See Shake The Dust From Your Feet - P2.
In Yeshua’s case, he was taking the concept of Temple and placing it upon himself. This meant, for instance, that divine healing and forgiveness would now come to Israel through him instead of through the Temple and its priesthood. Instead of going to the Temple to be cleansed, Yeshua pronounced people clean. Instead of accepting the blood the covenant in the sacrifice of the Jerusalem temple,[12] Yeshua invited people to the blood of the covenant at his table and in his sacrifice.[13] Of course, there cannot be two temples. If Yeshua is now equating himself with the temple of YHWH, then what of the Jerusalem one? He pronounced divine judgment on it physically when he drove the people out and declared it the habitation of terrorists,[14] symbolically when he cursed it via the method of enacted parable,[15] and prophetically when he said not one stone would not be left upon another.[16] In place of this corrupt and soon-to-be-destroyed Temple would be an incorruptible and indestructible one—himself:
Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews then said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
John 2:19-21
Jesus said: I will des[troy this] house, and none shall able to build it [again].
Gospel of Thomas, 71
Since the Pax Romana could be threated by a violent uprising against the Temple, but not by someone reinterpreting what it meant to be God’s chosen people, when men were found to bring false charges against Yeshua that might move Herod’s hand, they used Yeshua’s words to paint him in the first manner—like another Judas Maccabeus who wanted to drive foreign occupiers out of the Temple by the edge of his sword:[17]
We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’
Mark 14:58
This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’
Matthew 26:61
In reality, of course, Yeshua meant only that he, a temple even greater than the Jerusalem Temple,[18] would be proven true when the Jerusalem Temple fell without being raised again, whereas he would be raised in three days.
If Temple now had meaning in terms of Yeshua, anyone who participated in Yeshua’s work would be participating in the true Temple service. In this new situation then, following Yeshua meant the same as acts of holiness and separation from defilement. And therefore it was not only acceptable, but appropriate that traditions which symbolized this might be incorporated into Yeshua’s or his disciples’ activity. By sending out his disciples with regulations befitting those going to the Temple Mount, Yeshua was providing them with a powerful reminder that in doing his work, they were doing so by the same Spirit, with the same dedication, and in the same manner as those going to participate in Temple activity. Since shaking the dust from one’s feet was an act of separation from the defiled or unclean, for Yeshua’s disciples to do so whenever they or their message were denied became a powerful polemic. It meant that such people had taken on the status of lepers. They were unclean and unfit for the way of the Holy One. While this may sound like a harsh judgment, its primary purpose was to keep the disciples on task and to foster the holiness and righteousness of God’s kingdom. If the gospel did not result in cleansing people from their defilement in one place, then the disciples should move on to where it might benefit others. We see this same concept in Yeshua’s admonition to protect what is valuable by not handing it over to unreasoning and unclean creatures who will only trample it underfoot.[19]
[12] – The blood of the covenant
comes from Exodus 24:8.
[13] – Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24.
[14] – When Yeshua calls the Temple a den of thieves,
he is not making an ethical judgment of their monetary practices. This refers to violent bands of brigands who would rape, plunder, kill, and destroy. Usually they formed around a leader who combined political and religious overtones with their criminal activity. They hid in the rocky terrain of the wilderness like David in Old Testament times in order to evade capture and death. In modern times, they would be compared with Al-Qaeda or other militants who blow up civilians and then retreat to hidden dens on the edge of the territory.
[15] – The cursing of the fig tree. Mark 11:12-14, 20-22; Matthew 21:18-20. Mark specifically bookends this event around Yeshua’s temple rousing in order to show a link between them. But the fact that this is a Temple judgment is made even more clearly when Yeshua, on his way up to the Temple, explains the cursing of the tree by saying that that very mountain will be removed and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23; Matthew 21:21).
[16] – Luke 21:5-6; Mark 13:1-2; Matthew 24:1-2. One of Yeshua’s first oracles of doom against the Temple occurs in Matthew 7:24-27 and Luke 6:46-49 where he says in parable fashion, the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.
[17] – 1st Maccabees 1-4. The story of Judas’ forceful retaking of Jerusalem and the Temple from unclean pagan rulers and rededicating the sanctuary to YHWH is celebrated annually by the festival of Hanukkah.
[18] – Matthew 12:6
[19] – Matthew 7:6
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet - P1.
Turning back to the prerogatives enumerated in the Synoptic Gospels, we see that they align very closely with the specific ordinances required of those who would go up to the Temple Mount. Setting aside possible exceptions introduced in Mark, we see that both instruct against taking staves, donning any kind of shoe, carrying vestments for the storage of money (and probably other items), and wearing an additional outer garment. Both also require the removal of dust from one’s feet. These prohibitions were probably meant to remind people of the sanctity of the Temple and the service they were performing. This was a sacred enterprise. Just as they should not think to disregard the Temple and use it as a shortcut if they are engaged in common activity, so when they are engaged in sacrosanct activity, they should not bring things with them that might pollute their course. For instance, those who carried a staff, which was often used for journeys, might be tempted to do a bit of extra traveling on their way to the Temple and those who carried bags of money might be tempted to engage in commerce. Removing dust from one’s feet symbolized separation from the unclean and removing one’s sandals or shoes symbolized the willingness to be holy.[5]
The significant difference seems to be one of location. The Rabbis state that one is not to spit on the Temple Mount or use it as a shortcut, which is not incorporated into Yeshua’s directives. However, Yeshua’s disciples won’t be on the Temple Mount to spit there or to use as a shortcut. That could explain why those two were left out of Yeshua’s commands (of course, there’s no reason why Yeshua should include all of these Rabbinic ordnances), but we still don’t know why Yeshua would apply the others to his disciples when they are also not specifically journeying to the Temple Mount. They are going out into the world. Perhaps even away from the Temple Mount. I believe the answer can be found in an understanding of Yeshua’s mission and message.
Yeshua was reforming Israel around himself and was therefore redefining what it meant to be the children of YHWH.[6] In doing so, he subverted established and authoritative systems, traditions, and symbols. That does not mean he was doing away with Judaism for something else or critiquing it from the outside, only that he was using Jewish elements in different and (so he believed) divinely authorized ways. One of those elements was the status and concept of Temple. According to ancient tradition, the Temple was already itself a subversion and redefinition of a former concept: Tabernacle. After the tribes of Israel had settled in the land, but before Solomon’s Temple was constructed, the Hebrew scripture seems to indicate that the house of God
may have been established at Shiloh. It probably would have taken another redefinition or subversion of the way of things in order to relocate it to Jerusalem. If some scholars are to be believed, it was thanks to one or more scribes at the time of King Josiah that Deuteronomy or the core of it was discovered
[7] (i.e., purposely written or assembled) in order to legitimate political and/or religious reforms by the nation’s Sovereign (specifically to eliminate the practice in Israel of any religion other than that of YHWH and to centrally localize that religion in the Jerusalem city and temple).[8] Using religious texts or even finding religious texts in order to support legislative or governmental projects is a practice common both to modern and ancient times.[9] Once the Temple along with hope of its restoration had been totally destroyed, the Rabbis further reformed and redefined things so that a Temple was entirely superfluous. The Shekinah now dwelled in them as it once had within the Temple: If ten men sit together and occupy themselves in Torah, the Shekinah rests among them.
[10] Indeed, they argued the divine presence that used to fill the Temple would come into even a single person and defended it with Exodus 20:24: in every place where I record my name, I will come into you.
[11]
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet - P3.
[5] – We are reminded of YHWH’s command to Moses in Exodus 3:5: Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
[6] – Reforming and redefining Israel
was a very Jewish thing to do. At some point, various Semitic tribes with only a common, distant ancestry came under the same covenant and legislation. Moses is attributed with this major reform. Another great reformer would be the king who took those tribes with their own political sovereignties and united them into a national entity—commonly identified in scripture as David. In Greco-Roman times, we see people like the Essenes, who considered themselves Sons of Light and everyone else either Sons of Darkness or followers of Belial, the Samaritans, who believed themselves to be the true people of God preserving his true commands at Mount Gerizim, and countless others.
[7] – The discovery of the Scroll of Torah
and Josiah’s Reform is found in 2 Kings 22-23.
[8] – See the theory of The Deuteronomistic History. A short book that looks at the ideas and arguments while trying to pave a way forward through the many difficulties is Thomas Romer’s The So-Called Deuteronomistic History. K.L. Noll recently challenged the entire hypothesis in a ground-breaking article in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment).
[9] – Many ancient Near Eastern kings claimed to have discovered religious texts in their god’s temple in order to support religious, political, or social actions and reforms that, in reality, were probably not actually inspired by those texts.
[10] – Mishnah, Tractate Aboth 3:6
[11] – בכל המקום אשר אזכיר את שמי אבוא אליך - The Hebrew for you
is singular.
