Killing Jesus: A History

exchange their meager wealth in the form of coins minted by agents of Rome. The Roman coins are adorned with images of living things such as gods or with portraits of the emperor. But this coinage must be converted into shekels, 3 the standard currency of Jerusalem. In keeping with the Jewish law forbidding graven images, these special coins are decorated with images of plants and other nonhuman likenesses. Also known as the “Temple tax coin,” the shekel is disparaged by many pilgrims because it is the only form of money acceptable for paying the annual tax or for purchasing animals for ritual slaughter.
    The money changers demand unfair exchange rates for the privilege of turning local money into shekels. The Temple high priests also profit from this scam. Within the Temple’s inner courts are massive vaults filled with shekels and the foreign coins exchanged each year by pilgrims. When the Temple loans that money—as it so often does, to peasants who need help paying their taxes—the interest rates are exorbitant. Ledger sheets within the Temple’s grand vaults keep tally of all debts, and those who cannot repay suffer severe indignities: the loss of a home, loss of land and livestock, and eventually life as a debt slave or membership in the “unclean” class. The slums of lower Jerusalem are packed with families who were driven from their land because they could not repay money they borrowed from the Temple.
    So while Passover might be a holiday about faith and piety, it is also about money. As many as four million Jews make their way to Jerusalem each year. This means more income for the local shop owners and innkeepers, but the Temple priests and their Roman masters get most of the profit through taxation and money changing. Even more money is made when the poor must buy a lamb or dove for the mandatory Passover sacrifice. If a priest should inspect the animal or bird and find even a single blemish, the sacrifice will be deemed unclean and the peasant will be forced to buy another. It is no wonder that the people quietly seethe when doing business with the Temple priests. Many wish they could burn the ledger books and loot the Temple vaults. And in four decades, the sons and daughters of Israel will do just that.
    But that event is far away during this Passover week. Today Jesus climbs to the Court of the Gentiles and makes his way into the broad open-air plaza. Since his baptism and time spent fasting in the desert, his ministry has been a quiet one.
    Jesus of Nazareth has no army. He has no wealth. He has no sword. He has no headquarters and none of the infrastructure needed to support a movement. Nothing in his behavior so far has been rebellious or confrontational. His greatest social outing since being baptized by John has been attending a wedding in the Galilean village of Cana with his mother. If Jesus means to start a revolution by revealing himself as God, the planning is taking place only within his head. He has not preached a single message before a crowd. He has not challenged Rome or the Temple’s high priests—nor does he seem interested in doing so.
    But now, as Jesus walks past the tables piled high with coins and sees the people of Galilee standing helpless before these greedy money changers and the haughty high priests overseeing them, something in him snaps. This Passover ritual of money changing has not altered one bit since he was a child, but on this day Jesus feels empowered to do something about this obvious wrong.
    The Nazarene is not normally prone to anger, and certainly not rage. In fact, Jesus usually exudes a powerful serenity. So when he boldly storms toward the money changers’ tables, those who know him become alarmed. There is a power to Jesus’s gait and a steely determination to his gaze.
    The tables are made of wood. Their surfaces are scarred and dented from the thousands of coins that have been pushed back and forth across them. The coins are uneven in size and shape, so they do not stack well. Instead, the money changers sit before enormous piles of currency. The money gleams in the strong Jerusalem sun.
    Heavy as the tables might be, their weight does not bother Jesus—not after twenty years of hauling lumber and stone alongside his father. He places two hands beneath the nearest table and flips it over. A small fortune in coins flies in every direction. And even as the stunned shulhanim cry out in a rage, and coins cascade down onto the stone courtyard,