Smoodock's Blog

Authority is a very sensitive matter. Who has authority? The state claims authority over much of our lives. Some consider that they intrude upon matters they should not, that some personal things shouldn’t interest the state. In America it is claimed that the ordinary citizen has certain inalienable rights, or put another way, we have inalienable authority over certain matters. A case in point would be we have personal authority over our faith. The state has no right or authority to intrude upon that personal authority, unless we abuse it by intruding ourselves upon the personal rights or authority of another person. Authority has always been a sticky matter, and Luke tells us of the suspicion of the Jewish authorities over the claims Jesus was making against them in matters dealing with authority.

On one of the days in which Jesus taught in the Temple, a few days before he was crucified, the Jewish authorities came upon (G2186) him. The Greek word can have the sense of assaulting a person or a place (e.g. Acts 17:5), so the manner in which the authorities came upon Jesus may carry the sense of intimidation, perhaps surrounding him and menacing him with fingers to the chest or pushing at him.

The authorities who came upon Jesus were chief priests, scribes and elders. These three groups of men represent the parties that made up the Sanhedrin, the high court of the Jewish nation. They may very well have been envoys sent out by the council to question Jesus. Their question, may even have been formulated by the council, itself, in an effort to charge Jesus with a crime. That they had authority to arrest Jesus is seen in verse-19, where these men would have “laid hands upon him” at that time and take him into custody, but they feared the people, who supposed Jesus was a prophet.

The question the envoys put to Jesus was “By what authority (he) had done these things, and who gave (him) that authority” (Luke 20:2).The high council didn’t give Jesus any authority, and they were the authorities of the land. Jesus was neither accredited by any group of Jews with any authority,[1] nor had he attended any of the rabbinical schools (cf. John 7:15). Rather, it seems Jesus’ only education came from his parents, teaching him to read the scriptures (cf. 2Timothy 3:15).

So, what things are inferred in this question? First of all, the Sanhedrin wanted to know by what authority Jesus taught in the Temple, and, secondly, who gave him that authority. This was the immediate context of the question, but it also pointed to Jesus’ casting the buyers and sellers and the money changers out of the Temple, a thing the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem allowed. Moreover, why was he continually entering the city, each day, riding on a donkey’s colt, accompanied by praises from his disciples implying he was Israel’s King? The first was a theological question most likely handled by the Pharisees and scribes. The second concerned a direct confrontation with the Temple authorities (the chief priests) who permitted those men, whom Jesus cast out of the Temple, to carry on their business within the Temple court. The final question concerned the authority of the state, which, during the first century AD, would have inferred Jesus had a dispute with Roman authority.

In other words, these Jewish authorities were implying Jesus had no authority, nor could he have any, because no known authority had given him any right to do the things he had been doing. Nevertheless, although Jesus had no credentials, Isaiah 55:1-13 claims one needs no money to come to the table of God to eat. Jesus taught the people freely and they ate freely. No need for money or credentials. Jesus taught publicly for all to hear, question and contradict. He did nothing in secret that was not done in public. Therefore, theologically, the Jewish authorities had no right to detain him, and as for his casting out the profiteers from the Temple compound, the Jewish authorities permitted these men there, breaking their own laws concerning respect for the Temple, so they had no right to detain him for doing the things he did. Finally, later it was proved that Rome found Jesus innocent of any charges of conspiracy against Rome, so the Jewish authorities were wrong about that charge as well. In other words, they were intimidating Jesus simply because they disagreed with him, and he didn’t allow them to profit from their corruption.

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[1] See Acts 22:3 where Paul claimed he was a disciple of Gamaliel, a famous rabbi of the 1^st century AD.