Question:
Answer:
You ask a good question and there are two possible answers.
All four gospels provide accounts of this event, with John doing so at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (John 2:14-22) and Matthew, Mark and Luke toward the end. It’s possible that the four evangelists are referring to the same event. If that’s the case, as the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament provides,
John moved the episode to the beginning of his narrative to highlight an important truth. As it stands, the Temple cleansing makes the same theological point as that in the preceding Cana episode: Jesus brings a New Covenant that supersedes the institutions of the Old (p. 165).
It’s also possible that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. As the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament adds,
In fact, some have dated the episode in John around A.D. 27 or 28, calculating “forty-six years” from the time Herod the Great began renovating the Temple in 19 or 20 B.C. (John 2:20). This date fits more easily into the early period of Jesus’ ministry than the latter part of it (Ibid.).