Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 33:65 (Autumn 2020)
Article: Jesus’ Intervention In The Temple: Once Or Twice?
Author: Allan Chapple

JOTGES 33:65 (Autumn 2020) p. 67

Jesus’ Intervention In The Temple: Once Or Twice?

Allan Chapple1

Part-time Senior Lecturer in New Testament

Trinity Theological College
Australia

The Gospel of John has Jesus intervening dramatically in the Temple (John 2:13–22) before he begins his public ministry in Galilee (John 3:24; 4:3; cf. Mark 1:14). However, the only such event reported in the Synoptics occurs at the end of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 11:15–18 and parallels). What are we to make of this discrepancy?

Logically, there are four possible explanations:

1. The Synoptics are right about when the event took place—so that John has moved it to the beginning of the ministry, presumably for theological reasons. This is the view of the overwhelming majority.

2. John is right about when this happened—so the Synoptic Gospels have moved it to the end of Jesus’ ministry (again, presumably for theological reasons).2

JOTGES 33:65 (Autumn 2020) p. 68

3. Neither the Synoptics nor John have got it right, because no such event occurred.3

4. Both accounts are right, because two such episodes took place, one at the beginning and one at the end of Jesus’ ministry. This was the dominant view until the modern era, and it still has the support of some scholars.4

The purpose of this article is to make a case for the fourth of these explanations. We should note at the outset that there is little sympathy for this view, which has been dismissed in rather scathing terms: “the familiar argument of two cleansings is a historiographic

JOTGES 33:65 (Autumn 2020) p. 69

monstrosity that has no basis in the texts of the Gospels.”5 C. H. Dodd went so far as to call it a “puerile expedient,”6 although he used slightly less caustic terms in his subsequent study of John: “The suggestion that the temple was twice cleansed is the last resort of a desperate determination to harmonize Mark and John at all costs.”7

...