Jesus is against tax relief

[The Yosemite Bear]

"render unto caesar what is of caesar, render unto god what is of god"

Jesus not only said we should pay taxes, but that god was interested in your soul, not your wallet.


"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle then for a rich man to enter heaven."



this and the part about going mideval on all the money changers in the temple, I think are amoung the parts of the bible that Pat Robertson will never mention....

[Darth Wong]

You can point out passages like that all day long with no effect whatsoever on a typical right-wing fundie. The right-wing fundie has convinced himself that the central message of Christianity is: "Praise Jesus, drive an SUV, carry a gun, and bash the gays".

[Molyneux]

True, true, but mere holy words have never done anything to dissuade idiots before - why should they start now?

[Gandalf]

True, true, but mere holy words have never done anything to dissuade idiots before - why should they start now?

And depending on what's popular in a century, the interpretations will change accordingly.

[Spetulhu]

A columnist for one of our tabloids did a rant about Jesus and holidays this year. The christian holidays close businesses for several days every year, it's a question of law here. Yet JC spoke for letting people work on the sabbath. Strange that people would honor him by doing exactly the opposite of his teachings.

[God Fearing Atheist]

this and the part about going mideval on all the money changers in the temple, I think are amoung the parts of the bible that Pat Robertson will never mention....

What do you think the "cleansing" of the Temple means and why?

Would criticism of moneychangers as in some sense "defiling" the Temple or perverting its "true" function have made any sense to first century Jews? The Law, which prohibited images and demanded unblemished sacrificial animals, would render moneychangers indispensible to its function. A Temple tax paid with inappropriate coinage (i.e. coins with images; pagan cultic symbols, political leaders, and so forth) needed to be exchanged and sacrifical animals, which could hardly survive a pilgrim's trek to Jerusalem unblemished, needed to be purchased. It is therefore not surprising that despite a considerable Jewish literature deriding the preceived iniquities of Temple practice (e.g. priestly impurity, theft, and general defilement) this sort of objection is entirely absent.

[wolveraptor]

What does the necessity of money changers to Jews have to do with anything? We're talking about modern beliefs traditionally held by stereotypical conservative Christians, and how they contradict Jesus' teachings.

[Galvatron]

You can point out passages like that all day long with no effect whatsoever on a typical right-wing fundie. The right-wing fundie has convinced himself that the central message of Christianity is: "Praise Jesus, drive an SUV, carry a gun, and bash the gays".

[God Fearing Atheist]

What does the necessity of money changers to Jews have to do with anything? We're talking about modern beliefs traditionally held by stereotypical conservative Christians, and how they contradict Jesus' teachings.

The Temple "cleansing" was offered as an example of Jesus' teaching against wealth (?). Im questioning that interpretation.

[Flagg]

Everything in the Bible should be taken literally as Gods commandment to man. Except the stuff that shouldn't.

[wolveraptor]

The Temple "cleansing" was offered as an example of Jesus' teaching against wealth (?). Im questioning that interpretation.

Obviously, he was against the temple being run like a business: from the way you described it, the system seems very similar to the granting of indulgences that occured during the dominance of the Catholic Church. A pilgrim goes and exchanges his coinage for acceptable ones, and buys himself appeasement with YHWH. Jesus may also have been an angry young male seeking to revolutionize and overthrow the system, without paying attention to the necessity of the procedures in place.

[God Fearing Atheist]

[quote="wolveraptor]Obviously, he was against the temple being run like a business: from the way you described it, the system seems very similar to the granting of indulgences that occured during the dominance of the Catholic Church. A pilgrim goes and exchanges his coinage for acceptable ones, and buys himself appeasement with YHWH. Jesus may also have been an angry young male seeking to revolutionize and overthrow the system, without paying attention to the necessity of the procedures in place.[/quote]

I don't think thats obvious at all, which is precisely why I questioned it. I dont see any reason to think the "cleansing" was a demonstration against the Temple tax or the action of a political revolutionary.

What, precisely, do you think it was about and why?

[wolveraptor]

Assuming the Bible's account of this is 100% accurate, Jesus himself said why, didn't he? Do we have any other accounts that conflict with that? Frankly, I don't know if it happened at all, or if the events were widely exaggerated, but since we have only one source, and are debating on purely theoretical grounds, we can only take what the one source gives us.

[God Fearing Atheist]

Assuming the Bible's account of this is 100% accurate, Jesus himself said why, didn't he? Do we have any other accounts that conflict with that? Frankly, I don't know if it happened at all, or if the events were widely exaggerated, but since we have only one source, and are debating on purely theoretical grounds, we can only take what the one source gives us.

Even assuming Mark 11.17 (and parr.) is an authentic saying and not an editoral commentary (which I do not accept), and even assuming there is no way to tell the difference (which I do not accept), its not as simple as "look at what Jesus said."

If we must ignore the arguments against 11.17, there is still the question of what Jesus meant. Proper exegesis is considerably more complicated than reading the verse in English from a 21st century perspective; we have to consider what words the author himself wrote (that is, the Greek), the semantic range of those words, their narrative context, what they would have meant to his audience, why the author was trying to express it, etc.

[wolveraptor]

If you're going to assume certain sections are only editorial commentary, how do you know the entire damned book isn't editorial commentary? What parts are you choosing to accept as fact? How do you decide this? Is it arbitrary?
Here are the relevant passages:

11:15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
11:16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
11:17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

When he says "thieves" he is obviously referring to the moneychangers and profiteers. Therefore, he is against them and their works. What else could he have meant?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Actually if you were areound in the 1980's for Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ", that was the scene which pat robertson objected to over the whole dream sequence where lucifer shows christ what would happen if he is and isn't martyred. Including him seeing people pervert his teachings and adding in all kinds of bullshit.

[God Fearing Atheist]

If you're going to assume certain sections are only editorial commentary, how do you know the entire damned book isn't editorial commentary? What parts are you choosing to accept as fact? How do you decide this? Is it arbitrary?

Heh. No, it isnt arbitrary; its historical criticism. Higher and lower, internal and external, form, redaction, textual, narrative, source, rhetorical, etc. and all the methodology that stands behind it.

With respect to 11.17 itself, ive already offered one criticism. Any attack on Temple moneychanging would be without context in first century Judea. Like all Temples, the Jewish Second Temple was a place dedicated to sacrifice. The peculiar nature of Jewish sacrificial procedure, coupled with strict iconographic prohibitions, made financial services as indispensable to Temple operation as the sacrifices themselves. As Sanders succinctly put it, an attack on moneychanging would be tantamount to attacking Temple practice as such. We have no indication that Jesus opposed the sacrificial system, and even less to make us think anyone present would have understood him if he did.

Could it be that Jesus was not demonstrating against moneychanging as an institution, but against what he preceived as the corruption of present authorities? It is true, as I said above, that intertestamal Jews could find plenty of fault in the way the Temple was being run. The Hasmoneans were accused of "usurping" the high priesthood and combining the offices of priest and king against God's will (Ps Sol 17.6-8; T Mos 6.1). Many officials were adulterers, impure through contact with menstrual blood, and stole from the Sanctuary (Ps Sol 8.9-14). They arranged incestuous marriages (CD 5.6-8 ). To the Qumranic Essenes, there was hardly an offense the Wicked Priest had not committed (1QpHab 12.8 ). It is interesting that despite all the anti-Temple references scattered throughout the gospels, Jesus is never portrayed (except perhaps at the verse in question) as critical of the priestly status quo. This makes perfect sense in light of the interpretation I will offer below.

There are internal reasons as well. Roloff (1969) points to the Markan "he taught them and said." Harvey (1982) argues that the form of Jer 7.11 Mark uses ("for all the Gentiles") would not have been available to Jesus and the usage of lestes, translated as "theives" or "robbers," is semantically inappropriate (it carries the sense of raider, not swindler).

What makes much better sense is this: the "cleansing" is a symbolic act of destruction, and the words of 11.17 are the Evangelist's, not Jesus'. Why?

1) Jesus is frequently charged with threatening the Temple's destruction and promising its rebuilding. These words are attested many times and were clearly a source of embarrassment for the early Church; in several forms, Jesus' threats/predictions are patently false. Part of the Temple still stands and what doesnt has not been rebuilt. The Evangelists try to get around it various ways, most notably in GJohn, where it is allegorized (2.18-22; the Temple is now his body, and it is not he, but his Jewish enemies, who will destroy it). The "cleansing" as symbol of destruction makes sense as another instance of the same message.

2) Temple destruction/rebuilding can be derived from existing Jewish belief. Its a fairly frequent theme in Jewish eschatology (e.g. 11QTemple 29.8-10; Jub 1.15-17; 1 Enoch 91.13; Tobit 14.5; T Benj 9.2). Here we have something the citizens of Jerusalem could understand.

3) I mentioned above that we dont see criticism of priestly practices. No where in ancient Jewish thought is priestly iniquity connected to Temple destruction. Destruction without bad priestly behavior points to eschatology.

4) It is consistent with everything else we know about Jesus' ministry. The coming Kingdom, the Twelve and the restoration of Israel, his time with the apocalyptic prophet JBap and the strongly eschatological early Christian Church he spawned, all converge on a message of "the end is upon us." Jesus thought the old order of things was about to be "swept away" and set right by God, and we know Temple destruction was frequently expected to be an aspect of that.

On balance, which makes the most sense of the data?

11:15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
11:16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
11:17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

When he says "thieves" he is obviously referring to the moneychangers and profiteers. Therefore, he is against them and their works. What else could he have meant?

Yes, according to Mark they are doing bad. But again, it isnt obvious that Mark has "them and their works" in mind. Is he criticizing the moneychanging institution? Is it because commerce has no legitimate place in Temple worship, or because it facilitates sacrifice, and that is his real concern? Is it criticism of current shady practices, and not moneychanging per se? Maybe Jesus was perfectly content with both trade and the traders, and just wanted it moved outside the Temple complex itself? Maybe where trade was conducted, the court of the Gentiles, contains the key to its significance. Was Jesus acting on behalf on Gentile inclusion?

That all of these have been proposed at one time or another should make it clear that exegesis aint so simple. Even independent of the sayings historicity, it just cant be taken for granted that the intended meaning is a denunciation of moneychanging. It is sufficently vague to allow plenty of nuanced interpretation, and several are clearly incompatible with the thrust of the OP.

If you can be more explicit in your interpretation, support it with evidence and link it to the behavior of Robertson et al., i'll be more than happy to agree they're playing fast and loose with their bibles. If it turns out 11.17 is historically legit, i'll extend that to the words of Jesus. However big a douche Robertson may be though, criticism should be directed only when and where appropriate. His assholeishness may be manifested in 1001 other ways, but I think it is wrong to accuse him of contradiction here.