There’s no shortage of details in the New Testament that skeptics use to undermine the historical credibility of the Gospels. One is the timing of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple.
John places the event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (John 2:13-22). The Synoptics, however, place the event at the end of Jesus’ ministry (Matt. 21:12ff, Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-47). For British New Testament scholar Maurice Casey, this observation alone “show[s] that a conservative evangelical view of Scripture is verifiably false” (Is John’s Gospel True?, p. 29).
I think Casey makes too quick of a conclusion here. There are plausible ways to reconcile the discrepancy and thereby defend John’s historical credibility.
In his article on this issue, Jimmy Akin does a nice job laying out three common options for reconciling the discrepancy. He lists them as follows:
- Jesus chronologically cleansed the Temple at the end of his ministry (per the Synoptic Gospels), and John presents it at the beginning for theological reasons.
- Jesus chronologically did it at the beginning of his ministry (per John), and the Synoptics present it at the end for theological reasons.
- Jesus did it twice—at both the beginning and the end of his ministry.
There is nothing to say here to enhance Jimmy’s commentary on the above options. However, I would like to share a few thoughts in addition to what Jimmy says about the “two cleansings” hypothesis, simply to add to the lines of defense of John’s Gospel on this issue.
First, there are differences in the accounts that lend credibility to this hypothesis. Consider, for example, the details that are found only in John’s account. John reports that “oxen and sheep” (21:14) were being sold along with pigeons and that Jesus drove them out with a “whip of cords” (v. 15). Moreover, John alone tells us about Jesus pouring out the coins of the moneychangers. The implication in both instances is that if these things happened in one single cleansing of the Temple, at least one of the Synoptics would mention them.
There is also a difference in the key sayings attributed to Jesus. For example, the Synoptics record Jesus rebuking the moneychangers for turning his Father’s house into a “den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13, Mark 11:17, Luke 19:46). But John has Jesus zeroing in on the commercialism of their trade, saying, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (21:16).
Furthermore, the above statement of Jesus in John is an allusion to Zechariah 14:21, whereas in the Synoptics, Jesus’ response to the corruption is a combination of Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. And speaking of Old Testament passages, only John records the disciples remembering Psalm 69:9—“zeal for your house has consumed me”—and applying it to Jesus’ behavior.
Another difference between the accounts is John’s record of the exchange between Jesus and the Jews. The Synoptics merely narrate in passing that in response to Jesus’ behavior, the chief priests and scribes sought to kill Jesus. John, on the other hand, records an exchange between Jesus and the Jews. The Jews ask Jesus, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” (2:18), and Jesus responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19).
The details of this exchange lead us to another line of evidence in support of the “two cleansings” hypothesis. Mark tells us that Jesus’ response regarding the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple came up in Jesus’ trial. Mark’s report reads, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’” (14:59). Matthew reports them saying, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God’” (26:61).
Jesus’ accusers garble the details on two counts. First, they claim that Jesus said he would the destroy the Temple. Yet Jesus’ statement in John’s Gospel—“Destroy this temple”—implies that they would destroy the Temple.
Second, Jesus’ accusers charge him with saying he would destroy the physical temple of God. Yet all Jesus said was, “Destroy this temple,” leaving it ambiguous as to exactly which temple he was referring to. We know from John that Jesus meant his body.
Now, as Craig Blomberg argues in his book The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel, this mishmash of details by Jesus’ accusers supports the thesis that John records an event that took place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not at the end. He writes,
The garbled detail of this accusation, coupled with Mark’s observation that the witnesses could not agree (14:59), makes more sense as a confused recollection of something said two or three years earlier, not just a few days ago (p. 172).
When we couple this bit of evidence with the fact that the Synoptics don’t record Jesus’ cryptic statement about the destruction of his body, the “two cleansings” hypothesis becomes much more plausible.
There’s one last line of evidence we can give in support of the “two cleansings” hypothesis.
Consider that Jesus would have visited the Temple several times within his public ministry, as John suggests. And given that Jesus isn’t one to remain silent in the face of abuses, and it’s unlikely the abuses in the Temple would have ceased after his first reprimand, it’s not far-fetched to say that Jesus would have done this twice in his ministry.
Given the above lines of evidence, we can say, contrary to Casey’s claim, that the discrepancies between John’s account of the cleansing of the temple and the accounts of the Synoptics don’t disprove John’s historical credibility. They actually point in favor of it.