Mark 7:19: Interpolated or Faithful
How the Gospels Diverge on Jesus’ Teaching
My Refutation Towards these Websites:
Additional Websites:
Introduction
A common error in fundamentalist Protestantism is the vain attempt to reconcile contradictory texts in the Bible. And even these Christian websites cannot agree on what the Gospel of Mark says. One website in affirmation of the mosaic rites will presuppose that Mark did not say that Jesus taught that all foods are clean, whereas another website denies the interpolation theory and says that Jesus according to Mark did teach this. In my own assessment, I will mostly be refuting the article that proposes the “articulation theory” and will argue at length why Matthew and Mark do not agree. Jesus rejected the dietary laws and this understanding does not conflict with Christian orthodoxy.
Responding to the Articles (quoted in italics)
Here’s Mark Chapter 7 in the NRSVUE:
7) Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, [2] they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. [3] (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands,” thus observing the tradition of the elders, 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.”
[5] So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?” [6] He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘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.’
[8] “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
[9] Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! [10] For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ [11] But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God, [12] then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, [13] thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
[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.” [Verse 16 omitted in this translation]
[17] When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. [18] He said to them, “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, [19] since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) [20] And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. [21] For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, [22] adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. [23] All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Now, let’s hear the articles before I rebut them:
A common interpretation of these verses is that Jesus abolished the Torah’s distinctions between clean and unclean food at that moment. The end of verse 19 (“Thus he declared all foods clean”) is often understood as Mark’s parenthetical statement explaining Jesus’s teaching. Thus, the Torah’s commandments against eating meat from unclean animals (e.g., Leviticus 11) are no longer relevant to Christians. These comments from R. L. Solberg, an outspoken critic of Pronomian (pro-law/Torah) theology, are representative of the traditional perspective:
Jesus taught that all foods are clean and, as God incarnate, all foods became clean at His word. Thus, any of His listeners who decided to begin eating previously unkosher foods at that time would not have been in violation of the Law.
Solberg is certainly not alone in saying that Mark 7:18–19 is an example of Jesus doing away with the Torah’s dietary laws. But although this interpretation may be popular, numerous New Testament scholars soundly reject it.According to Dr. Matthew Thiessen, “Nothing suggests that the Gospel writers intended to portray Jesus rejecting the Jewish dietary laws.”
The appeal to majority as being valid is certainly a epistemic fallacy, which has often shifted depending on the mutable theological culture and new available data that later refutes many misguided interpretations. In relation to Mark 7, Jesus is conferring a principle that nothing we eat can defile our hearts, which is aimed at the status of the food ingested instead of whether one’s hands were washed or not (cf. verses 18–23). Now, allow me to refute the following points:
1) The traditional interpretation of this passage makes Jesus a hypocrite.
One of Jesus’s criticisms of the Pharisees in Mark 7 was that they were hypocrites who “leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (7:8). He said they “reject” and “nullify” God’s commandments/word (7:9, 13). Does it make any sense for Jesus to criticize the Pharisees for rejecting God’s commandments while at the same time doing away with the Torah’s dietary laws? Wouldn’t Jesus himself be a hypocrite if he invalidated God’s commandments immediately after condemning the Pharisees for invalidating God’s commandments?
No, Jesus would not be a hypocrite for rejecting the dietary laws, because the dietary laws didn’t come from God, but rather from the Ancient Near Eastern culture. God did not confer the mosaic laws to the Jews, instead He allowed them to adopt these customs, so as to reorient them for the future by giving us the spiritual (aka pneumatic) reading. In other words, imagine I wrote a book about folklore intending to communicate my own religious ideas about the afterlife and so forth, but God, rather than inspiring the contextual contents, inspired the symbolism and subtleties to point to His Son. God did not inspire the origin of the customs, but only its symbolic features. This theological view was commonly known by Paul and the Early Church (cf. Colossians 2:16–17; Hebrews 8:7, 10:1; Epistle of Barnabas [not the gospel of Barnabas!] 10:2–9; Contra Celsum V:60). Christ is subtly arguing that the dietary laws in the mosaic law weren’t divinely inspired by origin.
2) The controversy was over ritual handwashing, not the Torah’s dietary laws.
The Pharisees confronted Jesus not because his disciples disregarded the Torah but because they disregarded “the tradition of the elders” (7:5). One of the traditions of the elders was that a person must ritually wash his hands before eating regular meals. Where did this tradition come from? As Jacob Neusner explains, the Pharisees reinterpreted many of the priestly laws to apply outside of the context of the Temple:
The Pharisees were Jews who believed one must keep the purity laws outside of the Temple. Other Jews, following the plain sense of Leviticus, supposed that purity laws were to be kept only in the Temple, where the priests had to enter a state of ritual purity in order to carry out such requirements as animal sacrifices. They likewise had to eat their Temple food in a state of ritual purity, while lay people did not. To be sure, everyone who went to the Temple had to be ritually pure. But outside of the Temple the laws of ritual purity were not observed, for it was not required that noncultic activities be conducted in a state of Levitical cleanness. But the Pharisees held that even outside of the Temple, in one’s own home, the laws of ritual purity were to be followed in the only circumstance in which they might apply, namely, at the table. Therefore, one must eat secular food (ordinary, everyday meals) in a state of ritual purity as if one were a Temple priest.
Although the Torah does command priests to wash their hands when serving in the tabernacle (Exodus 30:17–21), there is no commandment for non-priests outside of the tabernacle to wash their hands. Indeed, Mark explicitly identifies the Pharisees’ ritual as “tradition,” in contrast to God’s commandments. In any case, the context of this conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in Mark 7 gives no indication that the Torah’s dietary laws are in view. The controversy concerned ritual handwashing. Thus, there is no textual basis for importing the Torah’s dietary laws into this passage.
There’s many assumptions being displayed here. Jesus intended the dietary laws and not the washing of hands. He changes the subject from washing of hands to dishonoring parents by offering to God, so it’s not inconsistent for Jesus to speak of the dietary laws in the final instance. The fact that Jesus compares the dietary laws to the washing of hands or neglecting parents indicates that He believed the dietary laws were “human traditions”. While it’s true in the beginning, Mark goes into length concerning the washing of hands, Jesus changes the subject casually and ends with a rebuttal for the logic behind the dietary laws. Jesus didn’t judge them for not knowing what wasn’t from God (i.e. mosaic tradition), but He judged them for knowing what wasn’t from God — their recent traditions like hand washing or their neglect of their own parents. Jesus was judging them for their inconsistency in their own beliefs.
3) Mark’s earliest readers did not understand Jesus’s teaching in Mark 7:1–23 to be a rejection of the dietary laws.
Most scholars recognize that both Matthew and Luke used Mark’s gospel as a source for their writing. When copying from Mark, Matthew is known to make adjustments and additions to Mark’s account to be more precise. Notably, when Matthew records his version of this conflict in Mark 7, he makes explicit the fact that the controversy concerned hand washing:
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” — Matthew 15:18–20
While it is plausible that Matthew and Luke borrowed some elements from the Gospel of Mark, there is no consistent evidence to suggest that it was entirely for the reason of accurate articulations or additions. The Gospel of Matthew was intended as a polemic against the Judaic rejection of Jesus, so the author of Matthew made adjustments suitable to the Jewish audience regardless of validity due to its polemical nature. The Gospel of Mark is more accurate in this scenario due to it being a closer address to past events than Matthew or Luke; it also lacks the polemical nature that Matthew was employing.
In the same article — though not quoted here, the author argues that they may have had different theological approaches, but the author dismisses this proposition in favor of the articulation theory with no compelling reason. It is plausible to suggest that the author of Matthew was closer to the spectrum of Judaized Christians instead of Mark, which explains his numerous typological quotations of the Hebrew Bible and his reinterpretation of Mark 7 suggesting hand-washings. In evidence of my proposition, Mark and Matthew diverge on a few points, whether Jesus said “Moses” in Mark or said “God” in Matthew as the delegate of the commands. Mark claims that Jesus meant the dietary laws while Matthew meant the washing of hands. Mark is the oldest written document, so he orchestrates a narrative where Jesus diverged from the mosaic laws; on the contrary, Matthew is polemical to the Jews, so he orchestrated a narrative in favor of the mosaic laws. This is why Mark mentions Jesus saying “Moses” to dilute or limit the mosaic laws as having divine influence, but Matthew mentions Him saying “God” to affirm their divine influence.
In another instance, a gentile woman requires Jesus to deliver her daughter from demons as recorded in Matthew 15:
“A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” 25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. 26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” 28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
The Gospel of Matthew depicts Jesus as being more exclusive due to ignoring the woman when she speaks, claims He was sent only to the Jews while excluding the Gentiles as a possibility, and then asserting that only Jews have the right to salvation or healing despite Jesus honoring the woman in the final instance. However, the Gospel of Mark omits all these elements in Chapter 7:
25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. 27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”
The Gospel of Mark depicts Jesus as being more inclusive, and He even says let the Jews have their blessings first before you receive your blessings. While some will try to argue that the Jews had a special relationship with God, this is not at all what Jesus means. Jesus was trying to test the woman’s heart and debunk a myth that His disciples believed in by demonstrating that even a Gentile woman can be faithful and not just a Jew. Even in the Old Testament, the prophet Amos believes that God gave exoduses to other nations, and it records that God gave salvation for healing to a Gentile soldier, which of course required a test of his heart (cf. Amos 9:7; 2nd Kings 5:1–17).
4) Jesus’s earliest followers did not understand Jesus’s teaching in Mark 7:1–23 to be a rejection of the Torah’s dietary laws.
Acts 10 is another passage that sheds light on Jesus’s teaching in Mark 7. Here, Luke records that Peter received a vision in which he was told to “kill and eat” unclean animals. Peter was shocked by this instruction and refused to violate the Torah’s dietary laws: “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:14). This is significant because Peter witnessed the conflict recorded in Mark 7 between Jesus and the Pharisees and heard Jesus’s private explanation of his teaching (Matthew 15:15). If Jesus abolished the dietary laws several years earlier in Mark 7, Peter’s response in this passage doesn’t add up. Some might argue that Peter’s vision in Acts 10 teaches that the dietary laws were nullified, suggesting that Luke understood Jesus to have abolished the Torah’s dietary laws when he read Mark’s account.
It is interesting that this person presumes that the Torah, specifically the mosaic customs, still apply to the Gentile Christians which is very misguided and contrary to Paul’s arguments. This person then adds that if Peter understood the dietary laws to be mentioned by Jesus, he would have adhered to what Jesus taught; on the contrary, Jesus tried to show him that salvation of healing and deliverance extends to the Gentiles, yet Peter did not retain these lessons in mind (cf. Mark 7:25–29; Luke 7:1–10). Even Gregory the Wonderworker (b. 213) in his canonical epistle understood Jesus “cleansing all meats” rather than washing hands as some suggest: “But the Saviour also, who cleanseth all meats, says, ‘Not that which goeth into a man defileth the man, but that which cometh out’” (Canonical Epistle, Canon I).
Anyway, the article is pure speculation, because Paul certainly understood Jesus abolishing the mosaic customs in Ephesians; for instance, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility [15] by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace [16] and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He extinguished their hostility…,” and “In that he says, ‘A new covenant’, He has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and grows aged is near to vanishing away,” and “Now these things having been thus prepared, the priests go in continually into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the services, [7] but into the second the high priest alone, once in the year, not without blood, which he offers for himself, and for the errors of the people. [8] The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the Holy Place wasn’t yet revealed while the first tabernacle was still standing. [9] This is a symbol of the present age, where gifts and sacrifices are offered that are incapable, concerning the conscience, of making the worshiper perfect, [10] being only (with meats and drinks and various washings) fleshly ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation” (cf. Ephesians 2:14–16; Hebrews 8:13, 9:6–10). In the book of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews is stating that the old covenant was abolished or nullified in primacy of Christ’s covenant, and he is reinterpreting the old system by spiritual allegory which is why he says “the Holy Spirit is indicating” and “this is a symbol of the present age”. The external regulations or “fleshly ordinances” were imposed “until a time of reformation”, meaning God allowed these human customs to preside over the Israelite people until Christ came to correct or revise these human traditions attributed to Moses. A reformation can only exist if the system itself is in error, which means the Mosaic customs and the Levitical priesthood were in error; Christ came to reform Mosaic Judaism, and not just the present Judaisms in His time.
The author of this article or blog attempts to appeal to the Didache in favor of enjoining the mosaic dietary laws onto the Gentile Christians based on the scholarly reading of Kurt Niederwimmer. But based on the Didache, such a reading is purely speculative and unverifiable. The author then appeals to another scholar, saying, “The dietary laws were not clearly condemned in the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, or in the first-century Pauline tradition.” But I have demonstrated in Ephesians and specifically in the book of Hebrews that such mosaic customs or laws have been abolished and concluded as human traditions. The author of the blog then appeals that the second century writers changed their attitude towards the Mosaic customs due to avoiding “the repressive and punitive measures (fiscal, military, political, and literary) aimed at the Jews” according to his appeal of someone named Lawrence Geraty. However, such appeals are ignorant, because none of the Christian writers of the second and third century named this as the cause; in fact, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who was a student of the apostles like Peter and Paul, argued against the continuation of the mosaic observance. He writes, “Be not led astray by strange doctrines or by old fables which are profitless. For if we are living until now according to Judaism, we confess that we have not received grace,” and “But if anyone interpret Judaism to you do not listen to him; for it is better to hear Christianity from the circumcised than Judaism from the uncircumcised. But both of them, unless they speak of Jesus Christ, are to me tombstones and sepulchers of the dead, on whom only the names of men are written. Flee then from the wicked arts and snares of the prince of this world, lest you be afflicted by his device, and grow weak in love; but come all together with undivided heart” (Ign. Magnesians 8:1; Philadelphians 6:1–2). Ignatius is repeating Paul’s accusation against the Galatians when they obey the mosaic or ritual customs at the expense of grace, and Ignatius borrows Paul’s symbolic sense of circumcision derived from Romans while comparing the ways of Judaism as an example of a demonic device (cf. Galatians 5:4; Romans 2:29).
The author of this same article tries to explain away the phrase “[Thus He declared] all foods to be cleansed” as a mention of food being purged out of the body as excrement; however, this reading conflicts with the whole context of Mark 7 in relation to the dietary laws. Even another article also attempts to argue against the translation:
The next part of the problem lies within the supplying of words that are simply not in the text. Literally the clause reads, “purifying/purging all foods.” Most translators supply a subject (Jesus), verb (declares/declared), and a conjunction (thus) when rendering the clause (“Thus, Jesus declares all foods clean”). Though I am not a fan of the King James Version, I propose the idea that the KJV translators translated this verse correctly, while the modern translations did not. I believe this is because the KJV translation is nearly four centuries old and the influence of this anti-Torah doctrine was not as prevalent back then.
Since then, the majority of English translations supply non-existing subjects, verbs, and conjunctions to this clause, thus rendering it inaccurately. The most accurate way to translate this verse would be to continue it as the words of Jesus and to render it as: “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? (19) Because it enters not into his heart but his stomach, and is expelled, cleansing all the foods?” The point that Jesus is trying to make is that everything we eat will eventually be expelled by our bodies’ natural cleansing methods, but the problem with our hearts is that they will never purge the wickedness within unless we surrender to God and his will for our lives, which includes keeping his commandments and not our own, as Jesus has so eloquently told the Jewish leaders in this text.
But this is another vain attempt to reconcile the text. Some Greek sentences or idioms cannot be translated word-for-word or literally, because it would cause confusion to the reader, so the translators appeal to conceptual translations instead to better represent the Greek sentence, not to deceive anyone due to some Judaic “prejudice”. It is most plausible to suggest that Mark is commenting on what Jesus said: “He said to them, ‘So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, [19] since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?’— [Thus He declared] all foods clean.” Very few argue that the last phrase “all foods cleansed” does not exist in early manuscripts of Mark from the third and fourth centuries; however, the Codex Sinaiticus contains this phrase: καθαρίζων πάντα τα βρώματα (literally: purifying all foods, or: rendering all foods clean). While two of these articles I have quoted against are Judaic Christians, there’s another article that believes otherwise:
In verse 18 Jesus tells us that what goes into a man’s mouth and into his stomach cannot defile him. What defiles a man is what is in the heart. Therefore, verse 19 concludes that all foods are clean. Thus the Mosaic food laws no longer exist. We can now eat any food, including those from the animals that the Mosaic law consider unclean.
The two articles represent Judaic Christian fundamentalism, and the last article I quoted above me represents an Antinomian Christian fundamentalism, but both of these systems are erroneous. Christian orthodoxy was aware that God never delegated the mosaic law, nor did He ordain it so as to abolish it later, but God allowed them to use their human customs to re-purpose them by conferring the spiritual reading when the Hellenistic culture invented allegoresis, and when Christ appeared to reform them. The Early Church Fathers like patristic Barnabas believed that God never commanded the Hebrews to not eat pork, but conveyed a spiritual lesson through the spiritual reading. “Moreover Moses says to them in Deuteronomy, “And I will make a covenant of my ordinances with this people.” So then the ordinance of God is not abstinence from eating, but Moses spoke in the spirit. He mentioned the swine for this reason: you shall not consort, he means, with men who are like swine, that is to say, when they have plenty they forget the Lord, but when they are in want they recognize the Lord, just as the swine when it eats does not know its master, but when it is hungry it cries out, and after receiving food is again silent…Moses received three doctrines concerning food and thus spoke of them in the Spirit; but they received them as truly referring to food, owing to the lust of their flesh” (Barnabas 10.2–3, 9). Saint Athanasius taught that God never commanded nor appointed sacrifice, but rather inspired the types and shadows to point to Christ rather than the authorial context. He quotes from Colossians 2:17 and Hebrews 9:10 in the same manner as I did in this medium article: “Now it appears to me — may God grant, by your prayers, that the remarks I presume to make may not be far from the truth — that not at first were the commandment and the law concerning sacrifices, neither did the mind of God, who gave the law, regard whole burnt-offerings, but those things which were pointed out and prefigured by them. ‘For the law contained a shadow of good things to come.’ And, ‘Those things were appointed until the time of reformation’…Therefore neither at the beginning, when God brought the people out of Egypt, did He command them concerning sacrifices or whole burnt-offerings, nor even when they came to mount Sinai” (Letter 19, Section 3–4, Athanasius of Alexandria).
Conclusion
So far, the Early Church were not fundamentalists of either the Judaic or Antinomian traditions. I have explained why Mark and Matthew diverge in their interpretation of Jesus’ teaching, and how the apostolic scriptures disagree with the Judaized and Antinomian fundamentalist ideas of the mosaic law. They simply did not believe that the mosaic laws were divine by origin, but appealed to the pneumatic reading of it as being inspired (e.g. Paul the apostle, Book of Hebrews, patristic Barnabas, Origen [on contra Celsus V.60], & Athanasius). The phrase in Mark 7 is faithful to the Christian message, and not an interpolation. If we attempt to prioritize the narrative as portrayed by Matthew over Mark’s narrative, not only are we falsely propagating the doctrine of inerrancy, but also such a claim dangerously leads to Judaized fundamentalism.
Even the Ebionites (some early Christians who advocated continual mosaic observance) relied on the Gospel of Matthew for their understanding of Christ, whom were against Christian orthodoxy. Irenaeus of Lyon records that the Ebionites used the Gospel of Matthew exclusively while neglecting the other gospels (cf. Against Heresies I.26.2). Because most misguided Christians have declared that the mosaic law as being divine in origin and in practice, some of them have become advocates of continual mosaic observance and have become like their unorthodox predecessors, the Ebionites. We must be textually critical and theologically discerning, instead of being naive to uphold a dogma invented in the sixteen century, and proposing a theory like the Matthean priority, which conflicts with good scholarship.
