Most people who study the life of Jesus come away convinced that he taught and practiced nonviolence, even if they find it hard to make such a commitment themselves. There are a few passages in the gospels, though, that seem to contradict this impression. These few passages inevitably seem to come up in discussions of whether Christians should be nonviolent, and whether Christian churches should be peace churches. I'm going to address one of these passages here, and three others in commentaries that will also appear on this Web site.

One story that always gets mentioned in debates about the nonviolence of Jesus is the "cleansing of the Temple," Jesus' action in driving out the businessmen and their customers who were trading in the Temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:13-22). Though none of the gospels mentions Jesus' emotions, it is widely assumed that this was an angry and violent outburst that contradicted his teaching on love for enemies and turning the other cheek. Particularly troubling is Jesus' use of a weapon, a whip made out of cords.

Let's deal with this last issue first. The whip is mentioned only in John, which is also the only gospel that mentions livestock (cattle and sheep). In fact, it is perfectly clear (more so in the Greek than in some English translations) that the whip is applied only to the animals and not to the people. As anyone who's ever had dealings with livestock knows, an implement can be useful, but a little slap is all it takes to get them moving; we're not talking about a beating here. According to John, Jesus started a stampede, and then turned his attention to the other merchants; but he didn't whip people.

Of the other gospels, Mark gives the earliest and the most vivid account of this event. There are no animals, and no weapons. The verb commonly translated "drive out" in Mark 11:15 is a common one in Mark, usually used in reference to Jesus casting out demons. But it's also used to describe the Spirit driving Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted (Mark 1:12), and Jesus "sending away" a leper he has healed (1:43) and putting people outside of a room before working a miracle (5:40). It is not in itself a violent term. Yet Jesus certainly does act with vigor, if not downright aggression. Overturning the tables of the currency exchange merchants did them no physical harm, though, and how it was that Jesus prevented people from carrying objects through the Temple we can't really know. On the whole, Jesus' action has a quality something like that of a protester who chains himself to a door to prevent people entering a building. It is obstructive and aggravating, but nobody suffers bodily injury. And it is worth noting that this is the most violent act attributed to Jesus in the Bible; there is really nothing else that is even close. Frankly, if this is as much violence as Jesus ever used, it's not much of an argument in favor of guns, bombs, and missiles.

The nature of his action requires some further exploration, however. It seems to me that an act of violence, whether offensive or defensive, would be one that uses force to compel other people to do what one wants them to do. Did Jesus, then, use force to "cleanse" the Temple of commercial activity? To answer this question, we need to accurately envision what took place. The Temple in Jerusalem was a large complex of buildings, encompassing perhaps as much as 35 acres altogether, and the business that Jesus opposed took place in its outer courtyards, the largest and most open area of the Temple compound. None of the gospels suggests that anyone other than Jesus was involved in it; there is no mention of his disciples being part of the activity. In other words, he created about as much commotion as one man acting along could manage in a very large open space. Most people visiting the Temple that day would probably never even have noticed it. Apart from any who may have found his actions and words persuasive and stopped what they were doing permanently, we would have to assume that a half hour after he left, the Temple was pretty much back to business as usual. As acts of violence go, this would not have been a terribly effective one.

In other words, Jesus' action in the Temple was basically symbolic, like the those performed by the prophets of old, such as Ezekiel packing and going away like an exile (Ezekiel 12:1-7) or Isaiah walking around naked (Isaiah 20:1-6). This is one reason why scholars today tend not to refer to the "cleansing" of the Temple, since Jesus did not "cleanse" it in any real or lasting sense. Being symbolic, Jesus' action would not have been meant to compel someone to do what he wanted, but only to show them in a very dramatic way what he thought was the right course of action. Because it was symbolic, we may also have to question the common interpretation of this action as an angry outburst; it could well have been carefully planned and carried out quite coolly.

As a symbol, Jesus' action may have had one or more of several possible meanings. He may have been saying that the outer courtyard of the Temple -- the only place Gentiles were allowed to be -- should have been left open and clear so that foreigners too might come and worship the God of Israel (hence his quotation of Isaiah 56:7). Rather than a fortress against outsiders and their contamination, Jesus may have wanted the Temple to be a wide-open invitation to all who wanted to worship. Or he may have wanted to oppose the commercialization of religion. It should be noted, though, that in any temple where animals and other items were sacrificed there had to be a provision for people to purchase them. "Commerce" in some sense was a necessity for the Temple to function at all. And so it may be that Jesus' prophetic action was actually a rejection of the Temple system entirely, a critique of its mandatory tithes that were oppressive to many peasant small farmers, and a foreshadowing of its ultimate destruction.

So Jesus' action in the Temple was not a violent means of imposing his will on others, but a symbolic action -- albeit a noisy and rather aggressive one -- that would have harmed no one physically and probably would not have caused much lasting disruption of Temple business. This is not to minimize its significance. It seems to represent a criticism of the established way of operating the one religious institution to which all Jews gave allegiance, perhaps even a criticism of this institution's very existence. Assuming that Mark (followed by Matthew and Luke) is right in placing it near the end of Jesus' life, it may well have been what finally provoked the authorities to take action against him. Fundamentally, though, while it might serve as a model for a boisterous demonstration against traditional practices, it hardly justifies acts of violence -- least of all acts of war meant to uphold an established status quo.

David Rensberger is Professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He has written extensively about the gospel and letters of John and on Christian spirituality. drensberger@itc.edu

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