How many times did Jesus cleanse the temple?

Answer 1

One could assume that Jesus cleansed the temple twice, as the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) describe this as occurring at the very end of the mission of Jesus, as the event that triggered his arrest, while John's Gospel describes it as happening at the very beginning of the mission of Jesus, with the resurrection of Lazarus as the trigger for the arrest of Jesus.

Although John's Gospel is now known to have been inspired by Luke's Gospel, the author chose not to follow his source as closely as the author of Luke had followed Mark. As a result, the 'cleansing of the temple' was not the only episode that John depicts at a different point in time, compared to the other gospels. John narrated an episode in which the risen Jesus appeared to the fishermen beside the Sea of Tiberias and, casting their nets on the other side, they caught so many fish that they could not bring them all in (John 21:1-14). This is really a repetition of the miracle catch of fish described by Luke as an event which took place at the same spot during Jesus' life (Luke 5:1-11). Whereas the synoptic gospels say that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover feast, John's Gospel says that Jesus was crucified on the very day of the Passover feast.

The original gospel, Mark's Gospel, has Jesus repeatedly call upon those whom he healed not to tell any one about him, making it extremely unlikely that he would have drawn so much attention to himself right at the start of his mission. And we know that when the priests finally decided to arrest Jesus, they did not know who he was and needed Judas Iscariot to point him out - yet if Jesus had already caused a great commotion in the temple, we can be sure that the religious authorities knew him quite well by the time of his final journey to Jerusalem.

There is no good reason to believe that Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers and 'cleansed the temple' more than once, if at all.