What was the importance of the Temple in the life of the Jewish people in the first century?

Question

Why would Jesus have considered cleansing the Temple so important?

Answer 1

Just like today, the Temple was the social and religious center of the Jewish community.  Back then, it also made most of the laws among Jewish people.  If the Temple was corrupt, then it would also corrupt society as a whole.

Answer 2

Well, the Temple was the center for Jewish religious life.  It's where the animal sacrifices took place.  It's where the priests worked and where the Ark of the Covenant was located.  And it was a huge complex, not just one building.

For information on the Temple, try the site listed below, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

I have no idea why Jesus would have considered anything about the Temple.  His turning over the table of the money-changers was the equivalent to looting a money-exchange office... very strange of him.

** Just a note about Luthien's comment:  the Temple, or the people in it, did not create the laws of G-d.  Those are found in the Tanakh (holy scriptures).  For a list of the 613 laws: http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

Answer 3

I cannot imagine why someone would give a thumbs down to Kathy's correct answer.

I am going to copy-paste a brief portion from a great web site that may help you with understanding many of the key differences between Judaism and Christianity.

"The centrality of the animal sacrifices ceased, not with the second destruction of the Temple by the Romans, but rather with the first destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. Please remember that the vast majority of Jews never returned to the Promised Land under Cyrus of Persia. They remained in Babylonia. By the time Jesus was born, eighty percent of the world's Jewish community lived outside of the Promised Land, and could not have cared less about the cessation of the animal sacrifices. When the Temple was reestablished, the Jews of Babylonia made an annual financial gift for the maintenance of the Temple, and the land, but never worried that God was not going to forgive them their sins without a blood sacrifice, just as Diaspora Jews do today. And the reason why they had no such fear, was that the Bible makes it explicitly clear that no blood sacrifice is necessary for the forgiveness of sins, or that the exclusive means for the God-man relationship was through the animal sacrifices."

Now back to my own words.  

For the pilgrims who ahad traveled a long distance to come to the Temple, exchanging to the local currency in order to purchase the flour, spices or animals for sacrifice was a well established and needed service.  

Money changers that may have not given fair exchange would be dishonoring the covenant.  To throw such dishonest dealings out of the Temple courtyard would be a service to all.   It may also be noted that the money exchanging at that time went on in the Court of Gentiles and many of the money changers and merchants were Gentiles. This appears to be forgotten sometimes by antisemites who also forget that Gentiles often prayed there and sacrificed there, too.

Gentile and Jewish pilgrims could exchange their foreign coinage for the appropriate local currency there also in order to purchase food and lodging.

Of course, sacrifice wasn't the most important thing that the Gentiles and Jews did at the Temple.

"As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name -- for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm -- when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel and may know that this house I have built bears your Name. [I Kings 8:41-43]

According to Mark 11:16, Jesus then then stopped people from carrying any merchandise through the Temple.  That would  have entirely disrupted all the services, and there is NO record in any Jewish writing of any such disruption of Temple proceedings.  Not uintil the Romans sacked the Temple did the daily offerings cease.  So, during the lifetime of Jesuis, there is no record in any Jewish writing that such an interruption of service occurred.

Prior to the lifetime of Jesus, and because so many Jews lived far from the Temple sacrificial system, Jews had questioned and challenged the whole system as Jesus appears to be doing.

With what shall I come before the Eternal and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Eternal be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Eternal require of you? Only to do Justice, and to love Mercy and to walk humbly with your God. [Micah 6:6-8]

Answer 4

The Temple is the center of Jewish life and culture.