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).

So, was there one cleansing (and, if so, was it at the beginning or the close of his ministry)?  Or were there two cleansings?

Here are the main alternatives:-

(a) Some 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.

Wright (in his popular work on John’s Gospel) is sympathetic to this view:

‘In favour of putting the incident at the beginning, as John does, is the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t have Jesus in Jerusalem at all during his adult life, so the final journey is the only place where it can happen. John, however, has Jesus going to and fro to Jerusalem a good deal throughout his short career. And if he had done something like this at the beginning, it would explain certain things very well: why, for instance, people came from Jerusalem to Galilee to check him out (e.g. Mark 3:22; 7:1), and why, when the high priest finally decided it was time to act, they already felt they had a case against him (John 11:47–53).’

Sceptical scholars suppose that the authorities, having been alerted by the cleansing recorded by John, would have been on their guard against any further such disruption.  They therefore insist that only one cleansing could have taken place.

(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).

Lincoln comments:

‘An overt attack on the temple arrangements for sacrifice is far more readily understandable historically as part of the culmination of Jesus’ public mission and as the event that sealed the decision to have him arrested.’

Lincoln adds that John may have moved the incident from its original place in ch. 12 in order to make room for the account of the raising of Lazarus, which then becomes the main trigger for Jesus’ arrest.  Moreover (comments Lincoln) the account in John retains clear links to the Passion narrative:

‘Verse 17 has an implicit reference to Jesus’ death and its citation of Ps. 69 is from a psalm extensively quarried by the early church for scriptural witness to the passion. Jesus’ saying in v. 19 is a version of a saying which has an important role in Mark and Matthew in their accounts of the Sanhedrin trial and the crucifixion.’

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.’

Pate (40 Questions about the historical Jesus) thinks that Jonn transposed the account in order to link it to a polemical statement about the temple (Jn 2:19-22):

‘He then saw both the anti-temple statement and the cleansing of the temple as the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1a (John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Messiah) and Malachi 3:1b (the Lord [Jesus] suddenly appears in the temple to cleanse it).’

Barrett thinks that John’s account draws on that of Mark, but that the fourth evangelist moves the incident for theological reasons:

‘An act of overt rebellion against the authorities of the nation is more readily understandable at the climax than at the beginning of the ministry, and the disposition of John’s material is often controlled by the development of thought.’

According to Beasley-Murray,

‘there is reasonably widespread agreement now that: (i) the event happened only once, not twice (at the beginning and end of the ministry of Jesus); (ii) it took place in the last week of the life of Jesus; (iii) the Fourth Evangelist had no intention of correcting the timing of the event, but set his account at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus to highlight its significance for understanding the course of the ministry.’

This account, transposed to the beginning of John’s Gospel,

‘provides a vital clue for grasping the nature and the course of our Lord’s work, his words and actions, his death and resurrection, and the outcome of it all in a new worship of God, born out of a new relation to God in and through the crucified-risen Christ.’

Noting that all four evangelists felt free to re-order their material for thematic or theological reasons, Burge suggests that:

‘John has recorded his own version of one cleansing and while it is an historical record, he has moved it chronologically for theological reasons.’

For Klink,

‘an overt attack on the temple arrangements for sacrifice is far more readily understandable historically as part of the culmination of Jesus’ public mission and as the event that sealed the decision to have him arrested.’

Klink continues:

‘In their reconstruction of the history of composition of the Fourth Gospel a number of scholars plausibly suggest that at an earlier stage the temple incident was associated with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem in chapter 12 but was removed to make room for the Lazarus story, which in this narrative provides the chief motive for Jesus’ arrest. In any case, as it now stands in the final version of the Gospel, the account still retains clear links with the passion narrative. Verse 17 has an implicit reference to Jesus’ death and its citation of Ps. 69 is from a psalm extensively quarried by the early church for scriptural witness to the passion. Jesus’ saying in v. 19 is a version of a saying which has an important role in Mark and Matthew in their accounts of the Sanhedrin trial and the crucifixion. It appears, then, that, as with a number of other features of the Fourth Gospel, theological rather than historical concerns have shaped the narrative’s presentation and in this case determined the place of the temple incident in the plot. Placing the temple incident at the beginning helps to structure the whole narrative of Jesus’ public mission in terms of a major confrontation between his claims and the views of official Judaism.’

Michaels (UBCS) notes that the reference to the Passover in Jn 2:13 is similar to that in Jn 11:55.  He regards this is evidence that the cleansing actually took place at the beginning of Passion week, and that John has deliberately separated the Triumphal Entry from the Temple Cleansing, so that each now stands at the head of the two main sections of the Fourth Gospel (Jn 2:13-11:54; and Jn 11:55-21:25).

Blomberg (Historical Reliability of the New Testament) notes that John’s normal chronological in his opening chapters ( Jn 1:29, 35; 2:1) are interrupted at this point.  Jn 2:13 refers to an upcoming Passover, but does not indicate which one.

Lincoln is sympathetic to the view that John’s account originally belonged alongside the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but it was moved to make room for the account of the raising of Lazarus, which was a key motive for the arrest of Jesus.  Now displaced to the beginning of John’s Gospel, it still (comments Lincoln) retains links with the passion narrative:

‘Verse 17 has an implicit reference to Jesus’ death and its citation of Ps. 69 is from a psalm extensively quarried by the early church for scriptural witness to the passion. Jesus’ saying in v. 19 is a version of a saying which has an important role in Mark and Matthew in their accounts of the Sanhedrin trial and the crucifixion.’

The placing of this narrative near the beginning of John’s Gospel:

‘helps to structure the whole narrative of Jesus’ public mission in terms of a major confrontation between his claims and the views of official Judaism.’

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.

However, there are clear enough indications of time to suggest that John has not altered the chronology to suit his own purposes.

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.

The view just mentioned is supported (with varying degrees of confidence) by F.F. Bruce, Witherington, Gerald Borchert, Kenneth Gangel, Craig Keener, Donald Guthrie, Robert Gundry, Gary Burge, D. M. Smith and R. E. Brown.

(c) But some take the view that there were two temple cleansings.  Morris, Osborne, Tasker, Mounce, Kostenberger, Hendriksen, Carson, Bock and Blomberg adopt, or at least incline, to this view.  In this case, the second (recorded by the Synoptists, took place two or three years after the first.  The first cleansing did not form a part of the tradition that they were drawing on.

Before proceeding, I pause to note the view of Brown, who (in the words of Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?):

‘explains the different timings of the cleansing by suggesting that Jesus warned of the temple’s destruction early in his ministry (Mark 14:57–59) but cleansed the temple precincts during his final days and that John has conflated the two events by transplanting the temple cleansing to the early part of Jesus’s ministry.’

The two-cleansing theory 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.”

In his book Fundamentalism, James Barr declares that

‘Harmonization through the production of multiple events is the most thoroughly laughable of all devices of interpretation.’

The ‘most striking example’ of such harmonisation is the cleansing of the Temple:

‘In the synoptic gospels this is narrated at the very end of the ministry of Jesus, at the beginning of passion week (Matt 21:10-17; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48), while John has it right at the beginning of the ministry (John 2:13-17). The New Bible Commentary Revised (on Mark, C. E. Graham Swift, p. 875b) gives us the simple but ludicrous harmonization: ‘By far the most satisfactory solution is that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice.’ Why not? By the same account, why should the ascension of Jesus to heaven not have taken place twice? This would successfully harmonize the facts that, according to Luke 24:51, the ascension appears to have taken place on the same day as the resurrection, while Acts 1 expressively makes it about forty days later. Jesus was carried up to heaven, but later returned, appeared and spoke with his disciples for forty days, and then finally ascended again. Why not? I have actually heard this explanation offered in all seriousness by a prominent conservative scholar.’

Even some conservative scholars have 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.’

To the contrary, it is the very text of the Gospels which requires us to take the two-cleansing hypothesis seriously.

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.  Note especially John’s way of putting it:

Jn 2:12 ‘After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days. 2:13 Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.’

(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) The accounts are dissimilar.  Although they 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 (Jn 5:18). In addition, Jesus’ common practice of withdrawing (Jn 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) Although the Synoptists do not record, as John does, multiple visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, they hint as much (Mk 14:49 – “Day after day…”; Mt 23:37 – “How often would I…”).

(x) Randolph Richards has examined the two accounts in the light of ancient cultures  of honour and shame.  In Blomberg’s summary:

‘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.  If Jesus spoke something like Jn 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.’ (The Historical Reliability of the New Testament)

Addendum

Bruner quotes Luther as saying that such historical problems may be unsolvable, but that they do not adversely affect the basis of our faith:

‘These are problems and will remain problems. I shall not venture to settle them. Nor are they essential. It is only that there are so many sharp and shrewd people who are fond of bringing up all sorts of subtle questions and demanding definite and precise answers. But if we understand Scripture properly and have the genuine articles of our faith—that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, suffered and died for us—then our inability to answer all such questions will be of little consequence. The evangelists do not all observe the same chronological order.… [W]hen [the Temple Cleansing] took place is immaterial. If one account in Holy Writ is at variance with another and it is impossible to solve the difficulty, just dismiss it from your mind. The [account] confronting us here does not contradict the articles of the Christian faith. All the evangelists agree on this, that Christ died for our sins. But in their accounts of Christ’s deeds and miracles they do not observe a uniform order and often ignore the proper chronological sequence.’

See this.

See also this, by Kurt Jaros.