[B-Greek] Mark 7:18-19
Leonard Jayawardena
leonardj at live.com
Tue Nov 3 04:41:59 EST 2009
18 KAI LEGEI AUTOIS, hOUTWS KAI hUMEIS ASUNETOI ESTE; OU NOEITE hOTI PAN TO EKSWQEN EISPOREUOMENON EIS TON ANQRWPON OU DUNATAI AUTON KOINWSAI
19 hOTI OUK EISPOREUETAI AUTOU EIS THN KARDIAN ALL' EIS THN KOILIAN, KAI EIS TON AFEDRWNA EKPOREUETAI (?), KAQARIZWN PANTA TA BRWMATA.
John Sanders:
> So whatever we do, we have a problem with this phrase. It
> just does not construe with any other member, either by the
> force of the discourse or by grammar.
(To which Wieland Willker added, "Note that Mt omits the phrase," apparently in agreement with John Sanders.)
I have to disagree. In terms of making sense out of KAQARIZWN ..., no problem at all. Grammatically, the length of Jesus' quoted speech interposing between KAI LEGEI AUTOIS and KAQARIZWN may cause some difficulty, but don't we have a similar structure in Mark 10:2, albeit with a shorter portion of direct or indirect speech?
Some list members have expressed difficulty in understanding Mark 7:18-19, which in reality is exegetically quite a straightforward passage.
This is my understanding of this passage.
We are told at the beginning of Mark 7 that the Pharisees and the Jews in general had the custom of ritually washing their hands in a certain way (Mark uses the word PUGMHi, the discussion of the exact meaning of which could provide a topic for another thread) before they ate. We are also told that this was part of "the tradition of the elders" that they observed, thus implying this was no part of the OT ceremonial law (vv. 3-4). The OT had remedies for certain types of ceremonial defilement which came to the knowledge of the person so defiled, such as touching a dead body. The Jews of Jesus' time observed rituals that went beyond them to include cases not covered by the OT, for example, unknowingly touching a ceremonially unclean person or an article touched by such a person at a public place such as the market (v. 4). Their ritual washing of the hands was designed to remove such ceremonial uncleanness contracted unwittingly. Apparently, their reasoning was that touching food with ritually unwashed or "common" hands passed on the impurity to the food and when such "contaminated" food was ingested by a person, he became defiled.
Seeing that the disciples of Jesus did not ritually wash their hands before they ate, i.e., that they ate with KOINAIS CERSIN, they protested to Jesus about it. Jesus' answer turns the focus from the Pharisees' obsession with ritual cleanliness to what made people spiritually defiled. He says that what a person eats does not enter his heart, i.e., there is nothing in what anyone eats that can defile his heart, the "heart" being considered as the seat of reason and intellect. Food cannot spiritually defile a man. If Jesus had stopped at EIS THN KARDIAN, it would have been sufficient to establish his point. And if "Mark" had added his editorial comment at this point, thus:
KAI LEGEI AUTOIS, hOUTWS KAI hUMEIS ASUNETOI ESTE; OU NOEITE hOTI PAN TO EKSWQEN EISPOREUOMENON EIS TON ANQRWPON OU DUNATAI AUTON KOINWSAI hOTI OUK EISPOREUETAI AUTOU EIS THN KARDIAN?, KAQARIZWN PANTA TA BRWMATA.
this passage, I am sure, wouldn't have occasioned such difficulty to so many. The words ALL' EIS THN KOILIAN, KAI EIS TON AFEDRWNA EKPOREUETAI are really not necessary; they just supplement and emphasize (with possible intentional jocular effect) Jesus' point that whatever goes into a man does not enter his heart.
KAQARIZWN PANTA TA BRWMATA then just sums up the jist of Jesus' quoted words. "Mark" says that by so saying Jesus "purified all foods," i.e., Jesus declared all foods, whether eaten with ritually washed or unwashed hands, to be clean and spiritually undefiling. Compare this with the concluding remark of Jesus in the parallel passage in Matthew 15:20: "... to eat with unwashed hands does not make a man unclean."
Some commentators have seen the editorial comment of Mark 7:19 as abrogating the dietary laws of the OT (Lev. 11 and Deuteronomy 14). Our passage has not the remotest bearing on the law of clean and unclean meats in the OT and to draw out such an implication, I think, is a glaring example of eisegesis. In Colossians 2:16, on the other hand, it is implied, I think, that the dietary laws of Moses are not binding on Christians.
It is instructive to look at Paul's treatment of a similar issue in his epistles. Romans 14:1-4, 6-15; 1 Corinthians 8; and 10:23-33 all deal with what was a problem for some Christians who were formerly idolaters: eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. The meat that was available in the meat market at that time usually had been sacrificed to idols. Paul says that since idols have no real existence, there is no problem in eating food sacrificed to idols. But when some Christians who lacked this knowledge ate such food, they ate it as if it were sacrificed to idols and their conscience was thus defiled (1 Corinthians 8). To avoid this problem altogether, some Christians had become vegetarians (Romans 14:2). Paul says, "I know and am conviced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it unclean" (Romans 14:14). In other words, conscience is the key factor.
Therefore "nothing is unclean in itself" (OUDEN KOINON DI' hEAUTOU), i.e., no food (by itself) is unclean = all food is clean. So said Paul.
SIMILARLY, JESUS DECLARED ALL FOODS TO BE CLEAN.
Leonard Jayawardena
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