Jesus and Purity Laws

In Volume 4 of A Marginal Jew, John P. Meier addresses Jesus’ attitude and actions pertaining
to purity laws.
Meier thinks that it is facile to stick labels such as “ritual” or “moral” on the laws in the
Pentateuch pertaining to purity. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that there are four categories
of impurity which can be distinguished in ancient texts. 1) Ritual impurity. This is the kind of
impurity which results from the normal cycle of human life–birth, disease, sexual activity, and
death. This type was considered contagious and needed to be expunged by rituals of cleansing,
but it had nothing to do with moral evil. 2) Moral impurity. This type is used of serious sins such
as murder, sexual behavior (such as incest, homosexuality, and bestiality), and idolatry. Moral
impurity was viewed as a threat to the integrity of the land or the Temple (Tabernacle), but it
is not contagious. 3) Genealogical impurity. This became a new concern after the Exile when
intermarriage with non-Jews was prohibited in the Book of Ezra (outside of the Pentateuch).
4) Impurity as a result of violating food laws. This is “the odd man out” in the previous three
types. The food laws are different from those pertaining to ritual impurity in that there are no
regulations about when or how one might eat pork, etc.; instead such eating is absolutely
prohibited. This would seem to put them in the category of moral impurity, yet it is never said
that eating forbidden food defiles the Temple (Tabernacle), and there is no precise punishment
for such a transgression. So this type stands between ritual and moral impurity. Meier briefly
surveys sociological theories which attempt to explain the food laws, but he does not take
a position on them. Meier simply acknowledges that the food laws represent a kind of “gut
religion” in more senses than one! They were a defining boundary marker and way of life for
Jews.
He notes that there was diversity regarding purity among Jews in the first century. Priests
practiced purity rules with stringency. Pharisees differed regarding food laws (such as whether
fowl and cheese could be eaten together or must be eaten separately) and yet apparently
remained tolerant of others’ views.
So then, in pursuing the quest of the historical Jesus according to a scientific methodology, the
question is, “What was Jesus’ position on purity?”
Most of the discussion by Meier is devoted to the longest pericope in the Gospels dealing with
this subject–Mark 7:1-23, a text which is notoriously controversial among exegetes. Mark 7:1-23
and its parallel in Matthew 15:1-20 are the two main texts which purport to present the teaching
of Jesus regarding purity laws. On the assumption that Matthew simply conflated Mark and
modified Mark’s text in accordance with Matthew’s own theological agenda, Meier devotes his
attention to an analysis of Mark 7:1-23. Meier analyzes this text with extraordinary rigor and
depth based upon voluminous research. I shall avoid going into his analysis (which would be
exhausting), but I shall present his conclusions.
He saves his discussion of Mark 7:1-5 until he has reached conclusions regarding the rest of the
pericope of Mark 7:1-23.
He first reaches a conclusion regarding Mark 7:6-8, which is Jesus’ statement to Pharisees
that they leave the commandments of God and hold fast the tradition of men based on a quote
from Isaiah 29:13. Meier contends that Jesus would not have made an argument based on
this text from Isaiah since it reflects use of the Greek translation in the Septuagint (LXX), which
changed the meaning of the Hebrew text. The main difference between the Hebrew text and the
LXX text is that the Hebrew text criticizes the people because “their worship of me is a human
commandment learned by rote” (NRSV) whereas the LXX criticizes the people because “in vain
do they reverence me, teaching the commandments of men and teachings.” In other words, the
LXX text provides the basis for Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees’ teaching of their oral tradition,
“the tradition of the elders,” by which they “abandon the commandment of God and hold to
human tradition.” Moreover, Meier notices the similarity between Mark’s use of this text with
that of Colossians 2:20-23 where regulations regarding food are described as “simply human
commands and teachings”–an allusion to Isaiah 29:13 in the LXX. In other words, the early
Christian church or at least the Pauline tradition relied on the LXX of Isaiah 29:13 to construct
a polemic against food laws of Jews and/or syncretists in order to justify Christian liberty from a
life regulated by dietary rules. So then, the portrayal of Jesus’ argument in Mark 7:6-8 which is
based on the LXX of Isaiah 29:13 must be a Marcan construction.
Next he examines the statement on “corban” in Mark 7:9-13. He judges that this is a statement
of the historical Jesus which Mark included in his narrative, but that it is inserted into Mark
7:1-23 by Mark himself (or perhaps redactors of Mark). The word itself and the practice of
corban is attested in the writings of Josephus and therefore we have firm evidence that
the institution of corban existed in the first century. However, he does not think that Jesus’
statement about corban tells us very much because we do not have the original context. [Some
other commentators suggest that the original historical context may have been a particular
outrageous act by a son (who refused to give financial support to his elderly parents because
the money was designated as corban) which was the subject of much gossip in Palestine.]
Meier thinks that Jesus’ debating partners “might have been a group of Pharisees (not all
Pharisees) who took a very strict approach to the institution and who therefore refused any
annulment of the vow [of corban], no matter what the consequences….”
Then he examines Jesus’ aphorism on defilement and his explanation in Mark 7:14-23. The key
verse is the aphorism in Mark 7:15: “There is nothing outside a man that, by entering into him,
can defile him; but those things that come out of a man are the things that defile him.” (Matthew
15:11 says, “not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth,
this defiles a man”). Meier says there are arguments for and against the authenticity of this
saying in Mark. It strongly represents the style of Jesus with its two-part antithetical parallelism.
The possible historicity of this saying has enabled some exegetes to take a middle position
in their view of Mark 7:14-23, believing that Jesus’ original teaching is reflected here in this
saying in Mark 7:15, but that Mark has given it a more radical and sweeping interpretation by
the way he has shaped the entire narrative in Mark 7:1-23 and especially by his interpretative
aside in 7:19 (“Thus he declared all foods clean”). But Meier, setting aside Matthew 15:11 as
Matthew’s redaction of Mark rather than a version from a source independent of Mark and also
setting aside a similar statement in the Gospel of Thomas as probably dependent on Matthew,
argues that Mark 7:15 is inauthentic. It is interesting that one reason he rejects its historicity is
because he does think such a statement would mean what Mark says it means–a setting aside
all food laws–which is a notion Meier considers preposterous for a Jewish prophet or teacher.
(Curiously, Meier does not give any consideration to the possibility that this was a statement of
Jesus in which he was emphasizing that God’s will is that persons be “pure in heart” and does
not necessarily represent a rejection of all purity laws of Judaism, but Meier insists that it should
be viewed as meaning what Mark says it means, namely that Jesus declared all foods clean.)
On this basis, Meier goes on to argue that there would have never been such a fierce dispute
in the early church over food laws if Jesus had ever made a statement like that in Mark 7:15
or at least that someone would have cited the statement in support of their position in the
disputes in the early church. He does address Paul’s statement in Romans 14:14 which some
commentators think is an allusion to this statement of Jesus in Mark 7:15–”I know and am
persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who
thinks it unclean.” Meier argues that Paul is appealing to the meaning of Christ’s death and
resurrection rather than to a teaching of Jesus. (I do think Meier is right that Paul’s reference to
being persuaded “in the Lord Jesus” is not the usual way Paul alludes to a teaching of Jesus,
but the question would be whether or not Paul is giving an interpretation of a saying of the
historical Jesus based upon his understanding of the new covenant instituted through the death
and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah).
Meier’s view of Mark 7:17-23 (where Jesus speaks of the evils that come out a person) following
the aphorism introduced in 7:14-15 is that Mark 7:17-23 reflects not the historical Jesus’
teaching but a Marcan construction patterned after the “vice lists” in the letters of Paul and
elsewhere in the New Testament.
Finally, Meier goes back to Mark 7:1-5, the beginning of the pericope which pertains to a dispute
over handwashing. On the basis that the rest of the pericope, except for the corban saying,
is inauthentic, Meier concludes that 7:1-5 must also be understood to be Mark’s creation. He
bolsters his judgment by pointing out that “there is no clear evidence that any Palestinian or
Diaspora group of Jews in the pre-70 period taught that handwashing by laypeople before
eating meals was obligatory.”
On the basis of his deconstruction of the text of Mark 7:1-23, Meier says that this entire text
should be judged as a Marcan construction (except the corban saying) which was designed
to justify the attitude and practice of Christians in the church in Rome where Mark composed
his Gospel–namely, their freedom from Jewish food laws. Since he considers Matthew’s much
more succinct account in Matthew 15:1-20 (which lacks the asides to Gentiles found in Mark)
a mere conflation of Mark by Matthew, Meier insists that we have no other teaching in the
Gospels that directly pertains to purity laws.
Meier does go on to examine other possible references to ritual purity in the Gospels. Corpse
impurity is one case. The Gospels never raise the question of Jesus contracting corpse
impurity nor of his being purified from it according to the Law. Jesus is portrayed as touching
the daughter of Jairus in Mark 5:41, touching the bier of the son of the widow of Nain in Luke
7:14, and coming to the grave of Lazarus in John 11:38. The first two cases in Mark 5 and Luke
7 would definitely involve corpse impurity, but the Gospels never mention this fact. He does
notice that John 11:55 mentions that Jews went up to Jerusalem to purify themselves while
John 12:1 states that Jesus came to Bethany (near Jerusalem) “six days before Passover,”
perhaps suggesting that this might indicate that Jesus was participating in the seven day rituals
at the Temple for corpse purification–perhaps to be cleansed of impurity because of his contact
with Lazarus. But this is to deduce a great deal from two passing references not connected by
John.
The statements of Jesus in Matthew 23:27-28 and Luke 11:44 (which Meier judges to be from
independent sources) criticize the scribes and Pharisees as being like sepulchres. This may
mean that Jesus was attacking the Pharisees for the details of ritual purity regarding corpses
while at the same time having a morally defiling effect on their fellow Jews, but these sayings
really do not indicate Jesus’ position on the ritual impurity of graves.
Matthew 23:25-26 and Luke 11:39-41 appear to be from the same source, Q, and Meier
considers it to be an authentic statement of Jesus. Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for cleaning
the outside of the cup and plate but inside they themselves are unclean. In these sayings,
Meier believes that Jesus uses the issue of ritual purity on a metaphorical level to inculcate the
importance of moral purity, but that they tell us little about Jesus’ views of purity laws. [Take
note of Matthew 23:25-26 and Luke 11:39-41 because I will refer to them in my critique of Meier
following my presentation of his arguments.]
The story of the woman with a flow of blood in Mark 5:25-34 is not as relevant as it might
appear. The law of Moses does not state that a woman’s flow from the genital area
communicates impurity by that woman touching someone as this woman touches Jesus.
Anyway the issue of ritual impurity does not seem to be on the radar of the evangelist telling the
story.
Laws governing menstruating women in Leviticus 15:19-24 became very important after 70
A.D. since they could continue to be observed without a Temple. Meier thinks it is striking that
this form of impurity is never mentioned in the teaching of Jesus. It is striking because Jesus
traveled with both male and female disciples. The women disciples would be menstruating at
various times and would have exposed the males to impurity on a regular basis by being in
contact with them (although not sexually). Moreover, both Jesus and his disciples would have
had seminal emissions which caused considered ritual impurity in Leviticus 15:16-17. Yet there
is silence in the Gospels about these matters.
The stories of Jesus healing persons with skin diseases also do not give any indication of Jesus’
teaching on ritual purity. Mark 1:40-45 says Jesus touched a leper, but the Law in Leviticus
13-14 does not, strictly speaking, forbid a leper to touch a person or render someone unclean
who touches a leper. Later rabbinic law has these prohibitions, and Josephus has one oblique
indication that this may have been the rule in the first century. The Essene documents contain
no clear teaching on the subject. The fact that Jesus sent lepers to the priests for a bill of good
health does not indicate Jesus’ own stance on the Law since it was necessary for the lepers to
do this to return to society.
Meier’s conclusion is that “Jesus never made any programmatic pronouncements on issues like
handwashing before meals or the distinction between clean and unclean foods.” This silence
takes on weight when put in the context of other Jesus traditions. The “authentic Jesus tradition
is completely silent on the topic of ritual purity–sometimes in stark contrast to debates in the
early church.” This silence of Jesus stands out “like a sore theological thumb” in comparison to
his Jewish contemporaries and to the Christian Jews. The historical Jesus was not indifferent
to the Jewish Law in general, but it seems that ritual purity was “not only not a burning issue”
for Jesus, it was “not an issue at all” for him. Meier’s supposition for why this was so is that
Jesus was an eschatological prophet and miracle worker–”a religious charismatic.” A religious
charismatic by definition simply claims to know God’s will directly and intuitively–as indicated by
Jesus’ unique practice of prefacing solemn pronouncements with “Amen.” Apparently, Jesus’
“studied indifference to ritual impurity” can be explained on the basis that questions of ritual
impurity were not his concern as the charismatic prophet of the end time.
Now I wish to offer my own preliminary reflections on Meier’s views. However, at the outset I do
want to acknowledge the extensiveness and depth of Meier’s research. His footnotes occupy
as much space as his commentary. Moreover, I respect the scientific character of his work
because he is true to his objective and to his methodology as a historian.
I think his reflections following his critique of Mark 7:1-23 on all the other stories and sayings
of Jesus that could be considered relevant to Jesus’ attitude toward ritual impurity are very
illuminating and demonstrate the value of studying the work of a historian like Meier. The silence
of the Gospel traditions regarding the whole issue of ritual purity must have some significance,
and I think Meier’s argument that this silence indicates that Jesus was not very interested in
ritual purity because he was an eschatological prophet is the most plausible conclusion one can
reach, at least insofar as it pertains to issues of ritual purity such as corpse impurity and the like.
I would differ with Meier in his dismissal of Mark 7 and Matthew 15 as being irrelevant to Jesus’
attitude toward purity rules regarding washings and food laws on the grounds that they are
merely creations of the early church. If there is a historical basis for the texts, then we would
have to say that Mark 7 and Matthew 15 do indeed indicate something about Jesus’ own
teaching regarding purity laws and food laws.
One general point I would make about methodology in conducting exegesis of texts is that the
particular scientific methodology of the quest for the historical Jesus is a kind of straight-jacket.
It is rigorous, but I think it is too rigorous to be always followed in doing exegesis of the Gospels
because it is based on a hermeneutics of suspicion. That is, a historian presumes that any
given text is a creation by the early church unless some historical basis for it can be ascertained
from known documentary sources or other internal evidence in the Gospels. Such a rigorous
method often rejects a priori the possibility that a text may be grounded in a historical event
even when there is no extant extra-biblical historical documentation to support it or rejects the
possibility that the Gospels themselves may be considered a reliable source of history when
we have no other sources outside the Gospels to corroborate what they contain. For instance,
until the middle of the 20th century miracle stories in John were deemed pure creations of
the evangelist by critical scholars until archeological excavations demonstrated the precise
accuracy of the topography of scenes in the Gospel of John, thus causing a sea-change in the
way that historians like Meier view the historical reliability of the independent traditions in the
Fourth Gospel. Prior to these archeological discoveries, any exegesis that had been based on a
hermeneutics of trust had been criticized by historians as merely an exercise in “apologetics” or
a conservative effort to maintain a belief in the trustworthiness of the Gospel of John. Likewise,
Meier approaches Mark 7 and Matthew 15 with the presumption that they represent creations
of the early church and therefore he does not take into account the possibility that there may be
reasons for seriously considering that these texts represent a plausible historical memory.
A good example of what I mean is his discussion of Mark’s citation of Isaiah 29:13. Because
Meier contends that this citation is from the LXX, which changes the meaning of the authorized
Hebrew text, he says that this citation could have never been used by Jesus. He thinks Jesus
knew some Greek in order to do his business as a woodworker and may have been able to
converse with Pilate in Greek, but he does not believe that Jesus’ Greek was fluent enough
that he would have taught in Greek or that he would have used the LXX. Meier does think that
Jesus was literate in Hebrew. Thus the whole argument of Jesus against the human tradition
of the Pharisees based on a citation of Isaiah from the LXX presented by Mark is obviously a
Marcan creation. However, Meier knows that Hebrew texts of the Scriptures from Qumran are
different from the standard Hebrew texts, and they are very similar in meaning to the LXX; Meier
acknowledges this fact in A Marginal Jew when he discusses texts other than Mark 7. Since
we do not have a Qumran version of the particular text of Isaiah 29:13, Meier concludes that
the statement by Jesus in Mark must be an abbreviation of the text from the LXX. However, if
we know that there were alternative versions of the Hebrew Scriptures which are similar to the
LXX in use during Jesus’ time, then it seems to me that one cannot rule out the possibility that
Jesus may have been alluding to one of these versions and therefore might have been able
to present an argument against the human tradition of the Pharisees based on an allusion to
Isaiah 29:13. We don’t know, but it is not absurd or even implausible to consider this possibility.
See the comment by W.F. Albright and C.S. Mann in their commentary on the parallel text of
Matthew 15:8-9 in Matthew (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971), pp. 184-
185: “The quotation (Isaiah 29:13) is neither from the LXX nor from the Masoretic text. It may
derive from the ‘Old Palestinian’ tradition. This source we no longer have, but its existence has
been dramatically indicated by the OT material from Qumran.” (Their commentary is in the same
series of the Anchor Yale Reference Library as is Meier’s A Marginal Jew.) Therefore, Meier’s
argument about Isaiah 29:13 seems too rigorous, so to speak. It fits his methodology, which is
to base judgments about historicity only on the basis of documentary evidence. But an exegete
may indeed consider the fact of the existence of alternative Hebrew readings in assessing the
historical plausibility of this story in Mark and Matthew. A hermeneutics of trust would motivate
an exegete to take into consideration the “Old Palestinian” tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures
which is known to be remarkably similar to the LXX.
Regarding Mark 7:1-23, it is clear that the whole pericope (really, several connected pericopes)
is written with the intention to apply it to the life of the early church, i.e. to give an interpretation
of Jesus’ teaching regarding purity laws that all foods were declared clean by Jesus. Also, there
are other elements (7:3 and 7:11) that show Mark is giving explanations to a Gentile Christian
community about unknown Jewish customs as well as Mark’s famous Latinisms. Compare
Matthew’s version of this story which lacks all of Mark’s obvious efforts to apply this story to the
situation of Gentile Christians. By the way, Meier thinks Matthew is a conflation of Mark based
on the accepted hypothesis that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. We must not forget
that there is an alternative theory of source criticism which thinks Mark used Matthew and Luke-
-a theory not widely accepted, but which occasionally makes more sense than the standard
theory. Since Matthew says Jesus spoke about what comes out of the “mouth” rather than about
what comes out of a man, it may be that Matthew has some independent source for his version.
Moreover, Matthew’s version of the “vice list” is Jewish rather than Gentile and would make
more sense as a representation of the teaching of Jesus. We cannot say for sure, but we have
to be careful about deciding the authenticity of a story in one Gospel (Mark) simply by ruling out
of consideration a parallel story in another Gospel (Matthew) as being only a redaction by the
writer of the other Gospel rather than another version of the same story that might be based
on an independent source of information. C.S. Mann is a commentator who advocates the
“Griesbach hypothesis” that Mark was written later than Matthew and Luke and was dependent
upon both of them and altered them by conflation and addition of vivid detail (perhaps from
Peter); see C.S. Mann, Mark (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1986). Mann’s
view is that Matthew’s parallel text to Mark 7:1-23 is an earlier Jewish Christian text that does
not reflect the “Roman stage” of Mark’s work as an evangelist when Mark was applying Jesus’
teaching to meet the needs of Gentile Christians (pp. 316-317).
I share the opinion of those whom Meier puts in the “middle position” regarding how to view
Mark 7. I think the aphorism of Jesus in Mark 7:15 is from the historical Jesus because it clearly
reflects the structure and style of statements attributed to Jesus that most exegetes judge to be
historically authentic. Meier definitely respects this opinion, although he jumps through
exegetical hoops to try to counter it. If the aphorism is from Jesus, then we do have an
indication of Jesus’ teaching as it touches on purity laws. The point of the saying is that what
matters to God is “purity of heart,” as it is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Purity of heart
fits Jeremiah’s depiction of the new covenant in which God writes his law on the people’s hearts
so that they know how to do God’s will. I think purity of heart (derived from Jeremiah’s prophecy
of a new covenant) was an essential dimension of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God
and interpretation of the law. The relevance of Jesus’ teaching on purity of heart to the purity
laws would be that Jesus makes the purity laws relative. He does not dismiss them or say that
one does not have to observe them, but he says purity is heart is what is most important to God,
and he would be implying that purity of heart is really the original divine intent of the purity laws.
My conception of Jesus’ teaching on purity of heart never appears at all in Meier’s discussion. It
is interesting how Meier does accept Jesus’ statement (Matthew 23:25-26 and Luke 11:39-41)
about the Pharisees being concerned about cleaning cups while they themselves are morally
impure. In fact, Meier says that Jesus’ statement in Matthew 23:25-26 and Luke 11:39-41 “uses
the issue of ritual purity on a metaphorical level to inculcate the importance of inner, moral
purity,” but he insists that this saying “tells us little about Jesus’ views of purity laws.” Doesn’t
that statement, which Meier acknowledges comes from Q (derived from the A.D. 40’s) and is
most likely authentic, fit with my contention that Jesus’ teaching involved an emphasis on purity
of heart as God’s will concerning the purity of Israel and human life? So then, I think Mark 7 and
Matthew 15 do provide a basis for getting a perspective on Jesus’ attitude toward purity laws. I
do not think that Jesus abrogates the purity laws (how could he and still be Israel’s
representative or at least a credible Jewish prophet?), but he does in effect make them relative
to God’s real intention for purity of heart. On that basis, Mark claims that Jesus did away with
food laws, but this is clearly only Mark’s interpretation after the fact to meet a need of the
Gentile church–an interpretation that goes far beyond what Jesus himself taught. No doubt
Mark, who was a companion of both Peter and Paul, is offering an interpretation or a broad
inference from Jesus’ more general teaching which was coherent with both the later belief of
Peter (who received a vision that all foods are clean) and the Gospel of freedom taught by Paul
on the basis of Paul’s understanding of the meaning of the new covenant instituted through the
death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
Now consider the scene in Mark 7:1-8 that opens the pericope and which concludes with Jesus’
denouncement of human traditions concerning handwashing and the washing of cups and pots
and vessels based on Isaiah 29:13. Meier dismisses the opening scene about handwashing
mainly because he thinks it should be judged inauthentic since the rest of the pericope is
deemed inauthentic and also because of the alleged misuse of Isaiah. In the opening scene,
Jesus is arguing that the oral tradition of the interpretation of the law by men has gotten in the
way of hearing the word of God in the law. Jesus is not opposing the law of the Torah; he is
opposing an oral tradition advocated by some Pharisees in which purity rules about washing
prescribed only for priests in the Torah are being imposed on lay people.
I think there are grounds to believe that this scene comes from a historical context. After all,
doesn’t Meier say that Jesus takes the side of the peasants in his commonsense approach to
the Sabbath? Isn’t Jesus doing the same here with handwashing? Besides, many
commentators think that some Pharisees in the first century were scrupulous about these kinds
of rituals. Meier argues that there is no documentary evidence that the Pharisees were this way.
no writings at all from the Pharisees in the first century. Commentators who judge that this story
may be historical point to later rabbinic teaching as an indication of what the Pharisees taught in
the first century. Meier’s methodology rules out later rabbinic teaching as relevant to the thought
of Pharisees in the first century, but if later rabbis did indeed develop out of the Pharisee
movement (a disputed scholarly issue) then it is reasonable to consider that later teaching about
washing may have been rooted in the teaching and practice of the Pharisees. Scientifically, this
cannot be proven, but if you do not have a hermeneutics of suspicion toward the Gospels, then
the Gospels are evidence of at least some Pharisees’ teaching in the first century. In Meier’s
previous discussion of Jesus and the Sabbath, he argued that the Pharisees would not have
opposed Jesus’ healings on the Sabbath since there is no documentary evidence from the
period prior to A.D. 70 that there were rules against healing on the Sabbath. Much of the
evidence Meier cites is derived from the research of Lutz Doering. In a footnote, he
acknowledges that Doering did believe that the disputes between Jesus and the Pharisees
about healing on the Sabbath are rooted in historical fact. Meier says, “Doering admits that
there is not a single non-Christian source in the pre-70 period that mentions sabbath healings
as a breach of the sabbath. But the Gospel dispute stories plus the prohibitions in the Mishna
and the Tosepta lead Doering to suggest that, around the time of Jesus, the Pharisees or other
Jews similar to the Pharisees in teaching held that healing was a sabbath violation…. One
wonders whether this line of argument does not involve a certain amount of circular reasoning.”
Doering was appealing to the historical evidence in the Gospels from several sources that
Jesus’ Sabbath healings provoked disputes. I do not think Meier does justice to this multiple
attestation from several sources in the Gospels of the connection between Jesus’ Sabbath
healings and disputes. Moreover, his hermeneutics of suspicion prevents him from accepting
evidence from one of the most important historical sources for first century Judaism– the
Gospels. I further think that the reference in Mark 7:1-8 that the Pharisees were preoccupied
with ritual washings should be considered as historical indicators just like the stories in the
Gospels which state that some Pharisees disputed Jesus’ healings on the Sabbath. This cannot
be proven since we have no writings of the Pharisees. I appreciate how Meier rejects the
accounts in the Gospels on the basis of his scientific methods, i.e. we have no documentary
evidence outside the Gospels to verify that the Pharisees either opposed healing on the
Sabbath or were scrupulous about washing, but the historical reality of what the Pharisees did
may be quite different from the construction Meier makes in accordance with his rigorous
methodology.
Besides, I point out an inconsistency in Meier’s case against the historicity of the depiction
of the Pharisees in the Gospels as advocating purity rituals of washing. As I have already
mentioned, in his discussion of texts that might pertain to ritual impurity Meier says that Matthew
23:25-26 and Luke 11:39-40 are from Q (probably dating to the A.D. 40’s) and are authentic.
These parallel texts criticize the Pharisees for cleaning the outside of cups and plates but the
Pharisees themselves were full of extortion and wickedness, adding that it is necessary to be
cleansed on the inside. These texts–which Meier himself cites as two versions of an authentic
saying of Jesus from Q– would seem to contradict Meier’s own overall conclusion that we have
no evidence that Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their insincerity in being preoccupied with
ritual washings while defiling the people with their moral impurity!
By the way, in a footnote, Meier does have to acknowledge that archeological excavations
have uncovered large numbers of stone vessels in and around Jerusalem dating from the
first century, which some scholars contend represent how many people were influenced by
the Pharisees to engage in ritual washings (stone vessels were prescribed by later rabbis for
ritual washings because they were believed to be free from impurities). This archeological
evidence is no small bit of evidence, and it would seem to support the historicity of the portrayal
of Pharisees in the Gospels as a group that practiced ritual washings and advocated that
lay persons do so also in accordance with “the tradition of the elders” or their oral tradition of
interpreting the law.
Remember, Meier accepts the saying about corban as authentic. Doesn’t this saying fit with
the overall view that Jesus was deeply concerned about how oral tradition was distorting the
divine purpose of the law? If the corban saying is historical as Meier judges, then it is a solid
example of the principle which Jesus discusses in the scene in which he criticizes the Pharisees
for imposing ritual washing designed for priests on the common people. In other words, the
corban saying illustrates or reinforces the idea that Jesus did dispute rabbinic traditions (like the
institution of corban) that in effect violated the will of God expressed in the Ten Commandments
and the law in the Torah.
I do not have a strong opinion about the “vice list” attributed to Jesus in Mark 7:21-22, but I
do assume that Mark’s agenda to instruct Christian Gentiles (originally in the church in Rome)
means that his creative hand is evident in this section. Whether or not that explains Matthew’s
version I cannot say, but I would point out that Matthew’s list in Matthew 15:19 is more Jewish
and more limited to the Ten Commandments and therefore may be a version of an original
statement of Jesus unless one presumes that it is the product of Matthew himself. Matthew
15:19 is, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false
witness, slander,” while Mark 7:21-22 is, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy,
slander, pride, foolishness.”
To sum up the discussion of Mark 7 and Matthew 15, I think they do go back to a historical
dispute between Jesus and some Pharisees and that they do reveal Jesus’ attitude toward
purity laws. In the end, I am not in serious disagreement with Meier’s basic view of Jesus and
the purity laws. Meier thinks Jesus generally paid them no mind. I think Jesus was engaged in a
debate about them with Pharisees and perhaps others, that Jesus had a concern about the way
the rabbinic oral tradition, “the tradition of the elders,” could obscure God’s will in the law, and
that Jesus also emphasized the necessity of purity of heart as being integral to God’s original
purpose of humankind in creation and in the giving of the Torah.