Would that not piss of Jesus? It came to me after watching the pope rap from WKUK.
ITT- a lot of people who are very confidently wrong even about basic facts about this.
Jesus flipping tables wasn’t aimed at the priests and church authorities, but at people who were based in the outer area of the temple selling supplies to make sacrifices and offerings prescribed in Jewish law (see the book of Leviticus for more descriptions of these sacrifices). Jewish law at the time required a lot of animal sacrifices and monetary offerings at the Temple, and Jesus didn’t seem to have any issues with these- after all, they were a core part of the religion at the time and again, the Torah explicitly states that priests are supposed to live off of Temple offerings (note that in this passage the priestly class are referred to as “Sons of Aaron”). So it would have been odd for Jesus, as someone who at least according to the Bible was very knowledgeable about scripture and Jewish law, would have been surprised at that aspect.
What he was mad about was the commerce occurring around this system. The Gospel descriptions of this event discuss “moneychangers” and people selling doves. These are people who exchanged Roman currency for traditional Jewish currency (which is what ancient monetary offerings were denominated in) and sold animals (and based on other writings in the Torah, probably spiced cakes as well) that could be sacrificed in the Temple on the purchaser’s behalf. As for why this made Jesus mad, that is up for debate. The obvious answer is that it represents greed and people making money off religion, but the large amount of sacrifices required by Jewish law at the time really encouraged this behavior just from a practical standpoint. Myself I think he would have been completely fine with it had it been happening right outside the Temple instead, but the Temple was considered an especially holy place, where God’s presence literally descended down to Earth to be with mankind in the innermost portion, which each concentric ring acting as a sort of “air lock” for ritual impurity.
So the problem was not that the priests were making money from religion (again, this was required by Jewish law at the time) but that these other people were hanging out in the Temple treating it as a marketplace rather than as an exceptionally holy and highly ritualized space. Understanding this is kind of difficult for modern people because we don’t really treat religion the same as people did back then, and especially from a Christian standpoint we tend to view religion as a matter of personal belief and not impurity that occurs as a natural consequence of things that happen and that must be cleansed before encounters with the divine.
This is a very good explanation. To answer the specific question about modern offering plates, those are fine bc it’s not selling anything, it’s a free will offering to support the church. Of course, some churches put a lot more pressure on their congregants and basically force them to give beyond their means by saying shit like “God demands you give x amount” or “buying salvation” and stuff, and that behavior would likely get them whipped by Jesus too. Unfortunately the people who do stuff like that, don’t actually care about Jesus and his teachings
Pssst…modern Christians aren’t actually Christian.
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The pastor never reads that passage. His job is to make people feel better about themselves and to enrich the church! If people start feeling bad about themselves, they’ll stop coming!
And don’t ask about why people don’t read the bible. That sounds hard…
The difference is that the church doesn’t give you anything in return for the money unlike the traders /j
But seriously, much like everything else in the bible, those verses get ignored when inconvenient
If you think your church is doing good work, you give.
The church I grew up in closed for lack of funds. The preacher never lived large, they weren’t taking more than people wanted to give.
I would never give money to a mega church, but I have donated to UU churches as an adult.
It to help the christian missionaries across the world, but not the neighbour sleeping on a mattress on their porch.
Its to help replace the church carpets that the pastor doesn’t like, not help the homeless community who is living under the bridge in the city.
I may be a biased, unhappy, ex-church goer, but that’s what I saw
Jesus wouldn’t gripe the practice of tithing so much as what the modern church does (or mainly doesn’t do) with the money. Obviously if that money was spent helping people he would be cool with it.
There’s even a bit in the bible where he say the poor woman who tithed the 1 penny she could spare was giving more than the rich people who gave much more.
If someone asks, “What would Jesus do?” Remember that flipping tables and whipping a bitch are viable options.
So was stealing horses.
And cursing fig trees for not bearing fruit out-of-season.
Never was religious, can you give context?
Lake, K. (1911). Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, Oxford (An old ass version of the bible from c. 400 C.E.
Matthew 21:12-13
12 And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that sold and bought in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those that sold doves,
13 and said to them: It is written: My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you make it a den of robbers.
So, Jesus showed up at the temple and “cast out” anyone engaged in commerce, calling them robbers.
Of the four apostles that mention the incident (Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John), only John indicates that a whip was used.
13 And the Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And he found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the moneychangers sitting; 15 and having made a scourge of cords, he drove all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and poured out the money of the money-changers, and overturned the tables; 16 and to those that sold doves he said: Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. 17 The disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for thy house consumes me.
The scourge of cords, with scourge meaning “a whip used as an instrument of punishment”.
Saved you 17 Google searches. /s
Religion is the largest scam against humanity.
When one person believes a delusion, it’s schizophrenia. When millions do, that’s religion.
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They weren’t priests collecting for the church.
They were loan sharks operating out of the church.
Yep. Jesus didn’t have a problem with raising funds for the church, he had an issue with the church being used as a forum for private financial business.
He called out the practice of killing animals for money, specifically calling the priests murderers during the event you reference. Not much of that spirit left in modern churches.
That’s not true. He denounced them for price gouging gentiles who came to the temple to make sacrifices. He didn’t call them murderers - he called them thieves.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A12-13%2CMark+11%3A15-18&version=NASB
He calls them “λῃστής”
Even in the source you linked that is translated to robber. To rob means “stealing using force or violence”. Who were the priests using violence against you think? Their clients or animals?
It can also mean to overcharge someone, which is likely how it is used here. The exorbitant price of sacrificial animals is multiply attested. The poor couldn’t afford it
I’m not sure how your interpretation is meant to work out. I don’t see how people would be compelled to give their belongings to someone if the threat is directed towards random sacrificial animals. Are you trying to say that they were stealing from the sacrificial animals themselves, and that’s why he called them robbers? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
Modern churches have nothing to do with Jesus.
It’s all fiction. None of it is real. The character jesus was not a real person, and he didn’t have superpowers.
Stop writing stupid fictional jebus fanfiction in your head. Find better, less hate filled, fiction.
I’m an atheist, but if you read about Jesus specifically you won’t find a lot of hate.
The character jesus was not a real person
I think it’s generally accepted that Jesus did exist, as his baptism and crucifixion were documented by third parties at the time.
All that means is that a person named Jesus may have existed. But that has no bearing on events described in the Bible. It’s like saying you found a birth certificate for a Clark Kent from the 1930’s so that means Superman really existed.
Well if Superman modeled itself as a true story and the Clark Kent you found was the person who inspired the story then yeah you did. It’s not Clarks fault the author lied. Historians don’t only think ‘some dude name jesus exists’. They think that the specific Jesus depicted in the bible was based on a real person. You can be against religion and recognize a historical consensus.
The Jesus of history is not necessarily the same guy they wrote about. All that is known for sure is that someone named Jesus, who came from Nazareth, existed around the same time. Absolutely nothing else is linked to the name.
Also, everything that makes up the bible was written several years after that man’s life.
Historians also agree on his baptism and execution, not simply his birth.
No no you see it’s only Science TM if they can use it to shit on Christians.
