Jesus And Temple

This book gives readers a fresh understanding of the life, ministry and teachings of Jesus. It helps to narrow the gap between 'the historical Jesus' and 'the Christ of faith'.

The New Testament provides abundant evidence that Jesus frequented the temple; according to Acts, so did his followers after his death. But the Gospels also depict Jesus in conflict with temple authorities, and questions about his attitude to the temple swirl around what the Gospels label false accusations from his opponents and around the dramatic but inconsistent accounts of Jesus "cleansing" the temple. Jesus' attitude toward the temple is at the center of current historical Jesus research, yet those discussions are often not current with the latest archaeological and related findings regarding the temple and its history, architecture, liturgy, and function. James H. Charlesworth here gathers essays from world-renowned archaeologists and biblical scholars to address the current state of knowledge regarding the temple and to consider anew vital questions about its significance for Jesus, for his followers, and for New Testament readers today--Back cover.

This study examines John's portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and replacement of the Temple. It also shows how a traditional conception of typology can be helpful for understanding the nature of the relationship between Jesus and the Temple. Interpreters often associate John 1:14, 1:51, 2:18-22, and 4:20-24 with Jesus' replacement of the Temple. Based on these texts, one can already begin to see that he fulfills and replaces the Temple in that he is the new locus of God's presence, glory, revelation, and abundant provision for his people. In particular, John 2:18-22 clearly associates Jesus' role as the Temple with his death and resurrection. According to Isaiah, part of God's decisive action on behalf of his people, and for revealing himself to the nations, is the lifting up of the Temple above all other temples. In John, this expectation finds its fulfillment in Jesus. John's language of lifting up and glorification marks Jesus' death, resurrection, and exaltation as climactic events through which God lifts up and glorifies Jesus, the true Temple. Jesus' death, resurrection, and exaltation are also the means by which God provides for his people. Jesus offers his flesh and blood for the life of the world and sends the Spirit to enrich believers with the benefits of his sacrificial death. In doing so, he simultaneously fulfills prophecies and patterns associated with the Passover, Feast of Tabernacles, Feast of Dedication, and the Temple.

Mark 13, the so-called Little Apocalypse, has puzzled readers for generations. Was Jesus speaking of the end-time return of the Son of Man or the coming destruction of Jerusalem or both? How can we know? Robert Stein, a seasoned Gospels scholar, offers an in-depth and insightful commentary on Mark chapter 13, an important and puzzling discourse of Jesus.

Most Jesus specialists agree that the Temple incident led directly to Jesus' arrest, but the precise relationship between Jesus and the Temple's administration remains unclear. Jesus and the Temple examines this relationship, exploring the reinterpretation of Torah observance and traditional Temple practices that are widely considered central components of the early Jesus movement. Challenging a growing tendency in contemporary scholarship to assume that the earliest Christians had an almost uniformly positive view of the Temple's sacrificial system, Simon J. Joseph addresses the ambiguous, inconsistent, and contradictory views on sacrifice and the Temple in the New Testament. This volume fills a significant gap in the literature on sacrifice in Jewish Christianity. It introduces a new hypothesis positing Jesus' enactment of a program of radically nonviolent eschatological restoration, an orientation that produced Jesus' conflicts with his contemporaries and inspired the first attributions of sacrificial language to his death.

This book is a study of the Johannine Christian response to the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 ce. A crucial text in this investigation is Jn 2.13-22 and its context, which provide a lens through which other texts in John are viewed. Kerr's examination of the Temple festivals of Passover, Tabernacles, Dedication suggests that in Jesus fulfils and replaces these, while in the case of the Sabbath he effects a transformation. The overall conclusion is that the Johannine Jesus replaces and fulfils the Jerusalem Temple.