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I. Introduction
Missing from the canonical Gospels and out of the spotlights that have been shone on Q and the Nag Hammadi library, there exists a hardly tapped source of extracanonical sayings of Jesus (agrapha), namely, sayings (logia) attributed to Jesus quoted by church fathers, heresiologists, and others in texts originating in the earliest Christian churches. In 1889, Alfred Resch-followed shortly thereafter by James Hardy Ropes-published a landmark review of this material in Agrapha: Außercanonische Evangelienfragmente, which was revised in 1906 with the title Agrapha: Außercanonische Schriftfragmente} In this article, written over one hundred years after the publication of Resch's work, I take a closer look at logion 43 of his collection. The agraphon-"Be ye approved money changers" (...)-was not only the most frequently cited of the sayings gathered together by Resch, but it was the one that intrigued him the most. Various Christian sources refer to it many times in one form or another-though sometimes it is connected to Paul or an unnamed character in a Gospel parable and not Jesus.2 In wide-ranging orthodox, heterodox, and proto-orthodox contexts, it is always deployed analogically in relation to the practice and skill of discernment-how one determines a given text, teaching, or even leader to be authorized or approved, just as the money changer tests the authenticity of coins to avoid counterfeits. In this article, I take another look at Resch's logion 43 and reevaluate the often maligned profession of Jerusalem temple money changer. In addition to questioning a familiar narrative and assessments of this saying by scholars in more recent decades, I will argue for the prominence and meaningfulness of this metaphorical saying in the social contexts within which we encounter the earliest Christian communities.
Money changers, especially those who worked their trade at the temple in Jerusalem, have a most notorious reputation. This is evident after even a cursory review of historical (e.g., see Shakespeare's Shylock, Rembrandt's Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple [1626]) and contemporary (just Google) references to these money changers in popular Christian literature, political debates over financiers taking unseemly profits, and anti-Semitic tracts.3 As is commonly deduced from Matt 21:12; Mark 11:15; and John 2:14-15, not only did Jesus himself in an unusual moment...