Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
They quite literally the Pharisees he gets mad at in the Temple.
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False.
The Pharisees were not the source of Jesus's indignation in the Temple-story. Rather, he drove out the merchants who were selling livestock for the purpose of sacrifice during passover week. In the following verses (Mark 11:18; Matt 21:15; Luke 19:47–48) it is clear that the Temple-priests and officials are the ones at loggerheads with Jesus in this story. The poor Pharisees are so misunderstood thanks to the he New Testament. Unlike the priestly class—which was populated by the aristocracy—the Pharisees were religious leaders among the lower and middle classes. They were not power-brokers in the temple and royal establishment, but rather championed a much more practical form of religious observance than the complex and capricious system of sacrifices upon which the temple religion was built. Jesus interacted primarily with Pharisees because he was in the same social circle, but it is important to note that these people were NOT the religious rulers in Palestine.
If we are drawing an analogy from this story to the Catholic Church, they were the angry Zadokite priests who controlled the Jerusalem temple. The Pharisees in this version would be more like the established main-line churches in Europe and North America. Jesus and his followers would then be the Evangelical apocalypticists, who were convinced that the Kingdom of God was at hand. In fact, a number of scholars believe that this story about the Temple was actually an insurrection and attempted coup by Jesus and his followers that ultimately failed, and resulted in his arrest and execution. In this reading Jesus would be a Q-Anon, working his followers up into a frenzy, and then leading them into the Capitol.