re: #197 Mattand

I’m partial to Numbers 22 and 23: it features a talking donkey and no one bats a frigging eyelash that a donkey just starts talking out of nowhere.

For extra fun, imagine the donkey with Eddie Murphy’s voice, a la Shrek.

Going back to Matthew for a second, once I got old enough to start actually learning and thinking, damned if I could see what was so wrong with the money changers at the temple. Jerusalem was an international city with travelers arriving from all over the Mediterranean world and even beyond. They carried currencies of probably three dozen kinds, and maybe only three were negotiable locally. Changing money was a necessary and important service, and the temple was the logical place to do it. It was central and convenient, everybody knew where it was, and the seat of civil government, the Roman governor’s palace, wasn’t likely to be opened up to this kind of exchange. What was the big deal?