Christ's Attack on The Temple-Banking System
Jesus Christ's iconoclasm against the banking system, and why he was crucified four days later
In this short post I want to show how Jesus driving out the “money-changers” is connected to the ancient banking system, and why it was a larger factor in Christ’s crucifixion than is typically made known.
The general narrative of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is that he was simply chasing out greedy people trading in the name of God. This is an obfuscation of the background of the story. Jesus said that the “Kingdom of God is within you”, and proceeded to engage in iconoclasm against the banking system by flipping over “money-changing” tables inside of a “temple-bank”.
In the ancient world, banks were inside of religious temples. State-sponsored coinage was protected by divine spirits or gods inside of the temples. This gave people a sense of security to deposit their coinage at the bank, and it also gave the banking system legitimacy. The temple-bank system operated in a large network across antiquity from Greece, to Egypt, to Babylonia, all protected by gods and spirits. The first bank was believed to be in Babylonia in the temple of the sun god.
Far before the time of Christ, Israel had already collapsed into corruption and materialism. Old Testament writers like Amos refer to paid-off leaders, economic injustice, rejection of God and the general enforcement of all things corrupt (sounds familiar). Israel assimilated into yester-year’s system of “globalist banking” under the Roman empire. As many of us know, this stage in the archetype of empire has a particular flavor to it. All things become a subverted financial utility of the empire, including religion. This was the environment that Christ was born into.
Around 150 B.C. there is a reference to the temple-bank from the apocrypha. II Maccabees Ch. 3 tells of a story about a banking dispute involving the Roman “Royal Treasury” confiscating money out of the Jerusalem temple-bank, which then claims two angels and a golden-armor wearing apparition appear to protect the money:
It was utterly unthinkable to defraud those who had placed their trust in the sanctity of the place and in the sacred inviolability of a temple venerated all over the world.
But Heliodorus, because of the orders he had from the king, said that in any case this money must be confiscated for the royal treasury.
Priests prostrated themselves before the altar in their priestly robes, and called toward heaven for the one who had given the law about deposits to keep the deposits safe for those who had made them.
But just as Heliodorus was arriving at the treasury with his bodyguards, the Lord of spirits and all authority produced an apparition so great that those who had been bold enough to accompany Heliodorus were panic-stricken at God’s power and fainted away in terror.
(“Prostrated” meant to pray)
In the time of Christ, The Sanhedrin (high council of Israel) and the “Roman procurator” managed the temple-banks in Jerusalem on behalf of Rome. Both became very wealthy from managing the banks, and collecting tribute for themselves. From their view, Christ’s iconoclastic attack on the bank was an attack on the Sanhedrin’s personal finances (the people who later had Christ executed), because it was showing that the emperor had no clothes. Someone can just waltz in and flip everything over, with no divine lightning bolts raining down to save their money (also taking the banking out of the temple would make them immediately lose money). This would also explain the accusations against Jesus for “blasphemy” from the Sanhedrin, because he had “blasphemed” against their banking scam.
The same is true of Socrates’ questioning of the Greek myths, which caused him to be accused of “corrupting the children” before being executed. If the gods of Greece are under scrutiny, the legitimacy of the bank is in danger.
The high-priest of the Sanhedrin named “Caiaphas” was directly running the banking inside the temple himself. He was also the primary conspirator in the trial of Jesus. The temple was giving out loans that benefitted the elite and was “draining the economic surplus out of the rural economy”, which is where Jesus was from in Galilee [3]. So there was already economic resentment from the poor as referred to in Jesus’ sermon against the Sanhedrin in Matthew 23:14-19:
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
John 11:47-48 refers to the Sanhedrin’s fear of Jesus damaging their political capital:
46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.
47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.
49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,
50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. - Matthew 21:12
The mention of dove sellers here is significant because the poor used doves for sacrifice at the Jerusalem-Bank, meaning it was the sacrifice of doves that helped to give the coinage inside the bank legitimacy. The dove is also connected to Jesus’ baptism with John the Baptist, when the Holy Spirit descends “like a dove” from Heaven to Jesus. The dove is a common symbol in The Bible, often alluding to hope, life, loyalty, and love. I’m sure you can connect the symbolism here, especially with Jesus’ emphasis on helping the poor. Christ had come to liberate people from the empire’s illusions by delivering the Holy Spirit (the true dove).
Part of this illusion was also that illness (especially leprosy) in this time was correlated to the sickness of the soul. Christ’s lack of fear or disdain for people with leprosy and his focus on healing them only further legitimized his actions at the temple.
The enchantment of money (or power) is one of the oldest sins in Christian thinking and elsewhere. It used to be understood that the irrationality and illusions required to maintain corrupt financial practices would trickle down and create mental neurosis in the psyche of society. Christ’s actions at the temple were meant to break this illusion by differentiating God from coinage. This is partially the reason Jesus was crucified four days after his actions at the temple, because it was going to hurt their political and financial scam.
I hope in this brief post I demonstrated that the cleansing of the temple was more than just driving out a few greedy merchants and money-changers. This was an iconoclastic demonstration against yester-year’s globalist banking illusion to separate God from money.
Sources:
1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3264170?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A3aa61d7180856cfad12eb39e2fb339ed&seq=1
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2113028?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A0f6481caabc6e50cb2299f94aa487af5&seq=1
3. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222015000200038
Excellent analysis! In Christ, Greg