I’m not seeing a judgment on the Temple in Mark. The fig tree story isn’t about the Temple; in the Old Testament a fig tree is repeatedly a figure for Israel, not for the Temple. It indicates that the time of Israel’s “bearing fruit” is coming to an end. Th cleansing of the Temple is not a condemnation of the Temple; to the contrary, it is an affirmation of the Temple against those who were misusing it by cutting off access by Gentiles via using the area that was set apart for them as a marketplace.
Sure there was: that area was designated as the Court of the Gentiles. Whether or not anyone had ever allowed it to be used that way is irrelevant; by turning it into a marketplace they had ruined a visual lesson the Temple conveyed: the Court of the Gentiles wrapped all the way around the Court of Israel (which included the Court of Women), thus portraying Israel’s position as the spiritual center of the world and its task of bringing blessing to all the other nations. In fact the total area of the Court of the Gentiles was greater than the area of all the rest, which itself was a message – but filled with merchandise, the message was subverted/perverted.
He wasn’t judging the Temple, He was judging its misuse and those who had established that misuse.
The destruction of the Temple in Mark’s presentation is a consequence of judgment on those in charge of it, not on the Temple itself. This matches the parable that follows, of the vineyard (Israel; cf. Isaiah 5) and the wicked tenants; the vineyard isn’t judged, just the tenants.
Well, yes – He was pissed that the “guest room” in His Dad’s House wasn’t being used for the intended guests. As the Heir, Jesus acted on His Dad’s behalf to clear the guest room.
In Mark that reads as a forecast; there’s no indication it was about judgment.
Listeners would not have missed the connection to the Temple as God’s House and likely would have made the connection that the leaders were “devouring” it as well.
That’s pretty clear from the Greek. The phrase “τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ”, literally “the mountain this (one)”. But it’s also a play on a common phrase used by rabbis to compliment a teacher’s stature/wisdom, “he removes (or, “is a remover of”) mountains”. Jesus would have been understood as saying that the least of His disciples had the same stature as the great rabbis.
Jesus is riffing off Isaiah 5; He uses almost the exact same opening words. Now at that point the idea of judging the Temple might come in since in Isaiah the vineyard itself gets torn down, but Isaiah is clear that this judgment is not on the land but on the Israelites who were to have produced “fine fruit” (justice and righteousness). If the Isaiah parable is applied, though, the judgment is on the whole House of Israel.
But in Jesus’ version the vineyard isn’t destroyed, which would have gotten His hearers buzzing because they would have known the Isaiah parable quite well – in His version, it’s the tenants that get destroyed and the vineyard is preserved. The leaders recognized this, since it says " they perceived that he had told the parable against them".
