There is more than one Greek Word for Temple (same with Hebrew), most New Testament references use one of two main ones.
Naos is a word that arguably strictly speaking would for The Jerusalem Temple refer only to the Building that contains The Holy Place and Holy of Holies, but maybe extended to include the Inner Court where the Brazen Altar is.
Heiron however is a much broader term, it could refer to a very large religious complex, and in The context of The Jerusalem Temple I strongly suspect was applied to the entire Temple Mount, Haram Al Sharif.
Every reference to the location of The Cleansing of The Temple uses Hieron, Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 2:14, each use Hieron. The only use of Naos in any of these Chapters is when John 2 later refers to the Body of Jesus.
This is important because when you know the details of how this whole area worked in The First Century, the context of what Jesus is doing makes clear he is nowhere near even The Inner Court.
The place where these kinds of financial translations went on, exchanging money and buying Animals to be Sacrificed, was at the Royal Stoa (Not to be confused with Solomon’s Porch) which was part of Herod Southern Expansion of The Temple Mount.
Where this is on the modern Map Jerusalem is the Silver Domed Al Aqsa Mosque. Muslims Usage did and sometimes still does use Al Aqsa for the entire Temple Mount and specifically The Dome of The Rock, but function wise the Golden Domed building is a Shrine while the proper Mosque is the Silver Domed structure on the Southern End of the Mount.
Now I have come to agree that the Dome of The Rock is where The Temple was at least in terms of Latitude. So it’s notable here that the Royal Stoa wasn’t just south of that but very far south, one alternate Temple location theory suggests you could rebuild The Temple between the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of The Rock without touching either.
This distinction is lost on the way many weaponize this narrative for modern purposes. I’m a Leftist who fully supported the Minnesota Protestors, but no, interrupting an actual Church Service is not equivalent to what Jesus did when he cleansed The Temple. The Cleansing of The Temple is more equivalent to disturbing a business venture a Church is doing on land it owns on a different block.
But I’m not really offended by Leftist trying to make that point. What’s more troublesome is when a Conspiracy Theorist tries to use the fact that Jesus wasn’t arrested immediately to prove He must have been working for The Romans or something.
Even if what Jesus did was a direct disruption of the main operations of The Temple, the simple fact that He was popular with the people, had large crowds of supporters, was enough reason for the authorities to be hesitant to take action right away, especially since this was during a Pilgrimage festival. There is text in The Gospels (chiefly Matthew 26) telling us they even later in the week still wanted to wait till after the Festival was over, but Jesus forced their hand when He revealed to Judas that He knew what they were planning.
But on top of that based on what I just showed this was definitely still a very big deal, even viewed as sacrilegious by many, but it likely didn’t actually disrupt the overall business that much, once Jesus was done they set the tables back up and got right back to business.
So it wasn’t worth making the commotion worse by arresting one of the most popular people in the Province while the city is at its most crowded.
