re: #298 mmmirele

Origen (2nd century) is the first to comment on the passage: he denies historicity and interprets it as metaphorical, where the Temple is the soul of a person freed from earthly things thanks to Jesus. On the contrary, John Chrysostom (v. 391) defended the historical authenticity of this passage, but if he considered that Jesus had used the whip against the merchants in addition to the other beasts, he specified that it was to show his divinity and that Jesus was not to be imitated.
Theodore of Mopsuestia (in 381) - who answered, during the First Council of Constantinople, to the bishop Rabbula, accused of striking his clerics and to justify himself by the purification of the Temple - and Cosmas Indicopleustes (v. 550) supported that the event is non-violent and historical: Jesus whips sheep and bulls, but speaks only to merchants and only overturns their tables.
Augustine of Hippo (v. 398-401) was the first great theologian to comment on this passage to justify the use of violence by Christians. Petilian of Constantine, Donatist bishop of Cirta, supported a non-violent Christianity, and reproached Catholic Christianity for transgressing this non-violence. The Bishop of Hippo answered him by interpreting the purification of the temple as a moment when Jesus was persecutor of the merchants of the temple. According to Alexis-Baker, it is by the importance of Augustine that his interpretation was followed by the Christians to justify an ever increasing violence.
Gregory VII (in 1075), quoting Gregory the Great, relies on this passage to justify his policy against the simonic clergy, compared to the merchants. Other medieval Catholic figures will do the same, such as Bernard of Clairvaux who preached the crusade, claiming that fighting the “pagans” with the same zeal that Jesus displayed against the merchants was a way of salvation.
During the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin (in 1554), in the line of Augustine of Hippo and the Gregories, defended himself by using (among other things) the purification of the temple, when he was accused of having helped to burn Michael Servetus alive, theologian who denied the divinity of Jesus.
Alexis-Baker indicates that, while the majority of English-speaking Bibles include humans, sheep and cattle in the lashes, the original text is more complex, and after grammatical analysis, he concludes that the text does not describe a violent act of Jesus against the merchants.