The problem of ritual purity in Mark 7:1–23: A new look

Abstract

Mark 7:1–23 contains a notorious crux interpretum: in the course of his anti-Pharisaic polemic, Jesus turns the debate about unwashed hands (7:1–13) into a teaching about things that defile from within (7:14–23). According to the traditional interpretation, the latter contains a veiled attack on kashruth laws (7:15), or at least this is Mark’s understanding (7:19c). This reading presupposes a profound contradiction in Jesus’ logic: 7:1–13 accuses the Pharisees of undermining the authority of the Scripture, while attacks on kashruth destroy this authority even more. If this interpretation is correct, 7:1–13 is a pastiche of mutually contradictive and partly anachronistic traditions. The paper weighs the pros and cons of a recent alternative approach (Y. Furstenberg, D. Boyarin): Jesus attacks the washing of hands as a Pharisaic novelty without a biblical basis and stands for a more conservative approach (humans as a source of ritual impurity, rather than its target). Furstenberg’s approach was criticized by Sh. Cohen, J. Marcus and others, but these criticisms are difficult to sustain. However, Furstenberg and Boyarin might overestimate the halakhic concerns of Mark: though 7:1–13 reflects mostly traditional material, Mark is no longer concerned with hand washing per se. Rather, he uses the tradition to oppose the Pharisaic concept of the Oral Torah. It is possible that he no longer remembers that the Pharisaic idea of the transfer of ritual impurity through food is a novelty, rather than an old teaching. Mark might also distance Jesus from his Jewish milieu at the level of redaction.