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Exerpted from a lecture I delivered to a Biblical Histry class as a teaching intern:
Now, in order to imagine the scene this must have created, you have to understand the physicality of Jesus. He was a Palestinian Arab, who probably stood on the tall side of the 5'4-5'6 height-range of the time. He would have been muscled like an ox, having spent the last fifteen or so years working as a carpenter with simple hand tools. He was a Gallileean, which meant he wasn't too well-thought-of by "polite" Jerusalem society. Worse yet, he was known to be several different kinds of a radical.
Imagine, if you will, a brawny Mexican carpenter barging into, say, the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, or the Sistine chapel, with a 20lb sldgehammer. Or, for a more neighborly tone, the First Baptist Church fundraising bazaar. He's shouting at the top of his lungs in Spanish and English, knocking over tables and souvenir stands and artwork, scattering all before him, and he's so pumped up with fury that people are tripping and stumbling trying to get out of his way. In the play "Cotton Patch Gospel," Jesus does just such a thing, after borrowing a sledgehammer froma nearby construction site and using it to break down the door.
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