The Life of Jesus in Four Accounts 8 min read Lesson 9 of 12

A king on a donkey, tables overturned, three days of questions in the temple court, and the one about authority that started it

The Last Week: Entry, Temple and Questions

A third of each Gospel is given to a single week. It begins with a procession the crowd staged and Jesus accepted, on an animal Zechariah had named. It continues with the one violent act in his life, in the temple, and three days of public argument with everyone who had a reason to want him gone. All four accounts tell the entry. Where the temple scene belongs is the first place they visibly disagree.

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Lesson 9 of 12 · Jerusalem

The last week takes up a third of Mark and nearly half of John, and it begins with the only public demonstration Jesus ever allowed. He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, which is Zechariah’s picture of the king who comes in peace, and the crowd shouts a Passover psalm at him. The next day, in the first three Gospels, he drives the traders out of the temple court and quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah at the priests. John puts the same scene at the start of the ministry, three years earlier, and a reader must decide whether there were two cleansings or one moved for a reason. Then come the questions. For three days, in the court, the priests, the Herodians, the Sadducees and the scribes take turns trying to trap him, and the first question is the one under all the others: by what authority. Luke adds the scene the others do not have, Jesus weeping over the city on the way in.

The donkey

All four record the entry, and all four know which prophet it came from.

Those who went in front and those who followed cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” — Mark 11:9–10 · WEB

Read the comment on The Colt, and the Den of Robbers

Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming. The shout is Psalm 118, the last of the psalms sung at Passover, and the word kingdom is the crowd’s, not his. Matthew and John quote the prophet outright: rejoice, daughter of Zion, your King comes to you, lowly, and riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9), and Zechariah’s next line says that this king will cut off the war horse and speak peace to the nations. Jesus arranged the animal himself; he chose the sign, and the sign was a king who does not come on a horse. The crowd cheered the king and did not read the rest of the verse.

“Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you! He is righteous, and having salvation; lowly, and riding on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9 · WEB
Behold, your King comes to you; he is righteous, and having salvation; lowly, and riding on a donkey, even on a colt: the prophecy that gave the entry its shape, and its meaning.
“they took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet him, and cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!”” John 12:13 · WEB
Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel: John’s crowd says the title aloud, and John adds that the disciples understood none of it until afterward.
“When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace! But now, they are hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41–42 · WEB
When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it: if you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace! Luke alone, on the road down from the Mount of Olives, before the shouting reaches the gate.
““Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!” Matthew 23:37 · WEB
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets! How often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not: Matthew’s version of the grief, at the end of the week rather than its start.

The temple

The one act of force in the four Gospels, and the one scene where their chronologies openly differ.

He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers!” — Mark 11:17 · WEB

Read the comment on The Colt, and the Den of Robbers

Isn’t it written, my house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers. The first clause is Isaiah 56:7, and Mark alone keeps "for all the nations": the traders were in the court of the Gentiles, the only part of the temple a foreigner could pray in. The second is Jeremiah 7:11, from the sermon in which Jeremiah told the temple it would be destroyed. Jesus has overturned the money changers’ tables and quoted two prophets at the priests, and Mark says that from that hour they looked for a way to destroy him. In Matthew, Mark and Luke this is Monday of the last week. In John it is chapter 2, at the first Passover of the ministry, with a whip of cords (John 2:13-16). Some readers hold there were two cleansings, one at each end; more hold that John moved the scene to the front of his book so that the whole ministry would stand under it. The Gospels do not say. What they agree on is what the act was: a prophet’s sign against the temple, and the reason the priests moved.

By what authority

The next morning the question comes, and it is the right one.

ἐξουσία exousía G1849

from ἔξεστι (in the sense of ability); privilege, i.e. (subjectively) force, capacity, competency, freedom, or (objectively) mastery (concretely, magistrate, superhuman, potentate, token of control), delegated influence:--authority, jurisdiction, liberty, power, right, strength.

Authority, right, jurisdiction; the freedom and the standing to act. It is the word the crowd used of his teaching in the fifth lesson, the word he used of forgiving sins in the sixth, and now the word the chief priests use in the temple: by what authority do you do these things, or who gave you this authority (Mark 11:28)? Jesus answered with a question about John’s baptism, which they could not answer without either condemning themselves or the crowd, and then told a parable about tenants who killed the owner’s son. The word ends the Gospel of Matthew: all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. The priests asked where it came from. The last chapter says.

The day of questions

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” — Matthew 22:37–40 · WEB

Read the comment on The Greatest Commandment

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. A scribe has asked which commandment is greatest, and the answer is the Shema, the sentence every Jew said morning and evening, joined to a line from Leviticus. It was not a new answer; what was new was joining the two and saying that everything else hangs from them. Before it, the Herodians had asked about taxes and been told to give Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s (Mark 12:17), an answer that gave neither side the charge it wanted; after it, the Sadducees had asked about resurrection and been told they knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Mark ends the day with no one daring to ask him anything more, and with Jesus asking the one question they could not answer, how David’s son could be David’s Lord.

What the week asks

It asks the reader to see the week as Jerusalem saw it: a Galilean preacher arriving with a crowd at Passover, staging a prophecy, striking at the temple’s trade, and out-arguing every party in the city for three days. The authorities did not decide to kill him for teaching love. They decided after the temple, and the Gospels are careful to say so. The week also asks what the crowd was shouting for. They cried out a kingdom, and by Friday most of them were gone, and the Gospel writers let that stand without comment because the reader is meant to ask which crowd they would have been in.