In this final episode of my series on the Temple cleansing, I point out the subjectivity and implausibility of the theological motives attributed to John. If it's too easy to come up with imaginative ideas about what theological or literary symbolism John might have intended by such a factual change, isn't that a clue that none of those various theories are well supported? And how would John's audience have known what symbolic lesson they were supposed to learn?
Scholarly ingenuity is a poor guide to historical probability.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 19, 2020.
