Latest / Economy & Finance / He died for our money_ Was the real Jesus killed for being an anti-capitalist_ _ The Story of Money

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He died for our money_ Was the real Jesus killed for being an anti-capitalist_ _ The Story of Money · Economy & Finance

0:00
Speaker 1: Jesus' story of money could not live alongside the stories
0:03
Speaker 1: that the people who ran the machine in his day
0:05
Speaker 1: were telling, so they killed him.
0:06
Speaker 2: The message from Jesus around money might be described today
0:10
Speaker 2: as pretty anti-capitalist.
0:11
Speaker 3: You're trying to insult half of America now, whatever we're
0:14
Speaker 3: doing now, aren't we?
0:15
Speaker 1: One of my own favorite stories, there are these big
0:18
Speaker 1: urns where people would come and make donations. And this
0:21
Speaker 1: old woman comes up who's got two pennies. That's all
0:24
Speaker 1: that she puts in. And Jesus says, hey, she gave
0:27
Speaker 1: everything she had. Less than a week after he said that,
0:30
Speaker 1: he was dead.
0:35
Speaker 2: Today on the story of money, imagine being arrested and
0:39
Speaker 2: executed after you disrupt the operation of a currency market.
0:45
Speaker 3: Well, that was the fate of possibly, arguably, the most
0:49
Speaker 3: famous person in history. This was someone renowned for his wisdom,
0:54
Speaker 3: his compassion, someone whose teachings inspired one of the great
0:58
Speaker 3: religions of the world. And yet many historians believe that
1:02
Speaker 3: this act of financial defiance triggered a chain of events
1:06
Speaker 3: that culminated in his brutal death at the age of
1:10
Speaker 3: roughly 33.
1:11
Speaker 2: Now, we are, of course, talking about that first century
1:14
Speaker 2: Jewish agitator, Jesus of Nazareth. And as the Bible said,
1:19
Speaker 2: he stormed into the Temple of Jerusalem and tore into
1:22
Speaker 2: the money changers operating there. Soon after, the Romans arrested him,
1:29
Speaker 2: tortured him and crucified him.
1:31
Speaker 3: But why did Jesus care so much about a bunch
1:34
Speaker 3: of currency traders in the first place? Was he like
1:38
Speaker 3: an anti-capitalist in the days before capitalism even had a name?
1:42
Speaker 3: And what role did money play in his life, his teachings,
1:47
Speaker 3: and his death? Here to tell us that incredible story
1:52
Speaker 3: is Tom Thatcher. Tom, thanks so much for being here
1:54
Speaker 3: on the show with us.
1:55
Speaker 1: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. Very exciting.
1:58
Speaker 1: I'm very humbled to be asked. Love your show and
2:00
Speaker 1: glad to be here.
2:01
Speaker 2: So, Tom, you're a lifelong scholar of Jesus as a
2:04
Speaker 2: historical figure, and you've written a couple of books about him,
2:08
Speaker 2: haven't you?
2:09
Speaker 1: I have written 23 books about Jesus as a historical figure,
2:14
Speaker 1: and I've been involved in many research units in the
2:16
Speaker 1: Society of Biblical Oaths, so this has been a topic
2:18
Speaker 1: close to my heart for a long, long time. Yes.
2:20
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Gillian, 23 books, I'm starting to feel
2:22
Speaker 3: a little bit lazy over here.
2:24
Speaker 2: Exactly. You're definitely a slouch, you know.
2:26
Speaker 1: I didn't say they were good, man. I just said
2:27
Speaker 1: there were a lot of them.
2:29
Speaker 3: No, no, no. I mean, look, any book takes a
2:33
Speaker 3: heck of a lot of energy. And Tom, you're actually
2:35
Speaker 3: an ordained church minister as well. So your interest in
2:39
Speaker 3: Jesus as a historical figure is not just an idle curiosity,
2:43
Speaker 3: is it?
2:44
Speaker 1: It is definitely a deeply personal topic. For me, it
2:48
Speaker 1: is the driving vision for my own view of money
2:51
Speaker 1: and everything money does and could do. I actually like
2:56
Speaker 1: Jesus' vision for money. I don't like everything he said
2:59
Speaker 1: or did, but I like his vision for money. I
3:01
Speaker 1: wish his story of money could have come to its
3:04
Speaker 1: full conclusion. Unfortunately, Jesus' story of money could not live
3:09
Speaker 1: alongside the stories that the people who ran the machine
3:12
Speaker 1: in his day were telling. So they killed him before
3:14
Speaker 1: we could get a happy ending.
3:15
Speaker 2: Well, that's going to be a very interesting discussion. You know,
3:18
Speaker 2: we are conscious that for people of faith, some of
3:20
Speaker 2: this may be a bit sensitive. But it's going to
3:23
Speaker 2: be an interesting angle, both on the story of Jesus,
3:26
Speaker 2: but also the story of money. So welcome to this episode.
3:30
Speaker 2: I'm Gillian Tett.
3:32
Speaker 3: And I'm Robin Wigglesworth.
3:38
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3:41
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3:49
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3:56
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3:58
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3:59
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4:03
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4:12
Speaker 3: So this episode is about Jesus Christ, but specifically the
4:17
Speaker 3: historical Jesus, the Jesus of Nazareth, who may be quite
4:21
Speaker 3: different from the man you imagine. But before we get
4:23
Speaker 3: to the man himself, I want to start with that
4:25
Speaker 3: incident we trailed in the introduction, which comes near the
4:28
Speaker 3: end of his life, because this incident, this event is
4:31
Speaker 3: going to be the central focus of our episode. So
4:34
Speaker 3: it happened in Jerusalem at around 30 CE or 30
4:38
Speaker 3: AD for the Christians in our audience. And here's how
4:42
Speaker 3: the gospel of Matthew describes it. Jesus entered the temple
4:45
Speaker 3: courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there.
4:49
Speaker 3: He overturned the tables of the money changers and the
4:52
Speaker 3: benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said
4:55
Speaker 3: to them, my house will be called a house of prayer,
4:59
Speaker 3: but you are making it a den of thieves.
5:03
Speaker 2: So that's a particularly famous moment in the life of
5:05
Speaker 2: Jesus known as the cleansing of the temple. He clearly
5:10
Speaker 2: created a huge ruckus and it would have huge consequences
5:14
Speaker 2: for him, tragic consequences. So Tom, explain to us what's
5:19
Speaker 2: actually happening here, starting with the venue, because the temple
5:24
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem no longer exists either as a building or institution,
5:28
Speaker 2: but in the first century, it was absolutely critical to
5:32
Speaker 2: the life of the Jewish people, wasn't it?
5:35
Speaker 1: It was absolutely critical. Actually, the temple does sort of
5:38
Speaker 1: still exist today. What's left of it, if you've been
5:40
Speaker 1: to Jerusalem or just seen the pictures in the news,
5:43
Speaker 1: the Dome of the Rock, which is a Muslim holy place,
5:46
Speaker 1: now sits on the site where the ancient Jewish temple was,
5:49
Speaker 1: almost exactly on that site. But the temple that existed
5:52
Speaker 1: in Jesus' time in Jerusalem was not the one that
5:56
Speaker 1: was originally built way back in Bible times by King Solomon.
6:00
Speaker 1: That temple had been destroyed by the Babylonian Empire about 440.
6:04
Speaker 1: 600 years before Jesus lived. And then they had built
6:07
Speaker 1: a new one around 500 years before Jesus lived. So
6:11
Speaker 1: it was the one that Jesus engaged with was an
6:14
Speaker 1: old building at that time. And it was nice and
6:17
Speaker 1: it served its purpose. But that temple originally was not
6:21
Speaker 1: especially huge or impressive. It was unique because Jewish law
6:26
Speaker 1: did not allow Jews to offer sacrifices anywhere else except
6:30
Speaker 1: at this one temple in Jerusalem be like saying that
6:33
Speaker 1: today every Catholic mass has to be performed at the
6:35
Speaker 1: Vatican in Rome. So over time, as the Jewish people
6:40
Speaker 1: spread out across the Greek and Roman Empire, this relatively
6:44
Speaker 1: small temple in Jerusalem became a huge global tourist destination
6:48
Speaker 1: for them. It was a place that Jewish people would
6:50
Speaker 1: go back to to worship and experience God there and
6:54
Speaker 1: connect with their own identity as Jewish. Same as many
6:58
Speaker 1: modern Jews will take pilgrimages to Israel today. So when
7:01
Speaker 1: the Romans took over Israel, now we're about 60 years
7:05
Speaker 1: before Jesus was born, the first Roman king of the Jews,
7:09
Speaker 1: King Herod the Great, who's the guy in the Christmas story,
7:12
Speaker 1: by the way, that the wise men come to visit
7:14
Speaker 1: and ask where the Messiah has been born. That guy.
7:18
Speaker 1: He's coming in as the Roman king or the Roman
7:21
Speaker 1: ruler of the Jewish people. And he realizes, I want
7:23
Speaker 1: to make a good impression on them. And I also
7:26
Speaker 1: would like to boost the economy. I'd like to create
7:28
Speaker 1: some jobs, fire up the economy, while also doing some
7:30
Speaker 1: things that the Jewish people would appreciate. Herod decided to
7:34
Speaker 1: dramatically expand the complex around that temple building. Now, the
7:40
Speaker 1: Jewish law is not going to let you change the
7:43
Speaker 1: architecture of the temple. So Herod said, and this is
7:46
Speaker 1: about now we're 20 or 30 years before Jesus was born.
7:49
Speaker 1: What I'm going to do is build a massive complex building.
7:52
Speaker 1: around that little temple building. I'm going to build an
7:54
Speaker 1: entire district around this little temple building. So Herod started
7:59
Speaker 1: doing that. He put thousands of people to work. He
8:02
Speaker 1: claimed a massive percentage of the total footprint of the
8:04
Speaker 1: city to do this so that by the time Jesus
8:08
Speaker 1: is an adult, around, say, 30 CE or AD, this
8:13
Speaker 1: religious pilgrimage site had turned into the largest public complex,
8:18
Speaker 1: the largest public anything in the Roman world. So now
8:22
Speaker 1: what was this one little space is the biggest tourist
8:26
Speaker 1: attraction in the Eastern Mediterranean. And you're getting so many
8:30
Speaker 1: people coming that there's times of the year when the
8:33
Speaker 1: population of Jerusalem. would swell from say 60,000 in a
8:38
Speaker 1: normal week to maybe hundreds of, maybe more than a
8:40
Speaker 1: million people at a time during certain weeks.
8:43
Speaker 5: Of the year.
8:43
Speaker 3: I'm curious, Tom, because I don't think I've ever seen
8:46
Speaker 3: a picture or illustration of it at all. What did
8:48
Speaker 3: the temple physically look like? Can you describe the construction
8:53
Speaker 3: of it?
8:54
Speaker 1: The temple building itself was not really huge. It's a
8:57
Speaker 1: rectangular colonnaded building and its architecture It reflects this idea
9:03
Speaker 1: that God is so holy that you can't see God
9:07
Speaker 1: or have immediate access to God. Or, you know, you'll
9:09
Speaker 1: experience what happened to those guys in Raiders of the
9:11
Speaker 1: Lost Ark when they opened the Ark of the Covenant
9:13
Speaker 1: and melted away.
9:14
Speaker 3: Very good Dean Andrew Jones reference there. I love that.
9:18
Speaker 1: Anyway, it's a classic. So in the very center of
9:22
Speaker 1: that building, you have a very small room called the
9:25
Speaker 1: Holy of Holies. And that is empty because the Jewish
9:29
Speaker 1: people didn't believe in idols. So that's... where God lives,
9:33
Speaker 1: and only the high priest can ever go in there.
9:35
Speaker 1: One day of the year on the Day of Atonement,
9:37
Speaker 1: Yom Kippur. Outside, you have an area called the Court
9:41
Speaker 1: of the Priests, which is where the priests who are
9:43
Speaker 1: performing sacrifices, like killing animals and burning them in that area.
9:49
Speaker 1: And there's like a barricade around that area. And then
9:51
Speaker 1: if you go out, there's another barricade around an area
9:54
Speaker 1: called the Court of Israel. Only Jewish men were allowed
9:58
Speaker 1: to go there because in their cult, the male head
10:01
Speaker 1: of the household brings the sacrifice so the men go
10:04
Speaker 1: into there with a sheep or a dove whatever you're
10:07
Speaker 1: going to sacrifice and give it to the priest across
10:10
Speaker 1: that wall across that gate outside of the court of
10:14
Speaker 1: men you have the court of women and So if
10:17
Speaker 1: I come with my wife and my family, my daughters
10:19
Speaker 1: are there, they can go to that level of being
10:23
Speaker 1: that close to God. And then me and my sons
10:26
Speaker 1: will go into the next level to give the sacrifices
10:29
Speaker 1: to the priest. And then outside, and this is getting
10:31
Speaker 1: into Jesus time, there's a much larger area called the
10:35
Speaker 1: court of Gentiles, which Gentiles just means anybody that's not Jewish,
10:39
Speaker 1: where anyone can come. And that area is where they
10:44
Speaker 1: would have the booth set up for the money changing.
10:47
Speaker 1: and for selling sacrificial animals that, again, you could take in.
10:50
Speaker 3: Oh, those famous dove vendors as well, then.
10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, the dove vendors, and they're selling sheep and all
10:55
Speaker 1: of this. And then outside of that, you have this
10:57
Speaker 1: massive commercial district of shops and restaurants and wine bars
11:02
Speaker 1: and places that talk business and hotels and warehouses and
11:05
Speaker 1: stockyards and the rich neighborhoods where the people who run
11:09
Speaker 1: this whole thing go at the end of their workday.
11:11
Speaker 1: So it's actually a whole district of the city that's
11:14
Speaker 1: like a series of concentric circles with god god's little
11:19
Speaker 1: room in the bullseye in the center of that temple
11:22
Speaker 1: building massively it's impossible to overstate how massive especially if
11:28
Speaker 1: i'm a person like jesus who's grown up in a
11:30
Speaker 1: city a little town with 50 people you've never seen
11:34
Speaker 1: anything like this in your life before except in this one.
11:36
Speaker 3: Place yeah so this construction project that king herald famously
11:40
Speaker 3: started that was one of the biggest construction projects in
11:43
Speaker 3: the world at the time though right Oh, monstrous.
11:46
Speaker 1: It's certainly one of the most expensive buildings, maybe ever,
11:51
Speaker 1: in terms of relative to what the actual GDP of
11:54
Speaker 1: that province was. The Jewish historian Josephus thinks that about 16,000
11:59
Speaker 1: or 17,000 people are employed just working on the temple
12:03
Speaker 1: and its construction and maintenance. Which means in a city
12:06
Speaker 1: of 60,000, if one third of the people work on
12:09
Speaker 1: this one building, it means everybody else... works for a
12:12
Speaker 1: collateral business around a billion, a bookkeeping company or a
12:14
Speaker 1: shipping company or a restaurant or a hotel. The whole
12:19
Speaker 1: economy of that city is tied up in that place
12:22
Speaker 1: that people come and meet God.
12:24
Speaker 2: So you've laid out a vision of why this was
12:26
Speaker 2: so unbelievably important for the Jewish people. But the question
12:28
Speaker 2: I have is, what on earth were money changers doing
12:31
Speaker 2: in the outer courtyard?
12:33
Speaker 1: Basically, under the Jewish law, adult male Jews 20 and
12:37
Speaker 1: up had to pay a tax every year for the
12:40
Speaker 1: temple's maintenance. And it's set at a certain number of
12:44
Speaker 1: grams of silver you have to pay for this tax. Well,
12:48
Speaker 1: by the time we get to Jesus' time, you've got
12:50
Speaker 1: different money being minted and used all across the Roman
12:53
Speaker 1: Empire with different silver weight in it, different values, same
12:58
Speaker 1: as different currencies today. And so in order to pay
13:01
Speaker 1: this tax, which is equivalent to about two days wages,
13:06
Speaker 1: it's not a huge tax, it's a flat tax, you
13:08
Speaker 1: have to convert it to a standardized currency. And the
13:12
Speaker 1: currency they used was called the Tyrian Shuckle. Tyre is
13:15
Speaker 1: a city, I think it's still a big tourist destination
13:18
Speaker 1: up in Lebanon, where they minted a coinage like the
13:22
Speaker 1: old Spanish pieces of eight that had a really high
13:24
Speaker 1: consistent pure silver content for trade purposes. It actually had
13:28
Speaker 1: a picture of the pagan god Melchor on it, ironically.
13:31
Speaker 1: But it was a very, very highly respected currency because
13:34
Speaker 1: it was really pure and had very high silver content.
13:38
Speaker 1: When you went to the temple, they use that coinage
13:41
Speaker 1: to pay this annual temple tax, which means I got
13:44
Speaker 1: to take my money from Spain or Egypt and buy
13:47
Speaker 1: kind of like buying fairground tokens or casino chips. Actually,
13:51
Speaker 1: you go into the casino. I put down my euros
13:53
Speaker 1: or my US dollars. I take your chips. I go
13:56
Speaker 1: give them back to the house. The house takes 90%
13:58
Speaker 1: of them. So now the house has my money and
14:01
Speaker 1: my chips. And of course, they're going to charge a
14:04
Speaker 1: little point of sale fee for that, too.
14:05
Speaker 2: So who was actually in charge of the temple?
14:08
Speaker 1: Basically, the Romans control the temple. So the Romans effectively
14:12
Speaker 1: appointed a high priest from a certain very small number
14:17
Speaker 1: of families who would have said on a hereditary basis
14:20
Speaker 1: they could serve in that role. And two of the
14:24
Speaker 1: high priests that are mentioned in the story about Jesus' death,
14:26
Speaker 1: Annas and Caiaphas, those who are father and son-in-law, those
14:31
Speaker 1: two Guys and their families controlled the high priesthood really
14:36
Speaker 1: for a period of would be about 80 years, 90 years.
14:39
Speaker 1: So you have a very small number of families that
14:43
Speaker 1: are very closely attached to the Romans that are the
14:47
Speaker 1: high priest. And then they kind of run the administration
14:49
Speaker 1: of the whole thing down, down from there.
14:51
Speaker 3: Okay, so Judea is at the time a part of
14:54
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire, famously. I'm curious, I mean, how exactly
14:58
Speaker 3: did that work in practice? Like, how did the Romans
15:01
Speaker 3: govern Judea? How did they tax people? How did the
15:05
Speaker 3: relationship between Judea and Rome function in practice?
15:09
Speaker 1: So the Romans, like modern, honestly, colonial governments and empires today,
15:19
Speaker 1: You don't want to spend a whole lot of money
15:20
Speaker 1: having a lot of people on the ground. So they
15:23
Speaker 1: will send a governor or a prefect. Here's the political
15:27
Speaker 1: angle and controls the military there and preserves law and order.
15:31
Speaker 1: Their preferred practice, though, like most colonial empires, was to
15:35
Speaker 1: work through a local leadership that the people would connect with.
15:39
Speaker 1: So when the Romans got to Israel... the people that
15:45
Speaker 1: the people looked to and connected with were the priests
15:48
Speaker 1: who ran their temple. And so we're going to work
15:51
Speaker 1: through those people, the priests, to control the masses. And
15:57
Speaker 1: the Romans aren't there to bring new autobahns or to
16:01
Speaker 1: up the stock market in Jerusalem. They're there to make money.
16:04
Speaker 1: And it's an agrarian society. It's an agricultural economy. So
16:07
Speaker 1: the way we're going to make money is any goods
16:10
Speaker 1: you grow, we're going to put taxes on everything. The
16:14
Speaker 1: Romans actually would privatize tax collection. So there were companies
16:20
Speaker 1: that they would contract to go out and collect the taxes.
16:24
Speaker 1: They would basically say in this area, we think this
16:26
Speaker 1: is the GDP of Judea. We want this much money
16:31
Speaker 1: coming out of there. And then you contract a company
16:33
Speaker 1: that can go do that at a certain margin that
16:36
Speaker 1: they set.
16:37
Speaker 2: That sounds quite familiar because we're seeing elements of that
16:40
Speaker 2: even today returning on the world stage.
16:41
Speaker 1: Well, some would say that's a more efficient way to
16:45
Speaker 1: do it. But it's also opens up a ton of
16:48
Speaker 1: potential for corruption, because if I'm if I'm who do
16:50
Speaker 1: I appeal to? If someone is messing me over, if
16:54
Speaker 1: the tax collectors are trying to mess me over.
16:56
Speaker 2: So that's fascinating. So we basically have a situation where
16:59
Speaker 2: you have the temple that is wealthy and powerful and
17:03
Speaker 2: quite extractive. But on top of that, you've also got
17:06
Speaker 2: the colonial structures, the Roman colonial structures was even more exploitative.
17:10
Speaker 2: And that all helps explain a bit about this famous
17:14
Speaker 2: scene with the money changers and the person who was
17:17
Speaker 2: creating all that ruckus, who was Jesus. But before we
17:21
Speaker 2: come on to that, let's talk about Jesus for a moment,
17:23
Speaker 2: because on the one hand, he appears to be incredibly
17:26
Speaker 2: well known in the world today. Even non-Christian communities tend
17:31
Speaker 2: to date their calendars from his birth. And yet one
17:35
Speaker 2: of your arguments, Tom, is that the historical reality of
17:38
Speaker 2: Jesus is somewhat different from what we all think we know.
17:42
Speaker 1: Well, when we talk about the Jesus of history, what
17:45
Speaker 1: we're looking at there very specifically is who he was
17:49
Speaker 1: as a person interacting with his own context versus later
17:53
Speaker 1: theological ideas about him being the son of God or
17:58
Speaker 1: the savior or the, you know, sacrifice for sins or
18:00
Speaker 1: those kinds, those are all important things. But when we're,
18:02
Speaker 1: what we're talking about now is who he was as
18:04
Speaker 1: a historical person interacting with his own context.
18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. He wasn't even called Jesus, right?
18:10
Speaker 1: No, Jesus is his Greek translation of his name. His
18:13
Speaker 1: real name was Joshua. He was probably named after the
18:17
Speaker 1: famous Joshua that led the Jewish people into the promised land.
18:20
Speaker 1: Two of the four Gospels say that he was born
18:23
Speaker 1: in Bethlehem, which today it's a part of metropolitan Jerusalem.
18:26
Speaker 1: But they all say that he grew up in Galilee,
18:31
Speaker 1: up in the north. That he is a Galilean from
18:35
Speaker 1: a very small village called Nazareth. And by the way,
18:38
Speaker 1: he wasn't born, the history of this, he wasn't born
18:43
Speaker 1: in the year we think he was born. He was
18:44
Speaker 1: actually born like four or five B.C. in the last
18:48
Speaker 1: year of King Heron's reign. And there was a miscalculation
18:52
Speaker 1: of the calendar, I think, what, in the sixth or
18:54
Speaker 1: seventh century, and they dated it wrong. So he was
18:56
Speaker 1: actually born five years before he was born.
18:58
Speaker 3: I mean, we've all made some math problems at some point, right? Nobody,
19:03
Speaker 3: none of us three have ever made a math mistake
19:06
Speaker 3: so bad that it's altered the entire human calendar, as
19:09
Speaker 3: it were.
19:09
Speaker 1: We don't know when he was born. December 25th was
19:13
Speaker 1: an existing Roman holiday. So the Christians said, hey, if
19:15
Speaker 1: we're already off work, we're going to celebrate his birthday today.
19:18
Speaker 1: on the same day they were celebrating the birthday of
19:20
Speaker 1: this other god. But what we do know is he
19:22
Speaker 1: grew up in Galilee, miles, days away from Jerusalem and Judea.
19:29
Speaker 1: Nazareth is such a small town, it's not even really
19:32
Speaker 1: mentioned in any other ancient sources outside of the Bible.
19:36
Speaker 1: It might have been 50 different households there, maybe two
19:40
Speaker 1: or three families, you know, of all different families. Very,
19:44
Speaker 1: very small, very Jewish, as far as we can tell,
19:47
Speaker 1: because their archaeological remains, they have the places they would
19:50
Speaker 1: take their ritual baths and the stone pottery for purity
19:54
Speaker 1: and things like that. But very tiny. He's probably, and
19:59
Speaker 1: I don't mean this in any offensive way, back in
20:01
Speaker 1: Jesus' time, maybe 3% of the population was literate. And
20:05
Speaker 1: he was not one of those people because he was
20:07
Speaker 1: not trained. So he's definitely nothing like a modern priest
20:11
Speaker 1: or pastor who had like nine years of education and
20:15
Speaker 1: probably comes out of a middle or upper middle class background.
20:19
Speaker 1: He definitely is coming from the bottom side of the
20:22
Speaker 1: cultural divide. economic spectrum back then.
20:24
Speaker 3: Well, in the Bible, he's obviously also brought up by
20:27
Speaker 3: his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph. And Jesus and
20:30
Speaker 3: Joseph are usually described as woodworkers, carpenters. But they came
20:36
Speaker 3: from a farming background, right?
20:38
Speaker 1: An interesting aspect of Jewish law is that if a
20:41
Speaker 1: man has four sons and he owns a farm or
20:45
Speaker 1: a vineyard, the oldest son gets a double inheritance because
20:48
Speaker 1: the older son is supposed to take care of me
20:49
Speaker 1: in my old age. Well, that's a great idea. And
20:52
Speaker 1: it makes sense as a form of like social security
20:55
Speaker 1: for the elderly. But you take that down 10 generations
20:58
Speaker 1: and the younger sons are splitting what used to be
21:01
Speaker 1: 100 acres down into 50 acres and 30. And now
21:04
Speaker 1: I got one and then I got none because I
21:06
Speaker 1: had to sell it because I had terrible debt. So
21:10
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people in the time of
21:12
Speaker 1: Herod the Great, especially turning to what we would call
21:15
Speaker 1: trades like they become day traders. And what looks like
21:19
Speaker 1: happened is they were basically construction workers who would have
21:23
Speaker 1: gone around and worked on these different public works projects
21:26
Speaker 1: that Herod was paying for all over the place to
21:28
Speaker 1: put people back to work. Actually, if any of your
21:32
Speaker 1: listeners or viewers are interested in ever taking a trip
21:34
Speaker 1: to Israel, you can visit a town called Sepphoris, which
21:38
Speaker 1: was a Roman colony up in Galilee. That's about six miles,
21:43
Speaker 1: maybe an hour and a half walk from Nazareth. And
21:47
Speaker 1: I've been there. I personally think that that's where Jesus
21:50
Speaker 1: probably grew up working on that, you know, cutting tile,
21:54
Speaker 1: pulling stone, framing up buildings. He spent the first 25
21:59
Speaker 1: years of his life growing up in a construction family
22:02
Speaker 1: and breaking rocks.
22:04
Speaker 2: So like a lot of people in America and elsewhere
22:07
Speaker 2: in the world today. And since this is a podcast
22:11
Speaker 2: about money, tell us what his experience would have been
22:14
Speaker 2: of money would he have been paid for his work
22:18
Speaker 2: at Zephyrus or elsewhere? With cash?
22:20
Speaker 1: You would be paid, but this is more like a
22:24
Speaker 1: pre-monetary society where the average person doesn't have money. You know,
22:32
Speaker 1: famously in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says to pray, give
22:35
Speaker 1: us today our daily bread. Because if I'm a guy
22:39
Speaker 1: like Jesus, I go out to work in the morning
22:42
Speaker 1: with nothing and I work, you know, 10 or 12
22:45
Speaker 1: hours until the sun goes down, basically. And I might
22:48
Speaker 1: get paid a few coins or some kind of food
22:52
Speaker 1: ration or salt, like they used to be. We call
22:55
Speaker 1: salaries because the Roman army paid soldiers in salt to
22:58
Speaker 1: take home. And on the way home, if I need
23:00
Speaker 1: to buy some food or I need to buy some
23:03
Speaker 1: new pottery for the house, I buy that and then
23:06
Speaker 1: I go home and I don't have any money. And
23:07
Speaker 1: then the next day I start that over. And also too,
23:10
Speaker 1: it's vitally important for modern people to remember that whatever
23:14
Speaker 1: their currency is actually has silver or gold or in it.
23:20
Speaker 1: It's not like a piece of paper that represents something else.
23:23
Speaker 1: So they just don't have a lot of money that
23:26
Speaker 1: they are in control of. And even the little bit
23:28
Speaker 1: that you have, Honestly, it's nothing like a modern Western
23:34
Speaker 1: society where, you know, hard work, union work, I can
23:39
Speaker 1: make a decent wage. If you make more, they're going
23:41
Speaker 1: to take more. And you're going to stay increasingly impoverished
23:45
Speaker 1: because you've got to pay the taxes to the temple.
23:47
Speaker 1: You've got to pay your offerings. You're also going to
23:49
Speaker 1: have to pay your taxes back to Rome. Everything you
23:52
Speaker 1: buy has a toll tax in it. You're going to
23:54
Speaker 1: fish on the lake. You've got to tax. Matthew, who
23:57
Speaker 1: we think wrote the Gospel of Matthew, traditionally, was a
24:00
Speaker 1: tax collector who sat out on the road and taxed
24:02
Speaker 1: all the farm wagons coming back into town. So I
24:06
Speaker 1: have heard, and I think it's reasonable, that if I'm
24:09
Speaker 1: a person like Jesus, I'm paying 60 to 70% of
24:13
Speaker 1: what I make in taxes. Especially when you consider, again,
24:17
Speaker 1: they don't have an income tax economy. They have a
24:20
Speaker 1: sales tax, a tariff tax economy, where everything is built
24:23
Speaker 1: into the price of everything you buy. So the prices
24:26
Speaker 1: are elevated. And if you don't pay your taxes back then,
24:30
Speaker 1: there is zero bankruptcy protection. If you couldn't pay your taxes,
24:33
Speaker 1: you sold yourself or your kids into slavery. And then
24:36
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you've got this small, small class
24:38
Speaker 1: of people who are becoming very conspicuously wealthy as more
24:43
Speaker 1: and more money is going into the Roman system and
24:46
Speaker 1: to the new economic world that is emerging. So it
24:50
Speaker 1: would be it's not. When we complain about our taxes today,
24:54
Speaker 1: we have no idea.
24:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm Norwegian, and even I think 70%
24:57
Speaker 3: sounds pretty high. And we get pretty good public services
25:00
Speaker 3: for it, which I don't think was probably true back then.
25:03
Speaker 1: The public service is the police, so they keep you
25:06
Speaker 1: in line. So it's really that kind of a situation
25:08
Speaker 1: for him.
25:09
Speaker 2: So all in all, it's really a world of tremendous
25:12
Speaker 2: stress in the sense we have high economic uncertainty, high inequality,
25:18
Speaker 2: high debt, high taxes. all of which is a complex
25:22
Speaker 2: that sounds familiar to some degree. And yet, at the
25:26
Speaker 2: age of 30, Jesus breaks out. He embarks on the
25:30
Speaker 2: part of his life that we all know about and
25:33
Speaker 2: starts spreading the word of the gospel, and he starts preaching.
25:38
Speaker 3: Why?
25:38
Speaker 2: What happens, Tom, that actually starts that?
25:41
Speaker 1: Well, so what happens to him, and this is straight
25:45
Speaker 1: out of the biblical account, which is all we have
25:46
Speaker 1: on this, He went down to the Jordan River on
25:52
Speaker 1: some occasion to see a very famous religious celebrity named
25:57
Speaker 1: John the Baptist. He was famously very ascetic. He lives
26:01
Speaker 1: out in the desert by himself, eating bugs and wearing
26:05
Speaker 1: camel hair and taking cold showers and all that. So
26:09
Speaker 1: Jesus goes down there. And if you know the Bible story,
26:12
Speaker 1: while Jesus is being baptized by John, he and John
26:16
Speaker 1: have a visionary experience where God tells him, hey, I'm
26:20
Speaker 1: setting you apart to go proclaim my kingdom around the area.
26:25
Speaker 1: The difference between Jesus and John the Baptist and what's
26:28
Speaker 1: going to become, in my mind, the difference between Jesus
26:30
Speaker 1: and the temple is this. If you wanted to see
26:33
Speaker 1: a guy like John the Baptist, he's doing a residency
26:37
Speaker 1: at the Sphere. So you want to see John the Baptist,
26:39
Speaker 1: you fly to Vegas, you watch the show, you go
26:41
Speaker 1: back home. Jesus comes up out of that movement and
26:45
Speaker 1: says listen we're going to go on tour 365 days
26:48
Speaker 1: a year so we're not going to be at a
26:51
Speaker 1: temple we're not going to be at the jordan river
26:53
Speaker 1: i'm going to come to you and so his movement
26:57
Speaker 1: is completely decentralized super low overhead in his mind god
27:02
Speaker 1: is everywhere so god can be experienced everywhere so again
27:06
Speaker 1: why would you need to go down to the jordan
27:08
Speaker 1: river or down to the temple in jerusalem to experience
27:11
Speaker 1: that because we're going to do it right here um
27:13
Speaker 1: in front of you.
27:14
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Jesus obviously in his wanderings had a
27:17
Speaker 3: lot to say about forgiveness, repentance, loving thy neighbor, the
27:22
Speaker 3: odds on a rich man getting into heaven, for example.
27:25
Speaker 3: And that last part, obviously, the part we really care
27:28
Speaker 3: about because the podcast is focused on money, not matters
27:31
Speaker 3: of faith. But I was wondering, what was his message
27:35
Speaker 3: about money in his wonderings and his teachings to people?
27:39
Speaker 1: Well, real quick, money is his biggest topic. Actually, we
27:42
Speaker 1: just never want to talk about it because it doesn't
27:45
Speaker 1: sell as well to talk about what Jesus said about money.
27:47
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you, I'll throw a couple of examples
27:48
Speaker 1: at you that illustrate why his story of money matters.
27:53
Speaker 1: was never going to work with the story of money
27:56
Speaker 1: that the people at the temple in Jerusalem were telling.
27:59
Speaker 1: So one of his real famous ones is called the
28:00
Speaker 1: parable of the talents. And the short version on that
28:03
Speaker 1: one is you have a guy who's really rich, who
28:06
Speaker 1: owns a big estate. He's going to go on a,
28:08
Speaker 1: like a year long business trip. He gives three of
28:10
Speaker 1: his servants a certain amount of money to invest. One
28:13
Speaker 1: gets like one talent, which is a massive amount of money,
28:16
Speaker 1: say a million bucks. He gives another 5 million, gives
28:19
Speaker 1: another 2 million. He's like, Hey, do what you can
28:21
Speaker 1: with this while I'm gone. He goes away. The one
28:24
Speaker 1: guy turns the $ 5 million into $ 10 million. The other
28:26
Speaker 1: guy turns the $ 2 million into $ 4 million. The third
28:29
Speaker 1: guy is like, I'm just going to put this in
28:32
Speaker 1: the safe because I don't want to get in trouble
28:34
Speaker 1: when the master comes back.
28:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, he buried the money. He buried the cow. He
28:37
Speaker 3: buries it in the ground.
28:38
Speaker 1: Because they don't even.
28:39
Speaker 3: Have safes back then. They didn't have safes back then. Yeah, exactly.
28:42
Speaker 1: Imagine you're out sneaking out, man, burying the money in
28:45
Speaker 1: the backyard or putting it under the bed. So in
28:49
Speaker 1: that story, the master, who obviously is God, who has given...
28:53
Speaker 1: These people, all of their resources shows up and says,
28:56
Speaker 1: where's my money? And the first guy's like, here, I got,
28:58
Speaker 1: you gave me five. I got 10. He's like, oh,
29:00
Speaker 1: that's great. Here's your reward. The second guy's like, you
29:03
Speaker 1: gave me two. I gave, I gave you back four,
29:05
Speaker 1: a hundred percent return. He's like, wonderful. Here's your reward.
29:08
Speaker 1: Third guy says, listen, here's your, here's your million bucks.
29:12
Speaker 1: Just take it back. And he's like, wait a minute. What's,
29:14
Speaker 1: what's this? Why didn't I get a return? And the
29:16
Speaker 1: guy says, well, I knew you're, you're pretty hard on
29:21
Speaker 1: people when they fail. And I also know you take
29:24
Speaker 1: what's not yours. You live off other people's work. You
29:27
Speaker 1: want me to do the work and then you take
29:29
Speaker 1: back the money. And the master says, well, it's funny
29:32
Speaker 1: you say that because it was my money in the
29:33
Speaker 1: first place. So how do you think I'm taking back
29:36
Speaker 1: your money? I'm just taking my own back, which the
29:39
Speaker 1: basic principle. is that any material wealth you have belongs
29:43
Speaker 1: to God. As far as Jesus is concerned, it all
29:45
Speaker 1: belongs to God. Anyway, we are just as some native
29:49
Speaker 1: traditional cultures would say, we're stewards of the land. We
29:52
Speaker 1: don't ever own it. We're stewards of it. Then you
29:54
Speaker 1: get a parable about the quote, rich man, Lazarus, which
29:59
Speaker 1: is a great, I mean, it's just a great story
30:01
Speaker 1: how it's told. But rich guy has a big house.
30:04
Speaker 1: There's some homeless guy that lives outside of his gate begging.
30:07
Speaker 1: Every day the guy goes out in his limo and
30:09
Speaker 1: the homeless guy is laying there begging. And he's like,
30:12
Speaker 1: somebody get that guy out of here. He smells. So
30:15
Speaker 1: he never does anything to help the guy. And again,
30:17
Speaker 1: the guy's got God's money. God made him rich. He
30:20
Speaker 1: can't help this homeless guy. And they both die. And
30:24
Speaker 1: I'm laughing about it because it's not me. It ends
30:26
Speaker 1: up the rich guy that everybody thinks has been blessed
30:29
Speaker 1: by God is in hell and the poor guy is
30:32
Speaker 1: over with Abraham in heaven. And that would be reflective
30:36
Speaker 1: of Jesus' idea that it's not just that it's God's money.
30:40
Speaker 1: He wants you to use it for the common good.
30:44
Speaker 3: So Tom, what did Jesus have to say about the
30:47
Speaker 3: temple and what kind of interactions did he have with
30:49
Speaker 3: this giant institution before that final incident with the money changers?
30:54
Speaker 1: Well, obviously Jesus is a Galilean and he spends the,
30:58
Speaker 1: Vast majority of his time, by any count, up in
31:00
Speaker 1: the northern area around Galilee and the lake. But according
31:04
Speaker 1: to the Gospel of John, as one source, he does
31:07
Speaker 1: go down there quite a bit the way any other
31:10
Speaker 1: person would. He goes down when there's a festival going on.
31:14
Speaker 1: The recurring theme, though, is whenever he goes to the
31:19
Speaker 1: temple to do anything, he engages in some form of
31:23
Speaker 1: protest there. He'll heal people on the Sabbath just to
31:27
Speaker 1: raise money. the ire of the temple authorities about why
31:30
Speaker 1: would you break the Sabbath? Or he'll do things that
31:33
Speaker 1: would violate their purity codes. He makes statements, the famous
31:37
Speaker 1: statement in the Gospel of John's version of this temple
31:40
Speaker 1: incident we're talking about, where he says to them, destroy
31:43
Speaker 1: this temple and I'll raise it up in three days, which,
31:46
Speaker 1: you know, the Gospel of John and then later Christians say, well,
31:48
Speaker 1: that's talking about Jesus rising from the dead in three days.
31:52
Speaker 1: If I was sitting there listening to that at that time,
31:54
Speaker 1: I'd hear him saying, Let's just tear the whole thing
31:56
Speaker 1: down because I can do all of this out in
31:58
Speaker 1: the street or out in the wine bar. I don't
32:01
Speaker 1: need this to do this. One of my own favorite
32:03
Speaker 1: stories actually about the temple, and it's called the Widow's Mites.
32:08
Speaker 1: And in that story, Jesus is sitting in the temple
32:11
Speaker 1: courts with his disciples. And there are these big urns
32:14
Speaker 1: where people would come and make donations. And of course,
32:17
Speaker 1: this is not like Apple Pay. You're going to have
32:20
Speaker 1: physical coins. So you're going to throw it in there
32:22
Speaker 1: and it makes this big crash come in as the
32:24
Speaker 1: coins are falling into the urn. So they're watching this
32:27
Speaker 1: and this old woman comes up who's got two mites,
32:31
Speaker 1: it says in the old King James, like two pennies.
32:35
Speaker 1: And she just drops them in and you're like, plink, plink.
32:38
Speaker 1: And that's all that she puts in. And Jesus says, hey,
32:40
Speaker 1: that lady just gave more money than all those other
32:43
Speaker 1: people combined. And the disciples are like, no, she didn't.
32:48
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, listen, they gave out of their surplus.
32:51
Speaker 1: She gave everything she had. Well, that's a great inspiring
32:55
Speaker 1: message even today for even a small person's philanthropy makes
32:59
Speaker 1: a difference. But man, if I'm trying to pay the
33:02
Speaker 1: overhead expenses on a billion dollar temple, it is not
33:06
Speaker 1: true that that old woman's two cents are worth that
33:09
Speaker 1: guy's half a million dollars. It just points to when
33:13
Speaker 1: you start saying to people that, think about this, what
33:16
Speaker 1: makes a currency valuable is not the silver that's in it,
33:20
Speaker 1: but the intention behind in the heart of the person
33:23
Speaker 1: who's spending it. You cannot run a temple on that
33:28
Speaker 1: kind of an economy. And I don't think that was
33:30
Speaker 1: a secret to anybody. And it ended up less than
33:33
Speaker 1: a week after he said that, he was dead.
33:36
Speaker 2: So what does that mean in terms of what he
33:38
Speaker 2: thought about taxation? Because of course, this was an era
33:41
Speaker 2: of very high taxation.
33:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a big topic, right?
33:45
Speaker 1: So always with Jesus, there's what he might've thought about
33:47
Speaker 1: it and what he actually was willing to say about
33:50
Speaker 1: it so right after the story we're going to talk
33:52
Speaker 1: about where he goes in the temple and throws down
33:55
Speaker 1: the money changers tables there's another story that a couple
33:57
Speaker 1: days later some of his enemies the religious opponents that
34:01
Speaker 1: want to discredit him bring him a coin that has
34:05
Speaker 1: a portrait of the emperor on it and they say
34:07
Speaker 1: so listen should we pay the taxes or not then
34:10
Speaker 1: this is in a public place so they're inviting him
34:12
Speaker 1: to make a seditious statement or they're inviting him to
34:15
Speaker 1: like take a side on that. And he famously says,
34:19
Speaker 1: he looks at the coin and says, well, give Caesar
34:21
Speaker 1: what is Caesar's and God what's God's. Which, on one hand,
34:26
Speaker 1: and there's been all kinds of sermons about that over
34:28
Speaker 1: the years, what that means. But if I'm sitting there,
34:31
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're saying we ought to pay the
34:33
Speaker 1: tax so that we don't create problems with these people.
34:38
Speaker 1: Some people could say, well, maybe he's saying it doesn't
34:40
Speaker 1: matter that He's saying coinage is not the future for
34:44
Speaker 1: us because I live in a place where we never
34:46
Speaker 1: had these anyway. So it doesn't matter. And we're going
34:49
Speaker 1: to go back to that. It could be he didn't
34:51
Speaker 1: want to make an overtly seditious statement. In my mind,
34:55
Speaker 1: it's probably him saying, I don't care about the money
35:00
Speaker 1: that much anyway. If these people want to take that
35:02
Speaker 1: and play that game, give it to them because I've
35:04
Speaker 1: got a higher agenda to pursue here.
35:07
Speaker 2: So as we know, Jesus would eventually push things too
35:10
Speaker 2: far by attacking the the temple money changers, which cost mislife.
35:15
Speaker 2: And yet it wasn't actually the temple priest who orders execution. Instead,
35:20
Speaker 2: it was the Romans. So why? Why did Jesus even
35:25
Speaker 2: attack the money changers in the first place? We're going
35:28
Speaker 2: to find out after the break. So listen on.
35:37
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36:13
Speaker 3: So, we are back in the year 30 CE, or
36:16
Speaker 3: 30 AD, I think we're going to stick to 30
36:19
Speaker 3: AD given the subject matter of this episode. Tens of
36:23
Speaker 3: thousands of pilgrims have gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, and
36:26
Speaker 3: many of them have heard the news of a holy man,
36:30
Speaker 3: a miracle worker, maybe even a possible messiah that has
36:34
Speaker 3: come to free them from tyranny. And then the man
36:37
Speaker 3: himself arrives, riding on the back of a donkey of
36:41
Speaker 3: all things. The crowd cheers, crying, Hosanna, Hosanna, save us,
36:46
Speaker 3: save us. And shortly afterwards, according to three of the gospels,
36:50
Speaker 3: Jesus enters the temple's outer courtyard, the court of the Gentiles,
36:55
Speaker 3: and knocks over the tables of the money changers and
36:57
Speaker 3: creates a huge hullabaloo. And that, as we will soon discover,
37:02
Speaker 3: would come back to bite him.
37:04
Speaker 2: So, Before we get to that, Tom, there's a really
37:07
Speaker 2: interesting question here, which is why did Jesus even target
37:11
Speaker 2: the money changers? Because they were operating in the outer
37:14
Speaker 2: courtyard of the temple where even non-believers were allowed. And
37:19
Speaker 2: the money changers were providing an important service. Jewish law
37:23
Speaker 2: said that the tax had to be played in pure silver.
37:27
Speaker 2: So what was Jesus' issue with the money changers? Why
37:31
Speaker 2: did he call them a den of thieves?
37:33
Speaker 1: I personally don't see that he had a problem with
37:35
Speaker 1: them as individuals, the people running the currency exchange, but
37:39
Speaker 1: they just work there. And I don't personally see that
37:41
Speaker 1: Jesus would say, well, there's a problem with you trying
37:44
Speaker 1: to express your devotion to God by paying for the
37:49
Speaker 1: maintenance of a temple. The issue is when you're standing
37:52
Speaker 1: in the most expensive public space in the world and knowing,
37:58
Speaker 1: being one of the kind of people that are carrying
38:00
Speaker 1: this on their back, And watching as some construction worker
38:04
Speaker 1: coming in and throwing down his two coins or getting
38:08
Speaker 1: his money to go pay his tax. If I'm coming
38:10
Speaker 1: from like Alexandria in Egypt where we think there were
38:13
Speaker 1: a million Jews living. Well they're not all going to
38:15
Speaker 1: come to the temple to pay their tax. They're going
38:17
Speaker 1: to collect it all up and a delegation of them
38:20
Speaker 1: is going to hire a security service. So you're going
38:22
Speaker 1: to have some people walking in there in that system.
38:25
Speaker 1: that are literally bringing millions and millions of dollars to
38:28
Speaker 1: support an approach to religion and an approach to God
38:33
Speaker 1: that Jesus doesn't think is necessary anyway. So I don't
38:36
Speaker 1: know that he thought those people were thieves or exploitative.
38:41
Speaker 1: He doesn't mean the currency guy. He means the priests.
38:42
Speaker 1: He means the people that are running the system, the
38:45
Speaker 1: Romans that have allowed this to turn into what it is.
38:47
Speaker 3: Because, I mean, we don't really know exactly what happened
38:51
Speaker 3: back then in the first century, but I have read
38:53
Speaker 3: a fascinating theory That comes back to this idea of
38:58
Speaker 3: the Tyrian shekel. So even if that was a fixed
39:00
Speaker 3: rate you had to pay the temple, it was the
39:03
Speaker 3: only coin they could accept. And obviously the temple becomes
39:06
Speaker 3: vastly wealthy in these very pure silver Tyrian shekels. And
39:10
Speaker 3: it must be very tempting for the money changers, because
39:14
Speaker 3: there's a shortage of this, to keep jacking up the price.
39:17
Speaker 3: So even though technically the tax remains the same, the
39:20
Speaker 3: actual real burden of that tax keeps increasing all the time.
39:25
Speaker 3: because you know there's a shortage of this coin and
39:27
Speaker 3: the money changes just ask for more and more wine
39:30
Speaker 3: cotton whatever i mean i was wondering tom do you
39:33
Speaker 3: think that could be another sort of locus of of
39:35
Speaker 3: jesus's anger towards the the system as it were wow.
39:39
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what now that you said that i
39:41
Speaker 1: want to write an article on that because it's fascinating
39:43
Speaker 1: i hadn't thought about that before you were saying that
39:45
Speaker 1: the um the fact is that again this is a
39:50
Speaker 1: an economy where there's an actual, it's a finite currency.
39:54
Speaker 1: It's not like what the U.S. does today, where we
39:56
Speaker 1: want more dollars, we'll just print a whole bunch more.
39:59
Speaker 1: It's an economy where there's a limited amount of silver coinage.
40:03
Speaker 1: And so the more of it I hoard up in
40:05
Speaker 1: this one place, obviously, the less is staying in circulation.
40:10
Speaker 1: You also have the fact, it's not just there's money there,
40:13
Speaker 1: there's people selling doves, they're selling sheep for sacrifice. Well,
40:16
Speaker 1: of course, If I'm going to make a sacrifice for
40:20
Speaker 1: my sins or an offering to God, I'm going to
40:22
Speaker 1: want to buy the ones that the temple is selling
40:25
Speaker 1: because they've got the, you know.
40:27
Speaker 3: The temple-approved brand. It's the approved brand.
40:31
Speaker 1: It's like to the household of the king. So, of course,
40:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to want to do that. Well, necessarily, that's
40:37
Speaker 1: going to be much more expensive if it's in that
40:40
Speaker 1: kind of a context because there's so much more overhead
40:42
Speaker 1: around it. So, we have to be careful here because
40:46
Speaker 1: you can easily go... bleed over into an anti-Semitic posture, candidly,
40:50
Speaker 1: if you're like, well, there's this conspiracy of greed amongst
40:53
Speaker 1: the Jewish authority. You're talking about a very, very small
40:56
Speaker 1: number of people who probably thought that they were fulfilling
41:01
Speaker 1: a necessary religious function.
41:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, and let's face it, greed is pretty much universal.
41:06
Speaker 3: I mean, we've seen a few examples of this throughout history.
41:10
Speaker 3: I mean, we've all read a lot of books about this,
41:13
Speaker 3: and I think it comes again and again and again
41:15
Speaker 3: and again, not least in our own time as well.
41:17
Speaker 2: But in practical terms, what we actually also have, leaving
41:20
Speaker 2: aside the question about greed, is something akin to a
41:24
Speaker 2: sober squeeze. I mean, anyone who knows about the Hunt
41:26
Speaker 2: brothers in the 20th century will recognize this, because essentially
41:30
Speaker 2: Even if the temple wasn't actually restricting the supply of
41:33
Speaker 2: silver shekels, there probably was a general shortage of silver
41:37
Speaker 2: in the Roman Empire. And at the same time, you
41:40
Speaker 2: had the Emperor Tiberius who was running fiscal surpluses throughout
41:43
Speaker 2: his reign, which meant that silver was being collected from
41:46
Speaker 2: the provinces as tribute. That would have been piling up
41:49
Speaker 2: in the imperial treasury, but it also had a huge
41:52
Speaker 2: trade deficit with places like India importing luxury goods and
41:56
Speaker 2: paying for them via a steady outflow of silver. So
42:00
Speaker 2: it's a classic problem of market squeezes, if you like, hoarding,
42:05
Speaker 2: coupled with trade flows and capital flows being very imbalanced.
42:10
Speaker 2: Once again, sounds familiar. So, Tom, do you think a
42:13
Speaker 2: shortage of silver was at the heart of the financial
42:16
Speaker 2: hardships that was really dogging the Jewish peasants?
42:20
Speaker 1: I think a That could certainly be a part of it,
42:23
Speaker 1: combined with, like you said, where the money is coming
42:27
Speaker 1: from for the Roman Empire is off the backs of
42:30
Speaker 1: these people who actually have, like you said before, very
42:33
Speaker 1: limited access to coinage. And we mentioned that parable of
42:38
Speaker 1: talents before, just thinking about what you just said. The
42:41
Speaker 1: bad character in that story is the one who actually
42:44
Speaker 1: hoarded the money, who kept it out of circulation and
42:47
Speaker 1: buried it in the ground. Because again, when you have
42:49
Speaker 1: a limited amount of, currency to put into circulation, that
42:53
Speaker 1: doesn't make things better for the people on the bottom.
42:56
Speaker 1: It makes it harder and harder to get what they
42:59
Speaker 1: need to live day to day.
43:00
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, whether it was a silver shortage, hoarding
43:04
Speaker 3: at the temple, sharp business practices by the money changers,
43:09
Speaker 3: whatever the real reason Jesus was, you know, unhappy with them,
43:14
Speaker 3: the whole system really. And this obviously wasn't the end
43:17
Speaker 3: of the story. Because, you know, he presumably disappeared back
43:21
Speaker 3: in the anonymity of the crowds of pilgrims gathered for
43:24
Speaker 3: Passover after this, this ruckus he calls by throwing over
43:28
Speaker 3: the temple tables. But this action set in motion a
43:32
Speaker 3: chain of events that would lead to his death. And Tom,
43:36
Speaker 3: you know, not everybody maybe remembers this or has heard
43:39
Speaker 3: these stories. I'd love for you to tell us a
43:41
Speaker 3: little bit what happened to Jesus after this famous hullabaloo
43:45
Speaker 3: with money changers.
43:46
Speaker 1: What very quickly happens is within a week, he's been
43:50
Speaker 1: betrayed to the authorities by one of his closest disciples,
43:55
Speaker 1: Judas Iscariot. They find a time when he's going to
43:58
Speaker 1: be away from the crowds because he's a very populous
44:00
Speaker 1: figure at this point. So they go find him at
44:03
Speaker 1: night while he's praying. And they take him back. And
44:06
Speaker 1: the Jewish religious authorities, the high priest.
44:10
Speaker 3: Annas, right?
44:11
Speaker 1: Annas is the, I hate to say this, the godfather character.
44:14
Speaker 1: And then Caiaphas is the current high priest, his son-in-law.
44:17
Speaker 1: They basically arrange for him to be brought before the
44:21
Speaker 1: Romans because they decide he's guilty of blasphemy. But I
44:25
Speaker 1: don't want to kill him because I don't want to
44:26
Speaker 1: be responsible for that. This is happening at Passover. You've
44:29
Speaker 1: got hundreds of thousands of rabble. coming into the city
44:33
Speaker 1: they don't actually know how many followers jesus has at
44:35
Speaker 1: this point might have had thousands or tens of thousands
44:38
Speaker 1: of his own so why would i want to take
44:40
Speaker 1: responsibility for that so they bring him to their roman
44:44
Speaker 1: contact which is pontius pilate who is the prefect.
44:47
Speaker 3: Yeah pontius pilate kind of becomes the tool of them
44:50
Speaker 3: kind of cracking down and something has gone from an
44:52
Speaker 3: annoyance to like a major issue but in the bible
44:56
Speaker 3: i remember pilate is portrayed as an indecisive man who
45:00
Speaker 3: you know, famously literally washes his hands of responsibility for
45:04
Speaker 3: Jesus's death. Is that the real historical Pontius Pilate?
45:08
Speaker 1: What he was, was a person who had a great
45:11
Speaker 1: deal of difficulty understanding, I would say, distinctives of the
45:16
Speaker 1: Jewish context. If I'm ruling a province in North Africa
45:19
Speaker 1: or somewhere in Italy, um, I don't have to deal
45:23
Speaker 1: with people who are radicalized monotheists who absolutely refuse to
45:29
Speaker 1: be ruled by a foreign power. And one of his
45:31
Speaker 1: famous stories is they needed to bring a new aqueduct
45:35
Speaker 1: in Jerusalem to bring more water into the city because
45:37
Speaker 1: the city was growing. So he's like, hey, you priests
45:41
Speaker 1: that are running this temple, you got billions of dollars.
45:43
Speaker 1: Can you put some money up toward this? And he
45:45
Speaker 1: seized it. That started a massive riot that almost led
45:48
Speaker 1: to a rebellion. And the Roman way is, Again, similar
45:51
Speaker 1: to some modern empires. You don't want to keep a huge,
45:56
Speaker 1: expensive standing army way out on the edge of the
45:59
Speaker 1: empire like this. So what you do is whenever there's
46:02
Speaker 1: any hint of resistance, you suppress it brutally, very quickly,
46:07
Speaker 1: and very violently. And he had a number of instances
46:10
Speaker 1: where he responded to public protests with extreme violence. In fact,
46:17
Speaker 1: the reason he was eventually recalled was because he massacred
46:20
Speaker 1: a bunch of Samaritans that were protesting around some prophetic
46:24
Speaker 1: figure that had risen up. So he's not the wavering
46:27
Speaker 1: figure we see in the Bible. On the other hand,
46:31
Speaker 1: I don't think he cried any tears over Jesus' death either.
46:34
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what you see in the
46:36
Speaker 1: Bible is him trying to get back at the high
46:39
Speaker 1: priest and be like, well, I'm not going to do this.
46:41
Speaker 1: Why should I do this? And finally, he's like, listen,
46:44
Speaker 1: they tell him, you know, we could write this up
46:47
Speaker 1: to Caesar because we're friends with Caesar. We don't know
46:49
Speaker 1: what you're doing here. We're telling you this guy's going
46:50
Speaker 1: to start a rebellion. He's like, okay, take it.
46:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, exactly. I remember somebody, someone was joking that,
46:55
Speaker 3: you know, the spectrum of punishments back then ranged from
46:58
Speaker 3: execution to execution.
46:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. Breaking your legs.
47:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But of course, this is not the
47:04
Speaker 3: end of the story. Religious people believe that Jesus was
47:07
Speaker 3: resurrected from the dead before ascending to heaven 40 days later.
47:11
Speaker 3: And of course, what is fascinating for the sake of
47:13
Speaker 3: our story is that After Jesus' passing, the subject of
47:17
Speaker 3: his ire in his last days, the temple itself, also
47:21
Speaker 3: came to an untimely end.
47:22
Speaker 1: So if we zoom out from this one story about Jesus,
47:26
Speaker 1: what he was doing in the temple was on the
47:27
Speaker 1: front end of what became a growing movement of discontent.
47:31
Speaker 1: So later on, you see a full-blown rebellion emerging where
47:38
Speaker 1: the first people who are assassinated by the zealot party
47:43
Speaker 1: is where that term comes from even today are the
47:45
Speaker 1: high priests for complicity with the roman empire and 35
47:49
Speaker 1: years after jesus death there is a full-blown revolt all
47:54
Speaker 1: across roman palestine that took the romans years to put
47:58
Speaker 1: down the zealot forces actually used the temple as their
48:02
Speaker 1: base of operations so when the romans captured them they
48:05
Speaker 1: actually destroyed that temple because they realized this is so
48:09
Speaker 1: much a centralizing force for these people that they'll do
48:12
Speaker 1: anything to save it. So by the time a lot
48:15
Speaker 1: of the books of the New Testament were written, that
48:17
Speaker 1: temple was actually already gone.
48:19
Speaker 2: So I'm really curious. I mean, if you fast forward
48:22
Speaker 2: to today and look at this story, there are a
48:25
Speaker 2: lot of echoes in terms of the fact we live
48:27
Speaker 2: again in an era of high economic insecurity, inequality, high taxes,
48:33
Speaker 2: high debt. And much of the message from Jesus around
48:37
Speaker 2: money might be described today as pretty anti-capitalist. And of course,
48:42
Speaker 2: we have an era when many young people feel pretty
48:47
Speaker 2: angry with the system and pretty anti-capitalist too. So I'm curious,
48:51
Speaker 2: if Jesus was alive today, where would he sit on
48:54
Speaker 2: the modern political spectrum, do you think? Would he be
48:56
Speaker 2: there with the likes of.
48:59
Speaker 3: AOC and others? You're trying to insult half of America now,
49:03
Speaker 3: whatever we're doing now, aren't we? Well, I'm just.
49:05
Speaker 2: Curious because it's kind of anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, anti-exploitation stuff. message
49:11
Speaker 2: and vibe.
49:11
Speaker 1: I actually think he wouldn't fit anywhere on the spectrum.
49:15
Speaker 1: So he can go in one day into the temple
49:18
Speaker 1: and make this protest and throw this stuff down and
49:21
Speaker 1: all of his people like you said they're sending messiah
49:23
Speaker 1: to messiah and two days later tell him pay your
49:25
Speaker 1: taxes and you could look at that and say he's
49:28
Speaker 1: being obtuse personally i think his approach to that whole
49:32
Speaker 1: question is the way you beat the system is by
49:35
Speaker 1: not playing the game if that makes sense so i
49:38
Speaker 1: personally believe If he were alive today, and man, in
49:42
Speaker 1: the U.S., Jesus is co-opted on every end of the
49:45
Speaker 1: spectrum on economics to give justification for anything people want
49:50
Speaker 1: to do. I believe what he would have done is
49:54
Speaker 1: any place you try to put him, he's going to
49:56
Speaker 1: say something. As soon as you call him an anti-capitalist,
49:59
Speaker 1: he's going to say something capitalist-like. And as soon as
50:01
Speaker 1: you say he's a socialist or a Marxist, he's going
50:03
Speaker 1: to do something to upset those people because it's the
50:07
Speaker 1: system that's a problem for him. not any particular person
50:10
Speaker 1: on any part of a spectrum.
50:11
Speaker 3: I'm curious, if Jesus had not been killed, how do
50:16
Speaker 3: you think he would have realized, what kind of a
50:18
Speaker 3: system would he have tried to build up, you think?
50:22
Speaker 1: What you see him trying to do in the short
50:24
Speaker 1: time he had with the little communities of people that
50:27
Speaker 1: he had around and within his own movement, I think
50:30
Speaker 1: you would see him moving toward a system that is
50:33
Speaker 1: not based on anything above the choices that individuals make.
50:38
Speaker 1: And I know some people say that's importing like a
50:40
Speaker 1: modern Western individualism into a traditional culture. I actually think
50:44
Speaker 1: that Jesus teaching or where that came from in modern
50:47
Speaker 1: Western culture. I don't believe when Jesus kicked over the
50:51
Speaker 1: money changers tables, he thought that was going to change
50:53
Speaker 1: the system. I think his idea was the way we
50:56
Speaker 1: change the system. is on a one-on-one level. So if
50:59
Speaker 1: I'm that rich guy that has Lazarus laying out the thing,
51:03
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go start a foundation and I'm
51:05
Speaker 1: not going to create a really high overhead model to
51:08
Speaker 1: deal with that. I'm going to deal with that by
51:11
Speaker 1: helping that person and that person's humanity at that moment.
51:14
Speaker 1: What it would look like is a movement and not
51:17
Speaker 1: a system and not a new NGO and not a
51:20
Speaker 1: bureau of some government agency with a budget and i
51:24
Speaker 1: think he would be pushing to keep it on the
51:26
Speaker 1: grassroots level and make it a very human exchange.
51:29
Speaker 2: So i guess one way to frame what you're saying
51:32
Speaker 2: is that jesus believed that money was there to be
51:34
Speaker 2: used for a purpose a good purpose but not simply
51:38
Speaker 2: as an end in itself and not in an exploitative
51:41
Speaker 2: or extractive way that's the way i like to think
51:42
Speaker 2: of it anyway would.
51:44
Speaker 1: You agree with that tom oh well said yep amen.
51:46
Speaker 2: Amen is very appropriate and exactly amen Sadly, that's it
51:50
Speaker 2: for this week's episode of The Story of Money. Tom Thatcher,
51:53
Speaker 2: thank you so much for educating about this aspect of
51:56
Speaker 2: history we didn't know much about. Thank you for joining us.
51:59
Speaker 1: Thank you. I learned more than you did, for sure.
52:02
Speaker 1: So thank you for the opportunity.
52:04
Speaker 3: That is completely untrue, Tom. But we'll take it. It's
52:10
Speaker 3: been great to have you on the show. So thanks
52:12
Speaker 3: for that. I'm Robin Wigglesworth.
52:14
Speaker 2: And I'm Julian Tett. And we'll see you back here
52:17
Speaker 2: next week.