transactions were carried on, to the taking undue advantage of the poor people who came
to offer their sacrifices. Thus we read,29 that on one occasion the price of a couple of
pigeons was run up to the enormous figure of a gold denar (a Roman gold denar, about
15s. 3d.), when, through the intervention of Simeon, the grandson of the great Hillel, it
was brought down before night to a quarter of a silver denar, or about 2d. each. Since
Simeon is represented as introducing his resolve to this effect with the adjuration, 'by the
Temple,' it is not unfair to infer that these prices had ruled within the sacred enclosure. It
was probably not merely controversial zeal for the peculiar teaching of his master
Shammai, but a motive similar to that of Simeon, which on another occasion induced
Baba ben Buta (well kno wn as giving Herod the advice of rebuilding the Temple), when
he found the Temple-court empty of sacrificial animals, through the greed of those who
had 'thus desolated the House of God,' to bring in no less than three thousand sheep, so
that the people might offer sacrifices.30 31
23. Comp. 'The Temple and its Services, &c.,' pp. 118, 119.
24. Jer. Taan iv. 8.
25. M. Derenbourg (Histoire de Palest., p. 467) holds that these s hops were kept by
priests, or at any rate that the profits went to them. But I cannot agree with him that these
were the Chanuyoth , or shops, of the family of Annas, to which the Sanhedrin migrated
forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. See farther on.
26. Sanh. 5 b.
27. Bekhor. iv. 5.
28. It is certain that this Temple -market could not have been 'on both sides of the Eastern
Gate - the gate Shushan - as far as Solomon's Porch' (Dr. Farrar). If it had been on both
sides of this gate, it mu st have been in Solomon's Porch. But this supposition is out of the
question. There would have been no room there for a market, and it formed the principal
access into the Sanctuary. The Temple -market was undoubtedly somewhere in the 'Court
of the Gentiles .'
29. Ker. i. 7.
30. Jerus. Chag. 78 a.
31. It is, however, quite certain that Baba ben Buta had not 'been the first to introduce'
(Dr. Farrar) this traffic. A perusal of Jer. Chag. 78 a shows this sufficiently.
This leads up to another question, most important in this connection. The whole of this
traffic - money-changing, selling of doves, and market for sheep and oxen - was in itself,
and from its attendant circumstances, a terrible desecration; it was also liable to gross
abuses. But was there about the time of Christ anything to make it specially obnoxious
and unpopular? The priesthood must always have derived considerable profit from it - of
course, not the ordinary priests, who came up in their 'orders' to minister in the Temple,
but the permanent priestly officials, the resident leaders of the priesthood, and especially
the High-Priestly family. This opens up a most interesting inquiry, closely connected, as
we shall show, with Christ's visit to the Temple at this Passover. But the materials here at
our command are so disjointed, that, in attempting to put them together, we can only
suggest what seems most probable, not state what is absolutely certain. What became of
the profits of the money-changers, and who were the real owners of the Temp le- market?