Certainly Jesus would scarcely have said these things about the temple at the time of the action itself. The temple saying fits much better in a situation in which he was accosted by representatives of the Council on account of the action that had already taken place. As Mark 11:27-33 shows, there was such a situation the very next day. During the temple action itself Jesus must have spoken more directly and less enigmatically. What Mark reports as happening at that time fits much better: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17). The words “den of robbers” are in Jeremiah’s temple speech (Jer 7:1-15): the sacrifices in the temple must correspond to a just society; otherwise God can no longer dwell in this place, and the temple will be destroyed.
The phrase “house of prayer for [all] nations” is from the last ten chapters of Isaiah (specifically Isa 56:7). The immediate context speaks of the gathering of Israel (Isa 56:8), and the broader context describes the pilgrimage of the nations to the eschatological Jerusalem (Isa 60) and the glory of the city newly rebuilt by God (Isa 62). So the words with which the temple action is accompanied in Mark’s gospel echo both the prophets’ sharp critique of the temple and their vision of it in the end time. Then the symbolic action in the court of the Gentiles would not have been fundamentally directed against the temple as such but against everything that did not correspond to the holiness of the eschatological temple.
In connection with Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God that, of course, meant that the eschatological temple is beginning now. Now God is requiring holiness in his house, and it is Jesus himself through whom God is creating the new temple. Thus the temple action and the temple saying are subject to the radical “today” that shapes Jesus’ whole message and practice. Because the reign of God is already breaking in and the new creation of Israel has already begun, the business of the temple in its present form cannot continue. The hour of the eschatological temple has arrived.
Did Jesus make a concrete image of this new eschatological temple for himself? We do not know; all we can be sure about is that the early Christian communities after Easter very quickly came to regard themselves as the eschatological temple, a sanctuary built of living stones.11 They did so long before the temple was finally destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.
The Sadducaic priestly nobility that held power in Jerusalem apparently understood quite clearly the degree to which their own image of the temple was being called into question by Jesus. Just as in the case of the Torah the issue was not merely one of marginal questions about the interpretation of the Law, so here it was not simply about marginal issues regarding the temple area—for example, whether the money changers and dove sellers should not be carrying on their business in the city instead of being in the outer courts of the temple. Rather, it was about Jesus’ right to see the cult in Jerusalem wholly in light of his message about the reign of God, and thus also his right to intervene. That is precisely what was so emphatically contested by the high priests, the scribes, and the elders, that is, the Council (or Sanhedrin), the highest religious authority in Israel.
The Last Meal
Luke, before describing the institution of the Eucharist, records the following words of Jesus: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). The saying makes it clear that Jesus knows what is coming. He will suffer; he will be killed. For that very reason this last meal he will celebrate with the Twelve has a special significance for him. Jesus’ whole longing rests on this meal. It was not just any meal, but the Passover feast. That is how Luke sees it, and so do Mark and Matthew also.
Because Jesus sees his death coming, he has to give it an interpretation.12 The Passover meal itself gave him the opportunity to do so, because this very meal was and had been from ancient times saturated with signs, references, and interpretations. There were the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread, the lamb, and the cup of blessing (later numbered as the third cup). The meal made present the exodus from Egypt and looked forward in hope to the Messiah. An ancient Aramaic interpretive word over the unleavened bread read, “See, this is the bread of affliction that our ancestors had to eat when they came out of Egypt.”13
Among Jesus scholars there is dispute about whether Jesus’ last meal was a Passover meal at all. While the tradition of the first three evangelists clearly speaks of a Paschal meal in the night before the fifteenth of Nisan, the Fourth Gospel stresses that the day of Jesus’ crucifixion was the fourteenth of Nisan, so that Jesus died at exactly the hour in which the Paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the temple.14 But precisely that would be Johannine theology: Jesus is thus depicted as the true Paschal lamb. Consequently, John does not represent Jesus’ last meal as a Passover supper.
In what follows I will give preference to the accounts of the first three gospels: Jesus’ last meal was the Passover meal in the night before 15 Nisan. The counterarguments have weight, but they are in no way decisive.15 At times they ignore the situation altogether. For example, it is argued that the Passover meal was celebrated in the family, with women and children, while Mark says that Jesus took his last meal with only the group of the Twelve.16 Indeed, that is how Mark portrays it. And that must have been Jesus’ precise intention: not to celebrate the Passover meal as it was usually done, with his natural family, but with his new family, and not with a random selection of disciples who might have been available. Instead, as Mark emphatically states, he wanted to celebrate it with the Twelve (Mark 14:17-18). His last meal had the familial intimacy that is proper to the Paschal supper, and yet the choice of participants points emphatically to Israel, to the eschatological gathering and new creation of the people of God that Jesus had begun with his circle of twelve. Here the usual ritual may not be held up against Jesus’ freedom. In what follows I will rely on Mark’s account for the description of the details.17 He depicts the special character of the meal as follows:
During the meal Jesus takes the bread, speaks the usual thanksgiving prayer over it, breaks it, and hands it to the Twelve. That is the prescribed ritual. It is the table prayer before the main course, after the appetizers have been eaten and the father of the family has recalled the people’s being led out of Egypt. It is true that Mark says nothing about the appetizers, the Passover liturgy, and other elements of the meal. The tradition he is following assumes all that as familiar and a matter of course. Mark and his tradition relate only what is special and unique about this one Passover meal.18 One of those things was that Jesus interpreted the broken bread he handed to his meal companions with the words “This is my body.”
“Body” should not be understood in our Western sense, in contrast to the soul. “Body” means the whole person. Jesus intends to say, “I myself am this bread, with my whole history and life. My life will be broken like this bread. I give it to you so that you may share in it.”