken hold.
Seeing that the Church had become a marketplace and den of thieves, in 590 Pope Gregory preached a homily decrying the simonical heresy.[40] It is a homily against a particular form of ecclesiastical entrepreneurialism, a denunciation of “the businessman Simon Magus” who “saw in the conferral of the Holy Spirit a great business opportunity.”
His homily weaves together multiple New Testament texts including the account of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in the Gospel of John. Gregory recalled how Jesus used a whip of cords to drive out those who were buying and selling doves, and argued that since the dove symbolized the Holy Spirit, the Church must therefore drive out all transactions surrounding the conferral of offices.[41]
Gregory’s definition of what needed to be driven out was remarkably expansive. Bishops must not grant offices in exchange for money (simony of hand), certainly, but should also avoid doing so in exchange for an individual’s submission (simony of servility), and also for praise (simony for adulation).[42] Pope Gregory recalled the prophet Isaiah’s warning against acting with an eye toward any gift at all, “for you must give freely what you have been given freely.”
There are multiple insights from Pope Gregory’s homily with applicability to the Church today. First, one should note that while simony refers to the buying and selling of sacred things generally, the term was first associated with the buying and selling of ordinations and lucrative church offices.[43] Later, in the Church of England, simony came to primarily refer to the buying and selling of benefices. As someone who works for the Church, I find it helpful and revealing to know that - at least historically speaking - the ecclesiastical commodities that were traded were those coveted positions of guaranteed income and little accountability.[44]
Perhaps more interesting still, however, is the fact that for Pope Gregory the Great, simony is not only a sin but a heresy.[45] In referring elsewhere to this as the ‘simonical heresy’, Gregory argues that these forms of transactions represent a false teaching about God and one’s relationship to God.[46] Simony has an educational aspect to it, therefore, as it teaches others that God’s grace can be commodified and that the church’s relationship to God is that of broker.
Pope Gregory’s homily was similar to Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in that it represents the voice of a faith leader attempting a religious reform within his own tradition. His homily - and particularly his three categories of simony - would become key approximately five hundred years later when another Gregory, Pope Gregory VI, would again attempt to root out financial corruption in the 11th century. Over and over and across the centuries, including in the Reformation and still today, the church must hear again what Jesus and Gregory were insisting - namely, that God’s grace has been given freely, and so must be offered freely (Matthew 10:8).
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But why does this matter so much? Who really cares if people wish to pay some coins in exchange for a baptism, or if a wealthy parent wants to ease their child’s ordination process with the subtle promise of a gift (or, more likely still, the threat of the removal of one)? In an age where churches are pressed to try everything they can to make ends meet, what's the harm in putting the sacraments behind a paywall?
At the end of the day, here’s why I think it’s important.
Right now, Americans are living through an extraordinary moment when Supreme Court Justices appear to be on the take, when Congressman George Santos has used campaign finances to get himself botox, and when parent social media influencers have shown themselves willing to monetize their children’s most intimate moments. It seems that everything – including our most sacred values - is up for sale.
In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, the Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that since the 1980s the United States has gradually transformed from having a market economy to becoming a market society in which market values have spilled over into every sphere of our lives and one has the growing sense that everything is up for sale.[47] Sandel notes, “A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.”[48]
This shows up in US society in ways large and small. For Sandel, an important example is how public seats at congressional hearings are now up for sale.[49] One seemingly sacred principle of our representative democracy is that the public should have access to congressional hearings, but limited space for the most important hearings means that access is limited and so the lines to enter these hearings are very long.
From one standpoint, these free seats – our democracy’s gift to citizens – are a limited and underpriced commodity and so “the line-standing industry remedies this inefficiency by establishing a market price.”[50] The result exacerbates inequality and corrupts congress itself.
Today lobbyists pay line standing companies to have people (frequently homeless) wait in line on their behalf so they can take their place shortly before a hearing begins. This allows lobbyists to attend these hearings conveniently and speak with representatives in the hallways afterwards. In doing so, they displace everyday citizens who may not be able to afford to pay a line standing company. Citizens without corporate accounts now simply have to show up earlier.
While legal, many rightly see this as corrupting practice, an instance in which something that was “set apart” as our democracy’s free gift to citizens has now been debased and devalued through commodification. Sandel writes, “To corrupt a good or a social practice is to degrade it, to treat it according to a lower mode of valuation than is appropriate to it. Charging admission to congressional hearings is a form of corruption in this sense. It treats Congress as if it were a business rather than an institution of representative government,” and “it degrades Congress by treating it as a source of private gain rather than an instrument of the public good.”[51]
In this environment in which everything is for sale, the Church actually has Good News to share with the world. Although we’ve often failed to follow our own teaching, we are followers of One who pushed back against a sacred place becoming a marketplace and den of thieves. When he sought to reclaim the sacred space from the overwhelming forces of the marketplace, he both set into motion the events that would lead to his arrest, while also laying the blueprint for many others across the centuries who would try to root out both financial corruption and simony in the Church ever since. There's Good News here: namely, that the church teaches that there are some gifts, some positions, and some public responsibilities that are so important that they must be ‘set apart’ from the market and rendered freely.
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[1] Gunn, Scott; Wilson Shobe, Melody. Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs and Practices (pp. 133-135). Forward Movement. Kindle Edition.
[2] It is an optional reading in the Book of Common Prayer’s readings for Holy Tuesday
[3] McCullough 91
[4] See “Temple” in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 350-351). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition
[5] See “Jerusalem” in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 294-295). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[6] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Temple of Jerusalem". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Temple-of-Jerusalem. Accessed 30 October 2023.
[7] “Those exiled are likely to have been community leaders; those left behind were apparently mostly of little account.” in McCullough 61
[8] “Temple” in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 350-351). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition and “Jerusalem” in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 294-295). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[9] McCullough, 62-63
[10] See McCullough, 65 and Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Temple of Jerusalem". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Temple-of-Jerusalem. Accessed 30 October 2023.
[11] McCullough, 66
[12] See “Jerusalem” in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 294-295). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[13] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Temple of Jerusalem". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Temple-of-Jerusalem. Accessed 30 October 2023.
[14] See “Jerusalem” in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 294-295). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[15] McCullough 106
[16] For “in the course of the capture of Jerusalem, whether by accident or by design, the great Temple complex went up in flames, never to be restored; its site lay as a wasteland for centuries.” McCullough 106
[17] Leviticus 1:14
[18] Matthew 21:12-18, Mark 11:12-25, Luke 19:45-48, John 2:13-12
[19] “The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke speak of a ministry spent mostly in Galilee in the north, with a final southward journey to Jerusalem; the evangelist John, by contrast, deals mostly with activity in the south, Judaea, focusing especially on the city and the Temple.” McCullough, 82
[20] For Matthew and Luke, the cleansing of the temple occurs immediately after he enters the city whereas for Mark it takes place on the very next day.
[21] See “Temple” in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 350-351). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition. See also From Chapter 5 on Galilee - Esler, Philip F.. The Early Christian World (Routledge Worlds) (p. 105). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
[22] From Chapter 5 on Galilee - Esler, Philip F.. The Early Christian World (Routledge Worlds) (p. 105). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
[23] See commentary on Mark 11 v 13 in Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 1864). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition as well as “Fig” in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 117-118). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[24] Mark 21:12-25
[25] See commentary on Matthew 21.12-27 in Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 1828). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[26] See “temple coins” in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 350-351). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[27] “The advantage to the priests was that Tyrian currency was not prone to the kind of inflation experienced by other states in the area, but it is surprising that they welcomed coins which bore pagan representations: for of those found from the year 26–27 CE the god Melkart-Heracles is represented on the obverse side, and an eagle with a palm branch over its right shoulder is on the reverse.” See ‘temple coins’ in Browning, W. R. F.. A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford Quick Reference) (pp. 350-351). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[28] See commentary on Mark 11.12-25 in Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 1864). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[29] On Matthew - Bruce Malina;Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Kindle Locations 2128-2132). Kindle Edition.
[30] See commentary on Mark 11.12-25 in Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 1864). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[31] McCullough 72
[32] On Matthew - Bruce Malina;Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Kindle Locations 2128-2132). Kindle Edition.
[33] Matthew 21:14
[34] See Lev 21.16-23 and commentary on Matthew 21.12–27 in Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 1828). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[35] Mark 11:17. Jesus cites Jesus cites Isa 56.7 and Jer 7.11.
[36] Gregory the Great in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (p. 240). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[37] Simony in Livingstone, E. A.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford Quick Reference) (p. 521). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition. “The term, which is derived from *Simon Magus (see Acts 8: 18–24), denotes the purchase or sale of spiritual things. The canons of the early Church show that simony became frequent after the age of the persecutions; there has been repeated legislation against it, especially in connection with ecclesiastical preferment.”
[38] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "simony". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Feb. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/simony. Accessed 22 November 2023. “Simony, in the form of buying holy orders, or church offices, was virtually unknown in the first three centuries of the Christian church, but it became familiar when the church had positions of wealth and influence to bestow.”
[39] CANON 48 of the Council of Elvira - The custom of placing coins in the baptismal shell by those being baptized must be corrected so that the priest does not seem to sell for money what he has received freely. Nor shall their feet be washed by priests or clerics. Canon 2 of the Council of Chalcedon - https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/chalcedon_canons.htm: If any Bishop should ordain for money, and put to sale a grace which cannot be sold, and for money ordain a bishop, or chorepiscopus, or presbyters, or deacons, or any other of those who are counted among the clergy; or if through lust of gain he should nominate for money a steward, or advocate, or prosmonarius, or any one whatever who is on the roll of the Church, let him who is convicted of this forfeit his own rank; and let him who is ordained be nothing profited by the purchased ordination or promotion; but let him be removed from the dignity or charge he has obtained for money. And if any one should be found negotiating such shameful and unlawful transactions, let him also, if he is a clergyman, be deposed from his rank, and if he is a layman or monk, let him be anathematized.
[40] 123-124 of Great, Gregory the. Forty Gospel Homilies. 2009. 1st ed., Gorgias Press, 2009, https://www.perlego.com/book/1162699/forty-gospel-homilies-pdf. And Registrum 62 as the place where he calls simony heresy
[41] 123-124 of Great, Gregory the. Forty Gospel Homilies. 2009. 1st ed., Gorgias Press, 2009, https://www.perlego.com/book/1162699/forty-gospel-homilies-pdf. “But granting the efficacy of the preaching and the power of the miracles, let us hear what our Redeemer added:'You have received freely, give freely.' He foresaw that some, hav-
ing received this gift of the Spirit, would turn it to business use, and would debase the miraculous signs, yielding to avarice. Thus Simon the magician, being very eager to pro-
duce miracles by the imposition of hands, wished to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for money. He could then commit a greater sin by selling what he had purchased through wickedness. Thus too our Redeemer made a scourge of cords, and drove the crowds from the temple, and overturned the seats of those who were selling doves. To sell doves means to grant the imposition of hands, by which the Spirit is received, not for the merit of the recipient's life but for a price.”
[42] 123-124 of Great, Gregory the. Forty Gospel Homilies. 2009. 1st ed., Gorgias Press, 2009, https://www.perlego.com/book/1162699/forty-gospel-homilies-pdf. He did not say that he is one who keeps his hands free of a gift, but added every, because a gift given from deference is one thing, a gift from the hand another, and a gift from the tongue still another. A gift from deference is submission conferred without being deserved, a gift from the hand is money, a gift from the tongue esteem. Therefore whoever grants holy orders keeps his hands free from every gift when he not only demands no money, but not even human favors for the sacred gifts.
[43] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "simony". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Feb. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/simony. Accessed 22 November 2023.
Simony, in the form of buying holy orders, or church offices, was virtually unknown in the first three centuries of the Christian church, but it became familiar when the church had positions of wealth and influence to bestow. The first legislation on the point was the second canon of the Council of Chalcedon (451). From that time prohibitions and penalties were reiterated against buying or selling promotions to the episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate. Later, the offense of simony was extended to include all traffic in benefices and all pecuniary transactions on masses (apart from the authorized offering), blessed oils, and other consecrated objects.
[44] Wikipedia: Simony see “Church of England” -The Church of England struggled with the practice after its separation from Rome. For the purposes of English law, simony is defined by William Blackstone as "obtain[ing] orders, or a licence to preach, by money or corrupt practices"[17] or, more narrowly, "the corrupt presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for gift or reward".[18]
[45] Gregory the Great, Registrum 62
[46] See ‘heresy’ in McFarland. The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology (p. 209). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. “In the fourth century heresy was formally defined by Augustine (Fid. 10), Basil of Caesarea (Ep. 188.1; see Cappadocian Fathers), and Jerome (Tit. 3.10) as false teaching (i.e., error in doctrine). As false teaching, heresy is that which is judged contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Gregory refers to simony as heresy in Registrum 62
[47] “The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.” Sandel, Michael J.. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (p. 7). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
[48] Sandel, Michael J.. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (pp. 10-11). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
[49] Sandel, Michael J.. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (p. 34). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
[50] Sandel, Michael J.. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (p. 34). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
[51] Sandel, Michael J.. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (p. 34-35). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
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