Hi friends,
I’ve always thought that Mark 7:17-23 provides a clear indication that Jesus moved beyond the food regulations of the Old Testament. It reads:
When [Jesus] went into the house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Are you also as lacking in understanding? Don’t you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into the stomach and is eliminated” (thus he declared all foods clean). And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.
For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.”
As Dr. Craig Keener explains in the IVP NT Cultural Commentary:
If Jesus’ words are taken literally, they declare the whole clean/unclean distinction emphasized in the law as of only symbolic value. Because this distinction constituted one of the main barriers between Jews and Gentiles (see Rom 14), Jesus’ statement opens the way for racial and cultural reconciliation in table fellowship.
So, if Jesus is declaring all foods clean, then there’s no problem for his followers to eat pork, shellfish, and importantly for American Southerners, fried catfish! It’s okay to combine meat and dairy into cheeseburgers, enjoy pepperoni pizza, and finish the meal with some gelatin-filled gummy bears.
However, as an American, I’m culturally inclined to be quite casual and relaxed about food! It’s no big deal.
To honestly engage in Jesus’s debate with the religious leaders, I must humbly respect the great seriousness with which they experienced the sacredness of their daily meals.
We must understand that in ancient Jewish culture, dietary laws were more than just health regulations - they were a fundamental part of religious identity and holiness. These laws, known as kashrut, separated foods into “clean” (kosher) and “unclean” categories. Observing these laws was seen as a way of honoring God and maintaining spiritual purity.
The concept of impurity in Jewish thought was complex. Ritual impurity was temporary and often unavoidable, like touching a dead body, and could be cleansed through specific rituals. Moral impurity, on the other hand, results from sinful actions and requires repentance.
Although we may be unfamiliar with this distinction, it’s crucial to understanding the Bible because Jesus’ discussion in this passage focuses on a particular debate about maintaining ritual purity.
In other words, in this discussion no one is talking about the dietary regulations in an immoral way: who cares about this? Just eat what you want! That flippant attitude would reflect a grave departure from the rules provided in the Torah.
I bring all this up because I’ve re-evaluated my understanding of this passage in light of the research done by Dr. Logan Williams, a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen.
In a very detailed and compelling way, he argues that this verse has been misunderstood for centuries.
Here’s the article for download, which is free to view here:
To summarize the complex reasoning, Dr Williams argues that Jesus was a faithful Jew who valued the Torah and maintained the kosher dietary regulations.
The first argument he makes is to reconstruct how Jews understand ritual and moral impurity in Jesus’ day. He writes,
Rather, ingesting non-kosher animals is prohibited, and eating them makes people morally impure because in so doing they have transgressed. What one needs when they ingest a non-kosher animal, then, is not immersion to ameliorate ritual impurity but rather forgiveness for transgression.
Because eating non-kosher animals is a kind of moral impurity, Jesus wasn’t addressing this category of behavior when he challenged some of the ritual impurity conventions of his day.
As Williams explains,
The Pharisees and scribes inquire why some of the disciples have not adopted an extra-biblical conception of impurity and the corresponding practice of handwashing. Mark’s account evinces an awareness that he and his Jewish contemporaries understood that the practice of handwashing prior to meals, as well as the notion that ingesting ritually defiled food could defile humans, was rooted not in Torah but in a different legal source – the tradition of the elders.
Thus, Jesus’ response in Mark 7.15a/18b – that ingestion cannot make a person ritually impure – does not oppose any purity regulation in the Torah but rather contests the basis for extra-biblical purity practice of handwashing decreed by the ‘elders’.
So how should we translate this passage? Williams offers:
We could therefore translate Mark 7.18b–19 in the following way: ‘Do you not understand that everything from outside going into a person is not able to defile them, because it enters not into the heart but into the stomach and goes out into the latrine, (the person) thus purifying all foods?’ In this reading, the clause communicates not that Jesus purifies all foods through his speech but rather that a person purifies all foods through digestion.
Here’s Williams’ interpretation that corresponds to this translation:
In this interpretation of Mark 7.18b–19, food that has been ritually contaminated is not able to defile a person because each person, through the operations of their digestive system, purifies any food entering the body from ritual defilement. To put it simply, ritually defiled food cannot defile humans through ingestion because humans purify all foods from ritual impurity through digestion.
As he puts it together in a later section,
To restate Jesus’ words with these explanations: ‘Everything from outside going into a person (even if it has contracted ritual impurity) is unable to defile a person, because it enters not into the heart but into the stomach (which acts as a purifying agent), and goes out (as excrement, which is incapable of being ritually impure) into the sewer, thus (the person, specifically their stomach) purifying all foods’.
Simply put, Jesus argues that digestion purifies ritually pure foods eaten with unwashed hands. The stomach prevents these foods from making a person ritually impure.
Well, we might be asking: so what?
In the final section, Williams explains that his argument shows that Jesus practiced and upheld the food regulations of the Torah.
I think of how strongly Jesus defended the Torah in Matthew 5:17-18,
Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.
Jesus upheld all the regulations God gave to Israel down to the tiniest stroke of the smallest letter. He was responsible for no moral failures.
Yet, he consistently opposed the extra-biblical interpretations added to the Torah.
Further, he also taught the true spiritual meaning behind the Torah. What should people be more concerned about? Man-made rituals to preserve external purity?
Or developing a pure heart with God? Jesus points to the impurities of the heart as the more significant concern. Let’s look back at Mark 7:21-23:
For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.
How can this evil defilement be addressed? I think the answer from Mark’s gospel is through Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.
Finally, I still think that God does reveal the end of the kosher regulations for his people elsewhere in the Scriptures. The vision that Peter receives in Acts 10:9-16, and his subsequent visit into Cornelius’ home, makes this clear. (Perhaps that’s the basis of another discussion!)
For me, Williams’ detailed study is very interesting.
It helps me appreciate Jesus’ fidelity to the Torah.
It helps me see Jesus’ disdain for man-made regulations to create the appearance of purity.
It showcases Jesus’ interest in God’s work to restore our defiled hearts to purity.
What do you think of Williams’ argument? What are the implications from your perspective?