Note 25 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES.

But allowing to these divergencies their full weight, the agreement between the two narratives preponderates. We have in both the same abuse, the same violent mode of checking it, by casting out (ἐκβάλλειν) the people, and overthrowing (ἀναστρέφειν) the tables; nay, virtually, the same language in justification of this procedure, for in John, as well as in the other gospels, the words of Jesus contain a reference, though not a verbally precise one, to Isa. lvi. 7; Jer. vii. 11. These important points of resemblance must at least extort such an admission as that of Sieffert,25 namely, that the two occurrences, originally but little alike, were assimilated by tradition, the features of the one being transferred to the other. But thus much seems clear; the synoptists know as little of an earlier event of this kind, as in fact of an earlier visit of Jesus to Jerusalem: and the fourth Evangelist seems to have passed over the purification of the temple after the last entrance of Jesus into the metropolis, not because he presumed it to be already known from the other gospels, but because he believed that he must give an early date to the sole act of the kind with which he was acquainted. If then each of the Evangelists knew only of one purification of the temple, we are not warranted either by the slight divergencies in the description of the event, or by the important difference in its chronological position, to suppose that there were two; since chronological differences are by no means rare in the gospels, and are quite natural in writings of traditional origin. It is therefore with justice that our most modern interpreters have, after the example of some older ones, declared themselves in favour of the identity of the two histories.26