sure, but he was not necessarily claiming divine status for himself, only an
authority that relativized the prerogative of the priests. That in itself would
have made him plenty controversial.
No doubt Jesuswascontroversial in his day, but it seems unlikely that
it was anything that he said or did during his Galilean ministry that got
him killed. This suspicion is confirmed by the observation that in the gos-
pel passion narratives it is not the Pharisees who have him arrested and
handed over to Pilate but the Jerusalem Temple leadership. Some of his
parables, notably the Vineyard and Tenants (Mark 12:1-12 pars.), imply
criticism of the Jerusalem priesthood, but the critique is scarcely harsher
than what we find in the sectarian writings from Qumran. Jesus’ procla-
mation of the coming kingdom of God might have been regarded by Pilate
as politically subversive had it come to his attention, since it implicitly
challenged the kingdom of Rome. More likely, however, it was the messi-
anic enthusiasm of large crowds that greeted Jesus on his entry into Jerusa-
lem and his demonstration in the Temple that brought him to the lethal at-
tention of the chief priests and the Romans. Both of these incidents are
reported in the Synoptics and independently in John with an overlay of in-
terpretation (Mark 11:1-10 pars. and John 12:12-19; Mark 11:15-17 pars. and
John 2:13-25), but there is no good reason to doubt their essential historic-
ity. What prompted Jesus’ disrupting the commerce in the Temple is un-
clear. Perhaps his ire was aroused by Herod’s remodeling program, which
had transformed the Temple’s outer court from a sacred space into a com-
mercial venue. Equally offensive to him, perhaps, was the type of coinage
required to pay the half-shekel Temple tax: Tyrian silver issues that bore
the image of the Canaanite god Melqart. Whatever provoked his gesture,
he may have intended it to symbolize the Temple’s impending doom and
perhaps also its eschatological replacement. This understanding of the
event finds support in the tradition of his predicting the Temple’s destruc-
tion, a prediction that need not be taken as anex-eventuprophecy (Mark
13:1-2 pars.).
The Markan trial narrative and its parallel in Matthew depict false wit-
nesses offering conflicting testimony before the Judean council that Jesus
threatened to destroy the Temple himself (Mark 14:57-58/Matt. 26:60-61; cf.
Jesus’ symbolic threat in John 2:19). The charge is not sustained but re-
placed with the accusation of blasphemy (Mark 14:64). What actually tran-
spired at Jesus’ interrogation by the high priest is beyond recovery. In the
Markan account he is accused by Caiaphas of blasphemy after confessing
to be the messiah and declaring, “You will see the Son of Man seated at the396daniel c. harlowEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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