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Jesus and the Dietary Laws Appendix Jesus and the Dietary Laws Thus [Jesus] declared all foods clean. Mark 7:19 NRSV Or did he? I have argued that the SynopVc Gospel writers portray Jesus in the ways they do in order to demonstrate Jesus’s observance of the Jewish law and his concern over the existence of ritual impurity. In the stories I have examined, Jesus systemaVcally destroys the sources of impurity, ritual or pneumaVc, suffered by the people he encounters. Such a por- trayal of Jesus, though, encounters one final potenVal obstacle in Mark 7, a passage that many readers interpret as clear evidence that Mark’s Jesus rejects the kosher food system that is integral to Jewish idenVty. A\er all, according to the NRSV translaVon, Jesus goes so far as to declare that all foods are clean.1 In this brief appendix, related but not central to the focus on ritual impurity, I reexamine this passage in order to show how it fits within the larger depicVon of Jesus that the Synop- 1 See Räisänen, “Jesus and the Food Laws”; J. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 4:359; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 264–67; Westerholm, Jesus and Scribal Authority, 82; Hübner, Das Gesetz in der synopFschen TradiFon, 175; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 396–98; and Loader, “Mark 7:1–23 and the Historical Jesus.” In a slight variaVon on this posiVon, Tom Holmén suggests that Jesus here shows his disinterest in the food laws (Jesus and Jewish Covenant Thinking, 236). Ma#hew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020). Exported from Logos Bible Software, 12:15 PM November 14, 2020. 1 Gc Gospel writers have constructed. First, LeviGcus envisages types of impurity that are disGnct but not enGrely unrelated. The majority of this book has focused on what most scholars refer to as ritual impurity, which is associated with only three physical sources: lepra, genital discharges of blood and semen, and corpses. Although LeviGcus uses the same language of impurity (He- brew: tameʾ; Greek: akathartos) and purity (Hebrew: tahor; Greek: katharos) for animals, it would be a mistake to include impure animals in the category of the ritually impure, because impure animals are not impure in the same way that lepra, genital discharges, or corpses are impure.2 In contrast to ritual impurity, which can be removed through a combinaGon of Gme and water (and with corpse impurity, the ashes of a red heifer), nothing can remove the impurity of unclean animals. Noth- ing a pig does makes it impure, and no one can purify a pig. There is no way to make a pig kosher; it is ontologically, one might say geneGcally, impure. It is born impure, passes on that impurity to any of its offspring, and then dies impure. Having said this, impure animals are only latently impure when they are alive. Israelites were permi#ed to own and ride donkeys, horses, and camels (e.g., Deut. 5:14; 17:16; 1 Sam 27:9; Zech. 9:9), and no rites are prescribed for purifying one’s body a[er touching such an animal, 2 According to Aelian, the third-century BCE EgypGan priest Manetho believed that drinking sow’s milk would give a person lepra (On the Nature of Animals 10.16). Similarly, the late first-century CE Roman philosopher Plutarch claims that all pigs have lepra (Table Talk 4.5.3). Nothing in Jewish literature suggests any such thinking though. Ma#hew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020). Exported from Logos Bible Software, 12:15 PM November 14, 2020. 2 demonstraHng that people did not become impure through mere con- tact with impure animals. Thus, in contrast to ritual impurity, impure animals did not transmit impurity to others through simple physical contact.3 Only when impure animals died did the impurity lurking within their bodies become a dynamic force; Israelites could not eat the flesh of impure animals or touch the carcass of such animals without becoming impure (Lev. 11:8). As Maimonides states in the twelRh cen- tury, “Of all animated creatures there is no species which, while yet alive, contracts and conveys uncleanness except man alone, provided that he is an Israelite.”4 The impure animals of LeviHcus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 simply do not fit within the category of what scholars call ritual impurity.5 Conse- quently, even if Mark 7 and its parallel in Ma#hew demonstrate that Jesus rejected kosher food laws and concluded that all foods were clean, it would not follow that he necessarily rejected the Jewish ritual purity system. Nevertheless, it seems implausible that Mark intended to show that Jesus held to the ritual purity system while rejecHng the laws pertaining to kosher food. Does Mark 7, then, undermine the arguments of the preceding chapters? The answer, yet again, is no. In his response to the quesHon of why his disciples do not wash 3 Jonathan Klawans locates food purity laws between ritual and moral purity laws (Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, 32). 4 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Corpse Impurity 1.14, in Danby, Code of Mai- monides. 5 On Lev. 11 and Deut. 14, see Houston, Purity and Monotheism, and Rosen- blum, Jewish Dietary Laws. Ma#hew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020). Exported from Logos Bible Software, 12:15 PM November 14, 2020. 3 their hands prior to eaHng and instead dine with impure hands (koinais chersin), Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah and concludes, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to the tradiHon of humans” (Mark 7:8; cf. Isa. 29:13 LXX).6 Mark’s Jesus goes on to accuse the Pharisees twice more in Mark 7 of prioriHzing human tradiHons at the expense of God’s law: “You reject the commandment of God in order to establish your tradiHon” (7:9); “[You are guilty of] nullifying the word of God by your tradiHon which you have handed down” (7:13). To demonstrate the veracity of his claims, Jesus provides a specific instance in which the Pharisees supposedly prefer human tradiHon to the command- ments of God: allowing a man to declare his possessions devoted to God upon his death (korban). In this way the Pharisees permit a man to avoid using his possessions to care for his parents in their old age and thereby permit him to break God’s commandment to honor one’s father and mother (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). Later rabbinic literature also condemns this legal sophistry, and even Origen appears to have knowledge of the pracHce.7 According to the Mishnah, Rabbi Eliezer argued that a man’s vow should be revoked if keeping it would mean failing to honor his father and mother. In contrast, Rabbi Sadoq argued that if honoring one’s parents is important, how much more necessary is it to honor God by keeping one’s vows. The Sages ulHmately defer to the posiHon of Rabbi Eliezer.8 6 On this contrast between tradiHon and the commandments of God, see Marcus, “Scripture and TradiHon.” 7 Origen, Commentary on MaChew 11.9–10. 8 Mishnah, Nedarim 9.1; cf. Mishnah, Bava Batra 8.5, which prohibits oaths that Ma#hew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020). Exported from Logos Bible Software, 12:15 PM November 14, 2020. 4 But Jesus’s disapproval of the Pharisees’ purported preference for human tradiJon at the cost of divine commands raises a real quandary for those who see in Mark 7 a rejecJon of the Jewish dietary laws. In a story that, according to tradiJonal interpretaJons, depicts Jesus’s rejecJon of the Jewish dietary laws, Mark portrays Jesus’s condemna- Jon of others who follow human rulings and in so doing disobey God’s commandments. How likely is it that Mark would stress obeying God’s commandments in a story in which Jesus rejects God’s commandments as they pertain to the consumpJon of impure animals? How rhetori- cally convincing would this story be if it were advocaJng the rejecJon of laws that most, if not all, Jews in the first century CE thought were divinely ordained? AUer all, LeviJcus stresses that the dietary laws have their basis in the commandment of Israel’s God (Lev. 11:1, 44–45).9 As Joel Marcus puts it, “Indeed, the anJthesis that Mark’s Jesus draws in 7:10–11 between what Moses said and what ‘you’ say could with just as much jusJce be applied to the Markan Jesus himself, since he sovereignly abrogates the Mosaic disJncJon between clean and unclean foods. Jesus then might easily be accused of subsJtuJng human commandments, i.e. his own precepts, for the clear mandates of God, and thus of falling under the judgment of Isa. 29.13—the passage that he himself cites in Mark 7:7.” 10 Such a blatant contradicJon between Jesus’s accusaJons against the 9 See too Sariola, Markus und das Gesetz, 72–73; Crossley, “Mark 7.1–23,” 11; and Kazen, “Jesus, Scripture and Paradosis.” 10 Marcus, “Scripture and TradiJon,” 183–84. So too Svartvik, Mark and Mission, 6.
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