Hi everyone. Welcome back to daily gospel exegesis. Our goal here, as always, is to do a really solid

academic exegesis of the literal sense of the text of today's gospel reading.

So if you went to Mass today, you would hear this reading from Matthew chapter 21 versus 23 to

27. So we'll read it out and then we'll have a go at working through it verse by verse.

Jesus had gone into the temple and was teaching when the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and said,

What authority have you for acting like this? And who gave you this authority?

Jesus replied,

I will ask you a question, only one. If you tell me the answer to it, I will then tell you

my authority for acting like this. John's baptism, where did it come from? Heaven or man?

And they argued it out this way amongst themselves. If we say from heaven, he will retort, then why did you

refuse to believe him? But if we say from man, we have the people to fear, for they all hold

that John was a prophet. So their reply to Jesus was, we do not know. And he retorted, nor will I tell you my authority for acting like this.

So let's start by setting the scene here.

What's the context?

So it's the last week of Jesus' life.

By now, Jesus has already cleansed the temple and he's cursed the fig tree.

And we're starting at verse 23. It says Jesus had gone into the temple and he's cursed the fig tree. And we're starting at verse 23. It says Jesus had

gone into the temple and was teaching. Now it was common for Jewish rabbis to go into the temple

and teach and anyone could come and listen to them. Popular rabbis would attract quite a large

crowd at the temple in Jerusalem. And remember this particular scene is during Passover, so there will be

lots and lots of people around. We know that Jesus spent a lot of his final week here in the temple.

In fact, in the gospel of Matthew, he spends a long time dialoguing with the Pharisees. In this final

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