I would say that is a hard yes. What comes to mind is the scene in the Temple, the symbolic destruction of the Temple. This would have been a direct slight to the Jewish leaders.
As a bit of background, during Passover, or really any time an offering was going to be made at the Temple, there was need for unblemished animals to sacrifice. You could try to bring such an animal with you, but the likely hood of it becoming tainted was high. That and it added additional stress to those traveling. If you’re walking for days to get to Jerusalem, bringing a sacrificial animal with you is going to be cumbersome, not only because of the size of the animal, but because of the extra resources you will need to feed that animal as well. And if on the trip something happens, the animal dies, gets eaten, or injured, you’re out of luck.
So, a system was put into place where vendors could sell acceptable sacrificial animals right at the Temple. This wasn’t in the Temple proper, but just outside. It was a system that was needed in order for many to participate in the activities centered around the Temple. One can see it as a necessary evil, as there was some abuse there as well, such as charging too much.
Because of the need for sacrificial animals, there also became a need for money changers. In order to buy a sacrificial animal, you needed to do it with coinage that didn’t portray an idol. Roman currency featured the Emperor as god, so it wasn’t suitable. Money changers took Roman currency and exchanged it for suitable currency, which came at a slight price.
This activity was needed for many to participate, and it was sanctioned by the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. Jesus entering into the Temple, and “cleansing” or “destroying” it was a clear message to the leadership that the end was near and a new perfect temple would soon arise.
E.P. Sanders, in his book, Jesus and Judaism, really delves deep into this narrative. His work is a bit dated, but the basic ideas he laid out about the practices as a whole, are largely accepted. I personally like Sanders conclusion, that the actions in the Temple were not a cleansing, but a symbolic destruction, and later evangelists just reinterpreted the actions. I believe this is probably the more correct reading, but there has been debate surrounding that.
Just to clear some things up as I didn’t really finish my thought completely there. So, throughout the Gospels, we get a picture of Jesus as being nonviolent. He preaches a nonviolent message. But every so often we get a picture that disagrees with that. For instance, when Jesus curses a fig tree (in context, Jesus is getting angry at a fig tree for not producing figs when it isn’t supposed to. Which makes the story weird, unless it belongs to a larger idea. Here, it is probably in reference to the Temple, as the story of the fig tree, in Mark, really sandwiches the incident at the Temple).
The incident in the Temple is also rather violent. John’s Gospel makes it more violent with the suggestion that maybe Jesus was even whipping people (that point is debated, but has produced some great articles referencing Jesus as a Whippersnapper). Either way though, it shows Jesus as violent, and as framed, it appears, as Sanders argues, and many scholars are now supporting, that Jesus was combining actions with a teaching, which represented a symbolic destruction of the Temple. Much of his teaching here actually comes from OT prophets, such as Jeremiah (such as the phrase den of robbers).
As I said though, the Gospels writers seemed to want to portray Jesus as nonviolent, and there is a really good reason for that. John Dominic Crossan goes over this quite a bit in his book, The Historical Jesus (or Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography for a shorter and more accessible read). To portray Jesus as violent would have been detrimental to the later movement. Christians (or Jewish-Christians to begin with) had to walk a fine line. Their leader had just been killed as a criminal against Rome. Their leader was preaching a message that seemed in opposition of Rome, and a message that was promising the destruction of Rome, in exchange for the Kingdom of God. This put the early followers in an awkward position, as it put them at risk of also being killed or persecuted by the Roman authority. So, we see a movement among the evangelists (and later Christian writers) to strip away a lot of more violent ideas, and to portray Rome as a whole in a more positive light (taking the blame from the Romans).
And that is what the evangelists do here as well. The whole thing is portrayed as more of an outburst (when it was probably a planned demonstration), but the actions and teachings are largely separate there. Instead of really focusing on the apocalyptic view that Jesus is pushing, the evangelists focus more on the idea that the Temple needed to be cleansed. That Jesus was clearing the temple of wrong doers (even though historically speaking, they were important factors in how the Temple worked).
To put it a different way, the evangelists ignore the fact that these coin changers, and vendors for sacrificial animals were needed for the Temple to function. They also ignore that they weren’t in the temple proper, but in the massive court for the Gentiles. Instead, they make it seem as if these individuals were doing something wrong, something that defiled the Temple. And because of that, he became indignant, and chased them away. They take the fight out of the incident, and portray it as a needed cleansing of a temple that had been defiled.
What Sanders, and others now have done (Borg and Crossan, in their book, the Last Week, present a great overview of this), is look at the entire context of the situation. They recognize how the Temple would have functioned, and that the money changers and other vendors were needed, and didn’t defile the Temple as they were outside of the Temple proper. They also place more emphasis on Jesus being a Jew, and thus look at his possible influences, such as the prophets of the OT. They then combine the teaching of Jesus, with his actions, and looking it as a whole, see it as a symbolic destruction of the Temple.
That Jesus had such a view that the Temple would be destroyed, or needed to be destroyed, is fully inline with Jewish views as well. Jeremiah appears to have preached such, and Jesus does quote from Jeremiah. We also see this sort of view in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was a way to completely sanctify the Temple. Or, as Bart Erhman suggests in Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millennium, it may have been that Jesus didn’t think there would be a need for a Temple in the Kingdom of God, and thus was portraying that through an enacted parable.
Either way though, the message Jesus was sending was loud and clear. In the Gospels, this is a turning point, where it is said that the Sadducees and Scribes then wanted to find a way to kill Jesus. And at this time, the Sadducees were really the ruling elite within Judaism.
