Assessing Jesus’ character in the temple-cleansing narrative in the Nigerian context: A response to Alana

Abstract

Relying on the temple-cleansing narrative, Alana asserted that the humility ascribed to Jesus by the European missionaries does not conform to his portrait in the NT narratives. In view of this action of Jesus, in the Nigerian context, he would be described as a hooligan. Applying historical-critical exegesis and the descriptive method, the article examined the narrative with a view to assessing Jesus’ character in response to Alana’s thesis. The study found, that in a way, Alana’s view resonated with the traditional interpretation of the story, which considers it as a historical event. The liberal approach, however, considers the narrative as historically inauthentic, relying on the writers’ wrong view of the temple’s size at the time of Jesus, by which Jesus’ supposed action would have gone unnoticed. Moreover, the Markan and Johannine versions of the narrative are variants of an older tradition of kings acceding to office and purifying the cult, a tradition that was older than the evangelists and Jesus himself. That the story is historically inauthentic implies that all interpretations relating it to Jesus’ character constitute a misrepresentation of his personality, just as they are inconsistent with his Christology and widely attested humility.
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article is a study in Christology. It argues that the temple-cleansing narrative is historically improbable, and therefore, all interpretations relating it to Jesus’ character are a misrepresentation of his personality.