Dunn's Partings 3: Jesus and the Temple

Chapter 3 of James D. G. Dunn's, The Partings of the Ways, asks whether Jesus himself shows any sign of "parting" from the limits of the Judaism of his day on the matter of the temple (Dunn's fourth pillar). Dunn rightly concludes, "Jesus appears on this subject to stand well within the diversity of second Temple Judaism" (74).

As usual, Dunn's writing is clear and logical. First, he brings together evidence of a positive attitude toward the temple in the gospels. He suggests that comments like the Q saying "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem..." in Matt. 23:37-39/Luke 13:34-35 reinforce John's sense that Jesus attended Jerusalem more regularly than the Synoptic gospels let on.

The statement in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:23-24) about leaving your gift on the altar and being reconciled to your alienated brother presupposes continued use of the temple cult. Of course Dunn does not defend the historicity of these sayings, which some might challenge.

However, in the second section Dunn discusses how Jesus' interaction with Jewish purity issues constituted an implicit challenge to the religious system centered in the temple. Dunn spends a little time arguing that "purity was a matter of wide concern within the Judaism of Jesus' time" (53), including short discussions of priests, Pharisees, and Essenes.

Then he shows how Jesus' engagement with lepers, the woman with the hemorrhage, etc. He concludes that a consistent picture emerges "of a Jesus who did not share the concerns or degree of concern regarding purity of many (most?) of the Pharisees, and who indeed sat loose to, disregarded or discounted some at least of the outworkings of the purity legislation as it governed social contact (people with skin diseases, corpse defilement, discharge of blood)" (58).

In the third section of the chapter, Dunn asks whether Jesus offering forgiveness to people challenged the Judaism of his day. He first clarifies that Judaism "was and is a religion of repentance and atonement," a "religion of forgiveness" (59). He discusses Mark 2:5-7, 10 where Jesus gets into trouble for forgiving someone's sins. Dunn points out that the priests regularly pronounced people's sins forgiven, so the simplistic reading usually given of this passage is wide of the mark.

Dunn suggests that the most logical explanation for the protest is "that he pronounced the man's sins forgiven outside the cult and without any reference (even by implication) to the cult" (61). In other words, Jesus' actions once again stood somewhat in tension with the temple cult. Jesus takes on himself the task of pronouncing priestly absolution without the authoriztaion of the temple and without reference to the cult (62).

In the fourth section of the chapter, Dunn discusses Jesus' action in the temple. Is it a) a revolutionary act, b) a symbol of the end of the sacrificial system, c) a symbol of the destruction of the temple, d) a cleansing of the temple? Dunn ends up opting for the final option. A revolutionary act would have brought swift Roman action. He thinks b and c require reading too much into the act when prophetic actions are usually fairly clear. He acknowledges that Mark seems to interpret Jesus' act according to c.

He opts for d, the cleansing of the temple. The act was "a symbolical representation of the 'cleansing' of the temple which would be necessary if it was to serve its intended eschatological function" (64). I personally lean toward it being a statement against the injustice of the leaders of Israel and the temple establishment.

Dunn next discusses Jesus word about destroying the temple and building it back up after three days (Mark 14:58). In some texts this is said to be false testimony but in John Jesus says something like it. It seems like Jesus did say something about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt. Dunn interprets the statement against the backdrop of 2 Samuel 7 and expectation that a son of David would build the temple. To him it "seems to set Jesus firmly within the expectation of Jewish apocalypticism" (67).

Lots of ifs in my mind for this section.

Next Dunn asks what killed Jesus. He notes the almost complete absence of Pharisees from the passion stories. The crucial issue, he argues was the temple and not the law (68). He argues that it was Jesus' challenge to the temple--at least as perceived by leading members of the Sanhedrin--that was the central issue (69). The principal movers were the high priestly faction (70).

Finally, Dunn asks whether Jesus saw his death as a sacrifice, as the end of all sacrifices. Dunn argues that Jesus did in fact anticipate his death, which not all scholars accept. He goes through several models that Jesus might have conceptualized his death by: a) the suffering of the righteous, b) a martyr's death, c) sufferer of end time tribulation, d) a covenant sacrifice. Whichever one of these is more correct, Dunn argues, none of them imply an end to the sacrificial system (73).

So Dunn concludes the chapter as I mentioned at the beginning. Nothing Jesus says or does would indicate that he stood outside the parameters of the diversity of Judaism in relation to the temple. It is important to realize that groups like the Essenes were highlly critical of the temple. The Essenes did not participate in the temple because they believed it was defiled. So they ran their community as if it were a temple community.

The fact that the earliest Christians seem to have participated in the temple seems to indicate that Jesus did not make clear to them that the temple was no longer needed.