The temporary hesitation of the
authorities did not prevent them from asking an obvious question. Mark's
account is again sound, though his use of the definite articles gives an
impression of hordes of chief priests, scribes and elders, when a manageable
group is not only more likely, but will also have been the intention of his
source.
And they came again to Jerusalem. And
he was walking in the Temple, and (the) chief priests and (the) scribes and
(the) elders came to him, and they said to him, 'By what authority do you do
these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?' (Mk 11.27-8)
Jesus' reply is revealing. It implies
both his known support for John the Baptist, and an indirect claim that his own
ministry was divinely inspired, like that of John. ‘I will ask you one thing,
and answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The
baptism of John, (was) it from heaven or of men? Answer me!' (Mk 11.29-30).
There is no way that such a response
would have been produced by the early church! This is the true tradition of
Jesus' words, in which he defended his prophetic action by direct reference to
the divine authority of the prophet who baptised him. Mark's account also
informs us that John still had considerable popular support, and had been
opposed by these same authorities (Mk 11.31-3, cf. Mt 21.31-2). This means that
the cultural nexus of severe opposition between these authorities and the
prophetic stream of Judaism was already in place, and had already led to the
death of a much revered prophet. At this stage, Jesus' powerful opponents were
sensible enough to bide their time and ask awkward questions, as Mark portrays them.
The important point for our purposes is that their opposition is predictable,
given the Cleansing of the Temple, coming after a ministry in which Jesus had
already incurred the opposition of scribes and Pharisees, in a social context
of known opposition of the authorities to John the Baptist. After inserting a
collection of Jesus' teaching, some of which is due to the early church, Mark
again makes the main point with clarity: 'And (the) chief priests and (the)
scribes were looking for ways to arrest him by trickery and kill him, for they
said, "Not in the festival (crowd), in case there is a riot of the
people'" (Mk 14.1-2). It is this dilemma which Judah of Kerioth solved for
them by betraying him in the garden of Gethsemane, where there was no crowd to
riot, and little enough opposition to his arrest (Mk 14.41-52).
One problem remained. What could they
kill him for? They were not arbitrary murderers, and it was in
their interests that they were not held responsible for the death which they brought
about. Some of them may have felt that Jesus' action in the Temple was
blasphemous, but it was not contrary to any law of blasphemy, and neither that
nor anything else that Jesus had done was contrary to a law that carried the
death penalty. The Roman governor was however in Jerusalem, with a force of
troops. He always came at Passover, in case of any breach of the peace. This
gave the authorities their chance. They handed Jesus over to Pilate. Since he
was crucified as 'king of the Jews', we must infer a charge of sedition, and
Jesus' preaching of the kingdom must have been employed to make the charge stick.
At this point, Mark fails us. His account of the meeting of the Sanhedrin is so
unsatisfactory that we must infer that he did not know what had happened there.
Up to that point, however, he is coherent. The incident of the Cleansing of the
Temple is comprehensible in itself, and all its consequences are
understandable. (Maurice Casey, is John’s Gospel True? [London:
Routledge, 1996], 7-8)
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