I like comics - cartoons. Just about every day I scan several comics at http://www.gocomics.com/features.
Readers are invited to comment on each comic. Monday's Frazz comic ( http://www.gocomics.com/frazz#.Ut1lQNIo5R0 had a comment that read Even Jesus chased the money changers from the temple. Force can be used when it is necessary.
As I understand it, that was a big deal for Jesus' followers. Their idea of a place of worship is sterile, neat, and clean.
The Temple was anything BUT sterile.
It was, among other things, a slaughterhouse where animals were offered up as sacrifices. Judaism at the time was still separating itself from the neighboring idolaters who sacrificed not only livestock but humans as well. (Perhaps eliminating animal sacrifices is why HaShem allowed the Temple to be destroyed the second time.)
So why WERE money changers in the Temple's (outer) court, in the public area (versus the alters for sacrifices and far from the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest entered on Yom Kippur)?
Even back before second Temple times, Jews were scattered around the known world - across North Africa, in southern Europe, in Yemen, Syria, Iran and Iraq to name a few places where Jews were found.
Jews from distant lands were unable to bring animals from "home" to sacrifice in Jerusalem. Transportation was a "bit" slower then; no giant cargo planes to ferry animals and owners to Jerusalem for the three yearly pilgrimage holidays (פסח, סוכות, שבועות). But, then as now, people could bring valuables to trade. Drachmas from Greece, denarius from Rome, benduqi from Morocco, etc., or gold, silver, and spices.
The money changers Jesus allegedly found so offensive were there to provide a needed service: changing one valuable for another, the latter being Israeli currency with which the pilgrim could could by an animal, a bird, or fine flour to offer on the Temple's alter.
If one of Jesus' followers was visiting in a foreign land and wanted to give a money donation to the local congregation would he or she give money from home or would the donation be in local currency? Most likely, the visitor would have exchanged currency with a currency exchange at the airport or, if there was a currency black market, in a nearby alley.
Granted, the money changers probably would not be in a church vestibule, but finding one lingering by the entrance should surprise no one.
If it was not enough that the money changers had a necessary purpose at the Temple, Jesus also was out of line in attacking the money changers. Israel had laws to protect people; Jesus violated those laws. If he had a problem with the money changers, he could have, and should have, gone to the authorities.
Only the courts had the authority to order stripes (lashes), and then strictly controlled; Jesus, on his temper tantrum rampage, clearly did not have control.
TO BE FAIR, perhaps this incident never happened.
The gospels were written so long after Jesus' death that most scholars doubt the absolute accuracy of those gospels.
