Cleansing of the Temple

Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov: The Cleansing of the Temple (1824)

Model of the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem. The temple market, with its money-changing tables and stalls, was probably housed in the extensions built by Herod on the south side (left in the picture) of the Temple Mount, either in the basement of the Hall of Kings, through which one of the main entrances to the temple led, or in the areas of the outer court adjacent to the hall.

Jean Jouvenet: Les marchands chassés du Temple (1706)

The cleansing of the Temple, in which the Christ expelled the merchants and money changers from the Temple in Jerusalem because it was to remain reserved for worship as a "house of prayer", is described in all four gospels (Matthew 21:12ff, Mark 11:15ff, Luke 19:45ff, John 2:13–16), but with different chronology. While it is mentioned very early in John's Gospel, the Synoptics place it only at the beginning of the Holy Week.

Gospel of John

In the Gospel of John, the expulsion from the Temple is reported in the 2nd chapter directly after the wedding at Cana and is thus still at the very beginning of Christ's earthly ministry. Here it also becomes clear that the Christ in truth meant the temple of his body and had already proclaimed his resurrection in advance.

„13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.“

– John 2:13–12

Rudolf Steiner illuminates the background:

„The writer of the Gospel of John tells us how he appears as the temple cleanser to those who pay homage to egoism and desecrate the temple by selling all kinds of things in it. Thus he gains the possibility of saying that now he has made the astral body so powerful that, if the physical body decayed, he would be able to build it up again in three days.“ (Lit.:GA 112, p. 193)

The astral body of the Christ had in the meantime already become so powerful that it could move freely outside the physical and etheric body. This made it possible for him to visit the initiate Nicodemus "by night", i.e. outside the body. The expression "by night" is chosen because the I and the astral body are (partially) outside the body at night in sleep, albeit unconsciously. The Christ, however, could move freely outside his body in his astral body consciously and willingly.

„This indicates that this shell, which has been sacrificed to him, now has the power to direct this physical body in such a way that it is master in this physical body. But then this body, which has now become so free, can move everywhere independently of the laws of the physical world, then this body, regardless of the other laws of the space world, can bring about and direct events in the spiritual world. Does it do this? Yes. This is indicated to us in the chapter that follows the chapter on the cleansing of the temple.

"Now there was a certain man among the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; who came to Jesus by night, and spoke unto him..." (John 3:1–2)

Why does it say "by night"? It is of course the most trivial explanation imaginable to say that the Jew was only afraid to come to Jesus in broad daylight and sneaked in through the window by night. Of course, anyone can give such an explanation. "By night" means nothing else here than that this meeting between the Christ and Nicodemus took place in the astral world, in the spiritual world, and not in the surroundings in which one is in ordinary daytime consciousness. That is to say, the Christ could now negotiate with Nicodemus outside the physical body, "by night," when the physical body is not present, when the astral body is outside the physical body and the etheric body.“ (Lit.:GA 112, p. 194)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Das Johannes-Evangelium im Verhältnis zu den drei anderen Evangelien, GA 112 (1984), ISBN 3-7274-1120-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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