Jacob, I agree that collaboration between the priesthood and
the domination system, the Herodian and Roman hierarchies, is likely to
have been part of the problem that Jesus confronted in the temple. But
it still seems to me that the basic thrust of his words and action in
the temple is not against Rome but against corrupt Israel. I don’t have
Brueggemann’s book so I can’t comment on that; but I don’t really see
where Borg and Crossan in The Last Week make the
incident specifically an anti-imperialist protest. They conclude
basically: ‘Jesus’ action in the temple was a symbolic fulfillment of
Jeremiah’s prophetic threat about its divine destruction if worship
substituted for justice’ (52).

The point of Jeremiah’s ‘den of robbers’ saying is that the
Jews act as robbers (‘you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear
falsely, burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods that you have
not known’) and then treat the temple as a ‘den’, a place of refuge and
safety. For this reason God will destroy the temple just as he
destroyed the northern sanctuary at Shiloh (Jer. 7:8-15). So Jesus’
argument is parallel: the Jews and in particular their leaders act
wickedly, imagining that they are protected by the sacrificial system;
but God will destroy the temple. Where is the express anti-imperialist
message in this? Jeremiah actually encouraged submission
to the Babylonians rather than opposition, as even Borg and
Crossan note (47).

Borg and Crossan also put forward the intriguing argument that
Jesus made a ‘peasant procession’ into Jerusalem on the same day that
Pilate made an imperial procession into Jerusalem (2-5). It’s a shame
they give no evidence for these events being on the same day.
I like the idea, but I still doubt that it indicates an expressly
anti-imperialist intent. Jesus no doubt believed himself to be enacting
the coming of YHWH as king to Jerusalem to liberate his people from
political-military oppression (cf. Zech. 9:8-10). But to suggest that
this symbolized a peasant revolt against an unjust imperial domination
system seems to me to be politicizing the event in the wrong way. At
issue is who reigns over Israel - and then what happens when God comes
to reign over his people. To characterize the entry into Jerusalem as
‘an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the
conquering emperor entering a city on horseback through gates opened in
abject submission’ seems to me at best the wrong focus. For Luke at
least the journey into Jerusalem culminates in the explicit prospect of
the overthrow of Jerusalem, not of Rome (Lk. 19:41-44).