Stein on the Cleansing of the Temple

Back to blogging Stein, after a week or two off. Chapter 14: The Cleansing of the Temple: God's House--A Den of Thieves. Before giving the excerpt, let me give you Mark's account of this event. Notice how Mark, unlike Matthew and Luke, gives us the story of the cursing of the fig tree in two parts, placing the cleansing of the temple in between them.

"On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city.

As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

(Mark 11:12-25 ESV)

Stein explains:

"The cleansing of the temple is best understood as a symbolic act of Jesus in which he sought to purify the temple and at the same time proclaim divine judgment on it. It was a purifying act in that he rebuked the commercialization of God's house. The temple was not meant to be a stock market or a bank exchange. It was not mean to be a profit-making enterprise for the high priests. Jesus' action, consequently, must be understood, in part at least, as a cleansing. His reference to the temple as a 'den of robbers' (Mk.11:17) and his prohibition of using the temple as a shortcut (Mk. 11:16) demonstrate that.

Yet the cleansing involved more. It was a prophetic act as well...  

...It may be that Mark intentionally placed the cleansing of the temple in its present position to help the reader understand how to interpret the event...As we shall see, Mark 'sandwiched' the cleansing of the temple (Mk. 11:15-19) between the cursing of the fig tree (vv.12-14 and 20-25) so that his readers would understand that the 'cleansing' was not simply an act of purification or reformation, but one of judgment...

Jesus did not simply predict the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. As in the cursing of the fig tree, so here also Jesus brought about that cursing/judgment. He himself would see that it happened. He had passed judgment on the situation and would bring it about. Unlike the Old Testament prophets, however, Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple without hinting that a new temple would be built to take its place. Through his ministry such a temple would be unnecessary (John 4:21-23)."

--Robert Stein, Jesus the Messiah

 

  

Wanna Avoid Being a Job's Comforter? Study Hermeneutics!

The title of this blog is two-pronged: (1) "Excerpts" (2) "Unoriginal Thoughts." So far, I have posted only excerpts: ideas that come directly from other people. This post will serve as my first sharing of an unoriginal thought--ideas that come indirectly from other people after being filtered through my mind, personality, and experience (both first-hand and vicarious). The words of C.J. Mahaney also apply to me: "I've never had an original thought" (Tilly disagrees with me on this, but she's wrong. :-) )

This unoriginal thought comes from my final exam in Dr. Robert Plummer's hermeneutics class. Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret the Bible. I took this class in the Fall of 2009. Since then, Dr. Plummer has published his own book on hermeneutics called 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible (which I own if anyone wants to borrow it). This was apparently question number 7 on the exam. The question was:

(7) “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”  I recently received an email from an old friend who told me to “claim the promise” of this verse.  Is this a correct way to think about this text? (10 points)

To which I responded:

I’m sure the friend meant well, and his or her trust in the truth of God’s word is admirable. However, before we go “claiming any promises,” we must first ask the question, “Is this a promise?”

We must keep in mind that the Bible contains many literary genres, such as historical narrative, poetry, prophecy, and apocalypse. Each genre has different rules for how we are to interpret it. So in order to interpret any passage properly, we must know what genre it belongs to and how to interpret that genre.

The answer to the question “Is this a promise?” is actually “No.” This verse belongs to the genre (and book) known as “proverbs.” Proverbs are not promises that hold true in every instance, but instead are short, pithy sayings that convey general truths. For example, when one proverb counsels us to “answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him,” it does not mean that we should never answer a fool, because the very next verse tells us to “answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Neither proverb is an absolute statement that applies in every case. Both are appropriate at given times, just as both are inappropriate at given times. Deciding which proverb applies requires wisdom. As I said, proverbs are short, pithy sayings. In order to remain short and pithy, however, they can't go into the exceptions; they simply state the rule. In this case, as a rule, if you raise a child properly, he will turn out well. But this does not guarantee that that will happen in every case.

In a similar example, there are proverbs that talk about how prosperity comes from hard work and poverty comes from laziness. Again, this is generally true, but this does not mean that all poverty comes from laziness, or that if someone is poor he must be lazy. Scripture often speaks of poor people who are righteous. If we were to interpret these proverbs as promises, we would end up acting like Job’s miserable comforters toward all poor people, telling them that they must have sinned or been lazy, otherwise they wouldn’t be poor. In the same way, we can easily become Job’s comforters toward Christian parents with wayward children if we misconstrue this proverb as a promise, telling them that they must have failed in some way, since the Bible promises that if you train up a child in the way he should go then he will not turn from it."    

Avoiding Mistakes When Doing Word Studies

Robert Plummer teaches Hermeneutics and Greek at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did missionary work in China, Israel, and Turkey (among other nations), and bears a striking resemblance to Luke Skywalker (as this photo link will demonstrate: http://www.sbts.edu/theology/faculty/robert-plummer/ ). This excerpt is from his book 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible, which I would highly recommend with a few caveats.


"Word Study Tools

Never before in the history of Christianity has there been less need for word studies than today. With the multiplicity of many excellent English Bible translations, readers of the Bible have the fruit of scholars' painstaking research. At the same time, it is a healthy desire for Christians to want to suck the marrow from every word of Scripture. However, as noted above, an uninformed linguistic euphoria can result in distortions of the text, rather than greater understanding. The following represents two common dangers when it comes to word studies.

1. Illegitimate Totality Transfer. All words have a range of meaning, and the nuances of each particular use cannot be read into all other uses of the word. That is, if the reader takes the totality of what a word can mean and reads that potentiality as a reality in every word occurrence, he has illegitimately transferred the totality of the word means onto each instance (thus, the label 'illegitimate totality transfer'). People tolerate erroneous linguistic approaches to the Bible that they would never accept in ordinary speech. For example, imagine the howls one would encounter if he said "You just used the word cell to describe your phone. By that, I take it that your phone is a small room of incarceration, that your phone is a wireless device, and that your phone is a microscopic blob of protoplasm." Obviously, only one of the potential meanings of "cell"  is intended. Yet, how many times have we heard a similar litany of potential meanings from a preacher presented as the "real meaning" of a word in the Bible? One can see the danger of tools like The Amplified Bible, which provides several possible meanings of most words. Without further instruction, such tools lead one down the path of illegitimate totality transfer.

2. Etymological Fallacy. Etymology is the study of the ancestry of words. Thus, the etymological fallacy is to wrongly believe that knowing the history of a word gives us deeper insight into its current meaning. There have been periods in biblical scholarship when even well-trained scholars were taken in by the siren-song of etymology. More commonly, in popular preaching, one hears the etymology of a word sometimes given as "what this word really means." To illustrate the foolishness of the etymological fallacy to my classes, I give illustrations from the English language. For example:

• When you hear the word tuxedo, undoubtedly, you think of the Algonquin Indian word for "wolf," from which the word tuxedo was derived. Unconsciously, you almost hear yourself saying, "There goes that dapper wolf!" 
• When your neighbor speaks of spraying herbicide on dandelions in his yard, you think about the underlying French words dent de lion ("tooth of the lion"). You might ask, "Those roaring weeds are sinking their sharp incisors into your lawn again, eh?
• Your wife says she is cooking lasagna for supper. You can't help recalling that the word lasagna ultimately derives from the Greek term for "chamber potty" (lasonon). "Going to dish us up another one from the toilet?" you innocently ask.

The reality is that words mean what the writers intended them to mean in the historical context in which they were written. The ordinary use of language (a word's potential range of meaning) constrains the possible meaning unless the author clearly points out that he is using the word differently than the way it would normally be understood. Thus, in the early twenty-first century, to say that someone is wearing "gay clothing" (without further qualification) means something quite different from what it meant when the translators of the KJV chose that expression when translating James 2:3 in the early seventeenth century. 

In spite of all these warnings against the misuse of word studies, they can be helpful in clarifying the nuances of important words. IN the case of a very rare word where we have few or no other instances of the word in the same time period, it can be legitimate to appeal to etymology to help us determine its meaning. Also, proper names (the names of people and places) often are presented in Scripture as being informed by their etymology. The most reliable and accessible word study tool for those lacking knowledge of Greek and Hebrew may be Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.

Robert Plummer, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible