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To: gleeaikin

yes, the money-changers were definitely performing a needed service (many Greek and later Roman coins carried pictures of their pagan gods, that being idolatry unacceptable to the priests........And Roman coins started carrying pictures of the Roman conquerors’ dictator-emperors, which was an inslut to the Jewish people living under their hard yoke.... And finally....many Roman coins also proclaimed those men to be gods!!......something that the priests COULD not tolerate at ALL! It was impossible in light of all Biblical teaching including the Ten Commandments that a man could be worshiped as divine...).

as for any profit, of course they had to make a profit... just as our banks do nowadays whenever you exchange one currency for another....
(and there were several such bankers or “money-changers” in Jerusalem and many other places you can exchange the idolatrous coinage for clean coins....so nobody was forced to patronize one banker’s table over any other)...

so my take on Jesus was that his objection was to the placement of that banking table in front of the Temple. It could easily have been removed a couple blocks. I am reminded of a Catholic college that gave most of its faculty regular offices (in regular office buildings) but somehow or other placed their graduate Finance (banking) professor’s office right in front of the entryway to the campus chapel... it made for a great deal of humor, referencing of course Jesus’ outburst at the Temple.. smile smile.
to this day, we don’t know how the college did that, was it an oversight or? I do recall another Catholic college which asked for its own telephone exchange and the phone company stuck the school with the prefix 666-
The college asked for it to be changed, for years and years... until finally getting its POV across .. and the prefix changed. Persistence....can sometimes be rewarding.


7 posted on 09/09/2019 4:08:15 PM PDT by faithhopecharity ( “Politicians are not born; they are excreted.” Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: faithhopecharity; All

I’ll have to check my bible, but I had the impression that the money changers were within the temple grounds, perhaps the entry courtyard.


19 posted on 09/09/2019 8:28:17 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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