And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.
— John 2:15–16
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
— Matthew 21:12–13
"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
— James 5:1-6
So funny story about this. Anyone ever notice that the same thing happens with Paul in one of the letters?
So Paul is recorded in a letter getting a fragrant offering gift for himself.
Decades later in Mark, a gospel that positions Paul as being the inheritor of sitting at Jesus’s right hand (beyond this comment but happy to go into, also see Dykstra’s Mark, Canonizer of Paul), there’s a scene where “some say” a fragrant good should be sold to the poor rather than personally used and Jesus chastises them. (In Luke the complainer is instead Judas. You don’t want to be like Judas, do you?)
Kind of like how Paul in 1 Cor 9 argues with the preexisting church in Corinth that he should be allowed to personally profit off ministering, at odds with Jesus instructing people going about ministering not to carry a purse (can’t collect money).
But fortunately for the church at the last supper in Luke he explicitly says “remember when I said not to carry a purse? Let’s 180° that.” A passage that’s missing in Marcion’s version of Luke (likely the earliest surviving copy).
So I wouldn’t be so sure a historical Jesus would have been okay so much as Paul and the profiteering that followed him would have been okay with it.
Pretty sure Paul is using “fragrant offering” metaphorically there. He uses the same phrases to describe Christ in Ephesians 5, and both call back to burnt offerings giving a “pleasing aroma” in the OT. The shift from plural “gifts” to singular “sacrifice” further supports this interpretation.
Possibly, but keep in mind for the analysis to be plausible it only requires that first century writers with access to the Epistles would have been interpreting his accepting personal gifts in the context of a fragrant offering for the scene of Jesus rebuking the criticism of personal use of a fragrant gift as opposed to selling it and giving it to the poor to be connected to Paul.
What Paul actually meant or didn’t mean isn’t at issue. Only whether or not his comment there would have resulted in contemporary criticisms (something we know Paul was receiving given Romans 3:8), whether or not there would have been pushback against Paul’s personal benefiting (something we can see him already responding to in 1 Cor 9), and whether or not that would have prompted a parallel anecdote being composed in the context of the founder’s behaviors and instructions.