Here’s the thing, up to this point, he hadn’t really had violent outbursts before. He’d been weirdly distant and cold sometimes, but overall you could chalk that up to the general weirdness of being an instrument of the divine. But he did have a reputation for just noping the fuck out when he wanted some space. So instead, imagine them looking for him for hours or days, combing the city, wondering if he’d said something too prophet-y at a Roman and got himself arrested. And then he shows up with a handmade cat-o’-nine-tails, says “lads, follow me, I’m about to start some shit,” and he starts marching back into downtown.
Now here’s the thing. There were in fact loads of “messiahs” wandering around Israel at that time. Israel was chafing under Roman rule, and cults and extremists are easy to organize when people are desperate. (This is ultimately why the Pharisees were always so wary of him, because they’d met three other messiahs this week alone, and questioning such claims was literally their job.) There were multiple resistors and militias organized to oppose Roman rule, and there’s evidence to suggest that several of the disciples were members of such groups. It’s been posited by some Biblical scholars that Judas’ betrayal was an attempt to force Jesus into a more aggressive posture, to make Jesus become a leader in the rebellion and a more literal “King of the Jews.” (It’s also suggested that Judas didn’t really exist at all, and his betrayal was symbolically added later as a metaphor for the perceived “betrayal” of Jesus by Judea, aka yet another way for Christianity to demonize the Jewish people. The betrayal story doesn’t appear in several of the earliest copies of the gospel texts.) My point with all that is, Jesus shows up with a whip looking ready to start a riot, and there were bound to be at least some of the disciples eager to get started. Cheering him on, getting improvised weapons themselves, ready to throw the fuck down. And then he starts beating people up in the temple, and they’re just like wtf man, the Romans are over that way.
Because that’s the other thing, the money changers were supposed to be there. The temple was a pilgrimage site for Jews all over the Roman world. The money changers were there in the outer court as a service to the pilgrims, to change foreign currencies into the local currency so people could do things like pay tithes at the temple, or buy sacrificial animals, since you couldn’t bring a fucking sheep with you all the way from Spain or wherever. They were there with the permission of the rabbis specifically because it was an important service to offer pilgrims. And then Jesus decides that money changing in the temple is a problem, and one he should solve with violence.
It’s an absolutely wild story given the historical context, and Jesus is not really the good guy in it.
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