Shake The Dust From Your Feet - P3 by slaveofone
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