Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 are selections from two discussions of the Law. In Mark 7:1-13, we find a pronouncement story in verses 1-8 and sayings in verses 9-13 concerning oral tradition. In Mark 7:14-23 we find sayings regarding purity laws, focusing upon kosher foods.
In Mark 7: 1-8, through a pronouncement story, has Jesus defining his attitude toward the subject of washing hands. The binding character of Jewish oral traditions must have been a real issue for the first decades of the church. The incident occurs in Galilee. Mark 6:56 has just said that Jesus went into the villages, where people placed the sick into his presence to receiving a healing touch. This is the scene in the marketplace when Jesus has his encounter with the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus seeks human contact with the sick and unclean in the town square; the Pharisees and scribes, on the other hand, adhere to purity laws. 1 Now the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered (συνάγονται) around him. After Jesus’ apostles return from their mission, they gather around him, telling him everything they did and taught (6:30). Mark uses the same verb as the Pharisees and scribes “gather” around Jesus. This time though, the gathering is confrontational, as the Pharisees challenge Jesus on his disciples’ behavior. This is not the first time others confronted Jesus about their behavior. Earlier, he and his disciples were eating with the wrong people (2:15-17). They eat at the wrong time (2:18-20). They eat food gathered in the wrong way (2:23-28). 2 They noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. Now, they are eating without performing the necessary rituals. The disciples are not washing their hands before they eat. This is not a question of hygiene; it is a question of defining ethnic identity and class status. In verses 3-4, Mark offers an explanatory note for his Gentile readers. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all (an exaggeration, but the practice was common) the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands[1]. Thus, they are observing the tradition of the elders. 4 They do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it. There are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) The tone of this explanation provided by Mark is hostile. Such regulations do not appear to refer to actual purity laws themselves, but rather to the hedge of traditions that had been built up around the laws in order to prevent the unintentional breaking of them. Thus, the issue under debate here is not whether Jesus' disciples are adhering to the law but whether they are following the body of tradition that had developed alongside of the law. 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live (or walk, περιπατοῦσιν) according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled (κοιναῖς) hands?” we sense that the question is not a friendly attempt at conversation, but an interrogation. The question relates to the daily practices and habits of the disciples, not just their one-time failure to wash properly. At first blush, it would seem to the casual reader that in this case the Pharisees have it right and Jesus has it wrong. They understood the importance of washing one’s hands. First, Jesus responds to the Pharisees in verses 6b-7 with a short, pithy saying from the well-known and admired prophet Isaiah. 6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as we find it written in the Septuagint in Isaiah 29:13,[2] ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ The reference to Isaiah is part of the evidence that the early church used to suggest that the Old Testament had anticipated the new movement. Jesus then applies the criticism by Isaiah to the people of God of his day to the people of God today. 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”[3] The oral law goes against divine intention. The apostles enter the dangerous realm of handing down tradition as well. The risk is always present that Christian tradition falls under the same condemnation. The danger is that in the act of human transmission people will evade the Word of God. If the human subject rejects and invalidates the Word for the tradition, another betrayal of Jesus occurs.[4]
Mark 7:14-15, 20-23 contains sayings around the theme of law on the clean and unclean. The citing of Isaiah 29:13 in Mark 7:6b-7 will become crucial in this passage.
Jesus moves from responding to the Pharisees and scribes in verses 6-13 to the crowds in Mark 7: 14-15. 14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” It would seem Jesus has gotten this wrong. In terms of basic pathology, we know that this simply is not true. Airborne viruses and bacteria introduced by our hands to our mouth or eyes can introduce disease from “outside a person” and “defile” our insides. In other words, apart from diseases that may be genetically inherited, disease visits us through the germs we inhale, bodily fluids we exchange with someone else, the smoke we breathe, the toxins we ingest and so on. The most effective way to avoid colds and flu is to rigorously wash one’s hands. Note the signs in public restrooms, particularly in restaurants, reminding that employees are required by state law to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Recall that before eating supper, your mother always asked you if you had washed your hands. And when you said, “Yes,” she followed that up with a second question: “With soap?” Yet, we need to read the text considering its first century Jewish context. The Pharisees thought that if their hands were clean, i.e., if they did everything that tradition and the Mosiac law required, God would consider them righteous. Jesus says it is not a question of the hand but of the heart. If one’s heart is pure, then one’s hands will be pure also. What defiles is that which comes from within us, from our hearts, from our very essence and nature. Such a saying is an aphorism that challenges the laws governing pollution and purity. It can apply to other forms of pollution. It challenges the everyday, the inherited, the established, and erases social boundaries taken to be sacrosanct. In saying that nothing taken into the mouth that can defile, he undermined a whole way of life. We can understand the verse following the pattern found in Hosea 6:6: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea was not calling for abolishing the sacrificial system, but that ritual subordinate itself to ethics. What Jesus is saying is that what really defiles people is not what they eat, but what they do. Since one need not take the saying literally, one can also apply it to other forms of pollution, as Mark has explained. It challenges the everyday, the inherited, the established, and erases social boundaries taken to the sacrosanct. If Jesus taught that there is nothing taken into the mouth that can define, he was undermining a whole way of life. Jesus is abrogating the Law concerning clean and unclean meats. He returns to the theme of eating and impurity, but not to the Pharisees’ original question. While the previous conversation focused on the replacement of God’s commandments by human traditions, here Jesus focuses on the food laws themselves. In Leviticus 11:43-44, we read: “You shall not make yourselves detestable with any creature that swarms; you shall not defile yourselves with them, and so become unclean. For I am the LORD your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” The laws of purity were an essential feature of Israel’s piety. Jesus’ statement, therefore, is a radical notion. However, he responds in the tradition of the prophets that challenges the practice of ritual through the practice of ethics.
Another aspect of Jesus’ interpretation concerns the existence of boundaries. Every group establishes boundaries. They can be good, especially when people create them to protect weaker people from domination by stronger ones. However, more often than not, the opposite usually happens: Boundaries function to separate the strong from the weak, protecting privilege and maintaining inequality. This kind of boundary Jesus challenges as he offers teaching on the dietary laws.
After leaving the Pharisees and scribes (verses 6-13) and the crowd (verses 14-15), Jesus and his disciples enter the house (vv. 17-23). They ask him for an explanation of what he has just said. Earlier, the disciples also asked for an explanation (compare 4:10). Then as now, Jesus questions their lack of understanding and then explains the parable to them (4:13-20; 7:18-23). He then stresses that what we eat and drink enters from outside, goes into the stomach, and then into the sewer. The food does not affect the heart. In contrast, evil thoughts and actions that proceed from the heart are what defile a person. At this point, Jesus’ quotation of Isaiah 29:13 becomes relevant. An unclean heart makes a person unclean, not the practice of eating with unwashed hands.
While not part of the reading, in verse 19, Mark offers an editorial comment: “(Thus he declared all foods clean).” The kosher diet[5] must no longer be a barrier to table fellowship with non-Jews. Mark agrees with Luke (Acts 10:9-16) and Paul (Romans 14) that Jesus and the earliest Christian communities believed in the removal of such obstacles to building community with Gentiles. While the Pharisees and scribes began with a question about following “the tradition of the elders,” there is a deeper question: Will the table be a place where they maintain boundaries? Alternatively, will the table be a place where they will welcome outsiders? His comment about all foods being clean is really an example of taking something from the life of Jesus and applying it in a different context. Although Christianity began within the Jewish community, by the time Mark wrote his gospel, it had expanded well beyond Jews into the Gentile world. The early church had to wrestle with the issue of how much of Jewish practice was to be required of Gentile Christians, and what they came up with was "not much" (see Acts 15). In fact, kosher practices sometimes made it difficult for table fellowship to happen in the early church when both Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles were present. Thus, Mark likely took this story of Jesus' comments about what actually defiled a person and "sermonized" on it. His parenthetical remark probably implied something like: "Even Jesus recognized that keeping kosher without the accompanying holiness of heart was pointless. Therefore we should not allow differing dietary practices to divide us in the church now." To say that a different way, in this incident, Jesus wasn't out to "kill" kosher practices, but instead, he identified what is truly kosher. What is truly kosher, as Leviticus 20:25 makes clear, is to be holy to the Lord, set apart for God's purposes.[6]
In verses 20-23, the lists of sins are similar to other early Christian lists, such as the one Romans 1:28-32. If it derives from Jesus, however, we could consider it the basic code of conduct for his followers, as every rabbi would offer. If so, right after Jesus sets aside kosher food laws, he suggests another content to living a kosher life. The saying suggests that the center of one’s personality that evil comes. The list is Pauline.[7] What comes out of a person is what defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication (πορνεῖαι), theft, murder, 22 adultery (πλεονεξίαι, covetous desire), avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness (ἀσέλγεια,[8] lewdness, lasciviousness and any sexual behavior that goes beyond fornication or adultery), envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Clearly, Jesus does not hate persons who do these things. If he did, he hated everyone. He identifies three types of sexual sins, fornication referring to any sex outside of marriage, adultery, and licentiousness. The last word in such a list is interesting. It seems likely that it refers to any sexual behavior not included in the first two. Jesus had a traditional Jewish view of marriage. Mark 10:1-9 is his clearest statement. The central teaching is that sex belongs only in a lifelong one-flesh relationship between a man and a woman. Jesus endorses only celibacy and committed heterosexual marriage. Thus, on sexual matters, Jesus and the Essenes have stringent standards and prohibitions. His views were those of mainstream Judaism. We need affirmation from those of the same gender that comes in a non-sexual way.[9]
Rejection of kosher rules and other purification rituals takes away the observable outward markers that separate Jews from their Gentile neighbors. It would have been quite Jewish for Jesus to insist that ethical life is as important as purity laws. Jesus took the argument a step further, however, challenging the essential nature of kosher as holiness and the ethical.[10] We also need to remember that Jesus and the early church lived with an expectation of the soon arrival of the rule of God. In that context, it would make little sense to focus upon to continue educating people regarding Jewish kosher dietary practices. Realistically, the danger in Christianity is that without clear external identity markers that distinguish it from culture, it opens the door to Christianity becoming like its culture. To put it differently, it requires prayerful discernment of the places where culture got it right and where it has gone wrong. Thus, Christianity has the potential for loving and redeeming involvement in every culture to which its missionary charge might lead it in a way that Judaism never could be.[11]
This passage raises an important question for us today. We can be grateful that what distinguishes the Christian from the world is not what they eat. The deeper issue now is how we live. One popular church song, that grew out of the Jesus movement in the 70s, has it that "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love." Well, we hope so, because we cannot count on being recognized as Christians by any daily dietary markers. Further, the love of God with all that we are and the love of the neighbor are clearly distinguishing markers. One would hope that growing in the fruit of the Spirit would be another marker. Avoiding the vices of Paul and practicing his enumerated virtues would be another marker.
[1] The Greek literally reads, "unless they wash with/by a fist." This odd expression could refer to a variety of things: the method by which the washing should take place (with a fistful of water), the amount of skin to be washed (as far as the wrist but not up to the elbow), or perhaps even the degree to which the washing should go (more thorough rather than less). The NRSV's choice of this latter option is perhaps as good as any, but the uncertainty of the phrase is nonetheless worth noting.
[2] Mark relies on the translation of Isaiah 29:13 from the Septuagint, but the point is the same in the Hebrew text.
[3] The Jesus Seminar points out that Jesus characteristically made his point by parables and aphorisms. He relied upon his insight, wisdom, and authority, rather than precise exposition of Scripture. The saying bears some resemblance to the teaching of Paul.
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2 [35.4] 482, 499.
[6] Speaking from his firsthand knowledge of Judaism, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach points out in his book Kosher Jesus that there were significant differences between the two major factions of Jews in Jesus' day -- the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In religious outlook, the Pharisees were committed to the Oral Law, a tradition that went all the way back to Moses. The Sadducees rejected the Oral Law but instead relied on literal interpretations of the Torah. The religious views of the Pharisees live on in Orthodox Judaism today, Boteach says, but there is no modern counterpart to the Sadducees. Politically, the first-century Pharisees were on the side of the common Jews and opposed to the domination of Palestine by Rome, while the Sadducees accommodated the Roman occupation and were rewarded by Rome for doing so. Boteach says the two groups were as different as "chalk and cheese."
What's more, Boteach argues that the "real" Jesus, when unearthed from the screen that gospel editors and later the apostle Paul erected in front of him, was essentially a Pharisee himself, who supported revolt against Rome. Boteach goes further, saying that Jesus indeed saw himself as the Messiah, but in the same sense that other Jews thought of the Messiah -- as one come to rescue the Jews from the oppressive yoke of Roman domination. Thus, if Jesus had a quarrel with one of the factions, it was the Sadducees, and, maintains Boteach, it was encounters with that group that originally appeared in several of the conflict stories in the gospels. But, he says, subsequent editors of the gospels "added the Pharisees in order to distance Jesus from rabbinic Judaism."
The reason this happened, Boteach hypothesizes, is the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66-70, which was violently put down by the Romans. At that point, the early Christians had to recognize that any religion based on a rabbi who was anti-Rome had no chance of succeeding and would be dangerous to its adherents. So at that point, the editors of the gospels began to change Jesus' statements, turning him from a political person into someone only interested in spiritual and ethical matters. And in the same move, the anti-Rome Pharisees had to be portrayed in a bad light.
There are further ramifications of this line of thought, but that is enough for our purposes here.
[7] For the Jesus Seminar, verses 20-23 are too much like other lists of virtues and vices, such as in Romans 1:28-32. The Pauline character of the list requires a later date of composition of these verses that the life of Jesus. For them, the list spiritualizes and thus softens the previous reference to bodily defecation. For them, an allegorical interpretation of a saying or parable of Jesus is typical of the unfolding tradition.
[8] The basic meaning is shocking behavior that goes way over the line. Plutarch uses the word for men who deliberately vomit at dinner and pooped on their chairs. Demosthenes uses it for men who dumped chamberpots on their host. More often, however, it refers to shocking sexual behavior. A maser has sex with his slave in public at a party. A soldier waves his penis at a crowd in Jerusalem. InTestament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Jews the word for unrestrained fornication, incest, pederasty, and bestiality. II Peter 2:2, 2:7, 2:18 links it to the sin of Sodom. We find it in Jude 4 to those who twist the grace of God. In Galatians 5:19 it is one of the works of the flesh. It tops the list of objectionable pagan behaviors in I Peter 4:3. It compares with uncleanness in Ephesians 4:19. Melito, in On the Passover, describes its ultimate examples as father cohabiting with his child, son with his mother, brother with sister, and male with male. - Tom Hobson, “What Does Jesus Say About Homosexual Behavior?” Biblical Words & World, May 3, 2018.
[9] Tom Hobson, “What Does Jesus Say About Homosexual Behavior?” Biblical Words & World, May 3, 2018.
[10] Commentator Pheme Perkins points out how Mark's comment brought this fact to the wider church: "Rejection of kosher rules and other purification rituals takes away the observable outward markers that separate Jews from their Gentile neighbors. A Jewish teacher might insist that the moral virtues in Jesus' list are just as important as kosher rules and that both are central to Jewish identity. External rules remind Jews that they are different from other nations. Mark's generalization makes a claim about the Christian community as a whole."
[11] "We can understand why Mark did not regard aspects of Jewish practice as essential: He believed that the apocalypse was imminent. ... It would be natural to ask why Gentiles should learn daily identity reminders from Judaism when they would not need them long. Mark, however, could have developed a theological rationale for such a position without libeling the Pharisees and scribes.
"When the apocalypse did not occur, the church was left without a tradition of daily identity markers as powerful as those of Judaism. Consequently, the church has been more susceptible than Judaism to make compromises with culture. The Christian community might well consider recovering aspects of Jewish practice."
--Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson, Preaching the Gospels Without Blaming the Jews (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 148. [Clearly, I disagree with the concluding suggestion.]
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