According to John 2:12-22, Jesus cleansed the Temple near the beginning of his public ministry.  The Synoptists, however, record a cleansing during the last week of his earthly ministry (Mt 21:10–17; Mk 11:15–19; Lk 19:45–46).  Possible reasons for this have been suggested:-

(a) A few think that John’s chronology is correct.  The Synoptic writers could not include the account earlier, because they do not record Jesus’ earlier visits to Jerusalem, and only mention the Passover during which he was crucified.

(b) Many think that the Synoptic chronology is correct.  John may have brought forward his account for theological, symbolic or literary reasons.  John, it is said, is concerned with the deeper meaning of the events he records, and feels free to rearrange them.  According to this view, ‘the ministry is launched by an affirmation of Jesus’ renewal of the worship of Israel and his claim to be the new locus, as the Risen One, of all commerce between God and humanity’ (Milne who, however, appears to support view (c) below).  However, the clear indications of time suggest that John has not altered the chronology to suit his own purposes.

Harper’s Bible Commentary: ‘In all probability John has moved an event from the passion week to the beginning of the narrative. Such a move would fit his tendency to set out at the beginning matters or events that in the other Gospels take place later (e.g., the confession of Jesus as Messiah). Jesus comes to the Temple of Jerusalem, the very heart of the Israelite nation and religion, at the outset of his ministry and there confronts its authorities. Their forthcoming hostility is adumbrated, and his own death and resurrection are revealed by the testimony of Scripture and Jesus’ own pronouncement.’

Blomberg (Historical Reliability of the New Testament) comments on the view that John has relocated this episode for thematic purposes.  He agrees that this is possible, in view of the fact that John’s earlier chronological markers (John 1: 29, 35, 43; 2: 1), and so on, are here absent.

On the question of John’s willingness to adjust chronology for theological reasons, scholars tend to claim, as key supporting evidence, that he brings move forward the crucifixion by one day.  But this claim is itself contestable.

(c) But some (e.g. Morris, Osborne, Kostenberger, Hendriksen, Carson, Bock, Blomberg) think, or at least incline to the view, that there were two temple cleansings, the second taking place two or three years after the first.

This was the dominant view in pre-critical times.  In modern times, however, many scholars dismiss this as a possibility.  According to Chapple, ‘C. H. Dodd went so far as to call it a ‘puerile expedient,’ although he used slightly less caustic terms in his subsequent study of John: ‘The suggestion that the temple was twice cleansed is the last resort of a desperate determination to harmonize Mark and John at all costs.”  Some conservative scholars have also roundly dismissed this possibility.  Borchert (NAC), for example, writes that ‘the familiar argument of two cleansings is a historiographic monstrosity that has no basis in the texts of the Gospels.’  France (on the Gospel of Mark): ‘the suggestion, still sometimes met as an attempt to ‘harmonise’ Mark and John, that it happened twice is about as probable as that the Normandy landings took place both at the beginning and the end of the Second World War.’

However, this possibility should be taken seriously, for a number of reasons:-

(i) Both accounts are given their own chronological markers.

(ii) Apart from the references to John the Baptist, there is no Synoptic material at all in the first five chapters of John’s Gospel.  This consideration adds to the likelihood that these are two distinct events.

(iii) Although both accounts begin similarly, there are a number of differences between the Synoptic and Johannine accounts.  Morris points out that apart from the central act, they bar little resemblance, and only have five words in common.  Blomberg: ‘Only John speaks of cattle, sheep, a whip of cords, and coins. The key sayings attributed to Jesus are entirely different- a protest against commercialism (v. 16) and a cryptic prediction of his death and resurrection (v. 19). A different Old Testament passage is cited (v. 17- Ps. 69:9) and different questions on the part of the Jewish leaders appear (vv. 18, 20). The synoptic accounts, in contrast, focus on the combination of quotations from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 (a house of prayer vs. a den of robbers).’

(iv) Milne argues that both accounts are contextually credible: ‘At the beginning, Jesus sees the worship of the nation through eyes newly kindled by the call of God and his nascent sense of mission. As the newly authorized Messiah King, he moves energetically to confront Israel’s apostasy and recall it to a new submission to God (Mal. 3:1f.). At the end of the ministry Jesus comes, in the shadow of his looming self-sacrifice, to declare the final bankruptcy of a religion which has turned its back on its high and holy destiny in the interests of self-aggrandizement and empty legalism.’  John’s account helps to explain the early hostility towards Jesus’ ministry (Jn 5:18).

(v) A further indication that the two accounts are complementary is the fact that Mt 26:61/Mk 14:58 refers to a saying of Jesus which is not recorded anywhere previously in the Synoptic Gospels, but is found in Jn 2:19.

(vi) The objection (of Keener and others) that it would be ‘unlikely’ that Jesus would cleanse the temple in such a dramatic way, and then be allowed to do it again (having re-visited the temple several times in between) must be regarded as rather conjectural.  Morris: ‘At the time indicated in John Jesus was quite unknown. His strong action would have aroused a furor in Jerusalem, but that is all. The authorities may have well been disinclined to go to extremes against him, especially if there was some public feeling against the practices he opposed [and, we might add, some public support for him, Jn 2:23]. It was quite otherwise at the time indicated by Mark.’

(vii) We should not be surprised that both occurred at the time of Passover, since Jesus would be most likely to visit Jerusalem then (Carson).

(viii) ‘An early temple cleansing helps explain historically why Jesus faced hostility early in his ministry (5:18). In addition, Jesus’ common practice of withdrawing (3:22; 6:15; 7:9-10; 8:59; 10:40) makes it historically plausible that he could have continued his ministry for two or three years after an initial temple cleansing.’ (Holman Apologetics Commentary)

(ix) ‘Randolph Richards has analyzed the events in terms of ancient cultures of honor and shame. It is conceivable that the first incident in John 2 occurred in a comparatively small corner of the temple so that the authorities did not immediately intervene but waited to see if a sign like the one they understood Jesus to have predicted would occur. When it did not, they would assume he was sufficiently shamed, in public, not to be any further danger. But if two or three years later he performed something similar, it showed him to be without shame, unaffected by social constraint, and therefore potentially dangerous.[ 517] If Jesus spoke something like 2: 19 that long before his trial and execution, it is also easier to understand how his words could have been garbled and misconstrued as in Mark 14: 58 and parallel.’ (Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament)