The Sunday lectionary reading for Trinity 14 in this Year B is Mark 7.1–8, 14–15, 21–23 (this reading was taking at Trinity 13 three years ago). We have chewed over the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6, and gathered up every last morsel of the ‘bread of life’ discourse over the last five (five!) weeks—and now our fast from Mark’s gospel is at an end!
Reading from a full Bible, rather than reading the lectionary extract from a sheet or on a screen, tells us two things. First, this whole passage functions as a transition between two sections of Jesus’ northern ministry: on the north coast of Lake Galilee, crossing back and forth between the regions either side of the Jordan, in chapter 4, 5 and 6; and ministry in clearly Gentile territory to the north, followed by a return to Galilee in Mark 7.24–9.29, after which Jesus heads south. The first section is bracketed by two sea miracles, and the second section is bracketed by two child exorcisms. The content of this passage—the implicit debate about food laws, which will have been critical for Mark’s first audience, especially if they are in Rome where these was clearly tension between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus—also represents a transition, from the Jesus movement being a Jewish renewal movement to something broader and more Gentile. Thus Mark represents in narrative form a transition which was becoming a historical and cultural reality.
Secondly, the lectionary has cut out elements of the narrative to make the passage short enough for a normal reading. The structure overall is as follows, with the verses in bold being included in the lectionary reading and the text in orange being omitted:
| 1–5 | Jesus and Pharisees | Pharisees’ challenge to Jesus |
| 6–8 | Jesus and Pharisees | Jesus’ first response quoting Isaiah |
| 9–13 | Jesus and Pharisees | Jesus’ second response: the practice of korban |
| 14–15 | Jesus and the crowd | Declaration about defilement |
| 17–20 | Jesus and the disciples, privately | Reiteration about defilement, with editorial comment |
| 21–23 | Jesus and the disciples, privately | Explanation of defilement in moral terms |
This selection firstly omits Jesus’ second response/rebuke to the Pharisees and scribes, and the second omission is possible because of the reiteration of the statement about true defilement in private to the disciples. What this misses is the double transition, from Pharisees (who appear to be speaking to Jesus alone) to the crowd, and then the switch again to the private discussion with the disciples. This makes us think that Jesus’ declaration about true defilement is made to the crowd, when in fact it is made to the disciples (and now made public by Mark in disclosing this secret conversation). This forms a parallel with Jesus’ teaching with and about parables in chapter 4, where he talks to the disciples privately about the meaning of the parable of the sower in Mark 4.10, and some later manuscripts emphasise the parallel by repeating Jesus’ injunction ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear’ in the (missing in most versions) Mark 7.16.
The lectionary trim also avoids the rather awkward reference by Jesus to defecation (‘it is expelled’); we might say Jesus was the first person to coin the idea of ‘garbage in, garbage out’! But it also omits the rather important editorial comment by Mark, applying this transitional incident to the key transitional theological issue for his readers (‘Thus he declared all foods clean’). The parallel in Matt 15.17, possibly written to a more consistently Jewish audience, does not include such a comment—and Luke, writing in a more Gentile register, does not include any of the debate about ritual cleanness (What Dick France in his NIGTC on Mark calls ‘The Great Omission’). In fact, we can see the importance of this episode for Mark and his readers by the unusual addition by Mark of extended explanatory comment in the form of aside—something which is usually much more characteristic of John than Mark.
The ‘gathering’ of the Pharisees around Jesus has a mildly threatening ring to it, and this is amplified by the inclusion of ‘some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem’. Jesus’ ministry in Galilee had been mostly well received, and Mark emphasises his popularity by the repeated mention of the ‘crowds’. But the investigation from Jerusalem (which has been present from early on, see the mention of scribes in Mark 2.10, and the plotting of Mark 3.6) anticipates the shift from chapter 9 on the journey south and the looming shadow of the cross.
There are two interesting ‘bridges’ between this passage and what has gone before. First, where previous people have been gathering around Jesus desperate to hear his teaching and receive his teaching, here his opponents gather around him to challenge him. Secondly, there is the theme of touch, of what we do with our hands. Previously, people touched Jesus with unclean hands and were cleansed; now the debate is about cleansing hands as the means to ritual purity.
The washing of hands before eating was not part of the Torah instructions, but constituted what later become know as the ‘fence [chumra] around the law‘. Deut 22.8 commands the building of a fence or parapet around the flat roof of a building, so that a person might not accidentally (for example, whilst sleeping) fall off. So the rabbis, reading this allegorically, believed that there should be a protective fence around the law, keeping people away from the danger of transgressing the law by accident. That this washing was ritual rather than hygienic is shown by the terminology; the verb here is baptizo, and its use for repeated ritual cleansing is an interesting contrast with the later use by converts to the Jesus’ movement of the verb for a once-for-all cleansing (as illustrated in Jesus’ rebuke of Simon Peter in John 13.10)—one baptism once to signal that the cleansing by Jesus is wholly effective.
In his first explanatory comment, directed to any readers unfamiliar with Jewish practices, Mark makes this clear: this is part of the ‘tradition of the elders’. This isn’t a comment against the idea of ‘tradition’ (paradosis) as such, since Paul uses the cognate verb positively for the gospel message in 1 Cor 15.3. Rather, it is setting up the contrast between ‘the commandments of God’ and ‘merely human traditions’ (note: the Greek term ἄνθρωπος means ‘human beings’ not ‘male men’), which Jesus articulates at the end of his first response (Mark 7.8) and at the beginning and and of his second response (Mark 7.9, 13). This is the key distinction: we need to note, on the one hand, that the gospels never portray Jesus as anything other than Torah observant; and it is clear from later disputes in Acts 10.9–16, Rom 14.20–21, 1 Cor 8.7–9, 10.27, Col 2.16 and 1 Tim 4.1–5 that the early Jesus community did not immediately interpret Jesus’ teaching here in the way Mark now draws his application.
Additional Note: in an important challenge to the translation of modern ETs, Logan Williams argues that Mark 7.19 should be translated ‘purifying all foods‘ with the implied subject being the digestion of the person eating, and the declaration of Jesus. I am persuaded by this, and have got some way towards it by noting that Jesus is not here challenging Torah obedience, but adherence to extra-biblical traditions.
Jesus’ citation of Is 29.13 (with a hint also from Ezek 33.31) appears to reconfigure the distinction between words of God and human traditions as a difference between outer practice (‘honour with their lips’) and inner disposition (‘their hearts are far from me’) and it is this inner/outer distinction that Jesus develops in his discussion of what happens to food. Topologically, we are all tubes; anything that goes into our mouth passes through our alimentary canal, and it not strictly part of our body. Waste materials pass right through (along with a load of intestinal bacteria!) whilst the nutrition alone is absorbed into our bodies. The true ‘inner’ life is that of our hearts, not in terms so much of affections or emotions, as we might think in our modern construal of the anatomy, but our will, our decisions and our disposition in life. For Jesus, the heart of the matter is the matter of the human heart.
But we need to take careful note of what Jesus is doing here. First, he is not dismissing the Old Testament purity laws out of hand; rather, he is drawing on an observation already made by the prophets about how the people of God can go astray by focussing on the merely outward and ritual, without seeing the connection with the inner and personal. There is one important contrast with the prophets, though. Where ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the prophet, who then proclaimed it to the people, Jesus is the source of the authoritative declaration himself. His ‘Here me!’ call to the crowd (in a section omitted in the lectionary, Mark 7.14) runs in parallel with ‘Hear, O Israel’ (Deut 6.4) calling the people to listen to God alone.
Secondly, in describing the things that do defile a person, he is drawing on the Torah itself. Most English translations have Jesus listing thirteen vices in Mark 7.21–22, but that is not quite correct; the first term ‘evil thoughts’ οἱ διαλογισμοι οἱ κακοι, is separated from the rest by the verb ‘come out of’ and so functions as an introduction to the other 12 that are listed. The fact that many of these are in fact actions, rather than thoughts per se, illustrates Jesus integrated view of thought and action. The list has a quite close, but not exact, correspondence with elements of the Ten Commandments:
| 3 | You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain | Blasphemy |
| 5 | Honour your father and mother | (Mark 7.9–13) |
| 6 | You shall not murder | Murder |
| 7 | You shall not commit adultery | Porneia, adultery, debauchery |
| 8 | You shall not steal | Theft |
| 9 | You shall not bear false witness | Blasphemy (?) |
| 10 | You shall not covet | ‘The evil eye’ usually translated as ‘envy’ |
Such a partial citation of the Ten Commandments, intended to communicate the whole of them, is not uncommon; in response to the rich young man in Mark 10.19, Jesus cites six of the ten. Interestingly, the pattern of six is repeated here; within the list, six commandments are alluded to, and of the 12, the first six are expressed in the plural, and the second six in the singular—surely a rhetorical device rather than a theological point.
But one thing stand out from this list: where the Ten Commandments have only one in relation to sexuality, Jesus amplifies this to three. The first, porneia, is often assumed to refer to sex outside marriage, particularly prostitution, though most possible examples of that, in a culture where almost everyone would be married, are covered by the second term, moicheia. Rather, the first term must be taken as a reference to all the prohibited sexual activities found in Lev 18.6–23.
[T]he porn- group of words relates to any form of unsanctioned sexual intercourse. Porneia is normally translated as ‘fornication’. But this translation obscures a simple fact. In the Jewish context of Jesus’ day, and in the Christian context that grew out of it, homosexual coitus would have been automatically embraced within the scope of porneia. (John Nolland)
The first six terms occur in the plural, denoting evil acts. The first is “sexual immorality” (Gk. porneia), which can be found in Greek literature with reference to a variety of illicit sexual practices, including adultery, fornication, prostitution, and homosexuality. In the OT it occurs for any sexual practice outside marriage between a man and woman that is prohibited by the Torah. This sense is retained and intensified in the NT, which “is characterized by an unconditional repudiation of all extramarital and unnatural intercourse.” (James Edwards, Pillar commentary)
The third term, aselgeia, has a more general meaning of ‘lack of self-restraint’, but appears to have sexual overtones to it. As John Nolland highlights in his study of such vice-lists, Jesus appears to be just as concerned about sexual morality as he is about justice and care for the poor.
So how does this passage help us in our decision about how to read the Torah for ourselves? One option is to reinterpret Mark’s claim, and decide that all the food laws still apply to contemporary followers of Jesus, even Gentiles? Although this sounds like an unusual approach, it is the one taken by the Worldwide Church of God (rebranded as Grace Communion International) following the teachings of Herbert W Armstrong. Unfortunately, their literalistic reading of the whole Bible leads them to reject orthodox belief about the Trinity and therefore, in effect, reject Jesus’ claims about himself in the gospels. This reading struggles to take the key texts relating to food laws at face value, and instead removes them to the level of exemplary metaphors. (Update: it turns out that WWCG/GCI have actually revised their doctrine to be orthodox, so I wonder if the Church of the Great God split from them for this reason.)
An alternative, more common, approach is to believe that the Torah does not apply to us, interpreting Paul’s statement that ‘Christ is the end of the law‘ (Romans 10.4) in the sense of a termination of the demands of Torah. Therefore, just as we don’t obey all the food laws, we can also set aside the sexual ethics of the Old Testament in some important regards.
The problem with such an approach is evident in this passage: despite what Mark says about the food laws, he is very careful to have Jesus distinguish between the ‘commandments of God’ and human tradition, and continues to appeal to the Torah and the prophets in his teaching—as indeed does Paul. And if the foods laws are set aside, both Jesus and Paul are clear that the core of OT sexual ethics is not.
Three observations might help us here. First, as Sarah Whittle helpfully points out in her chapter on defilement in Reading Mark in Context:
[This passage] reflects both the concern with the universal threat of the danger of impurity and the Pharisees as Jesus’s opponents. All the incidents of Jesus teaching on purity are set in relation to Pharisaic traditions concern eating… As such, it has been claimed that “the synoptics educate their readers on the Jewish purity practices of their main characters”. In contrast, Jesus is portrayed as “the Holy One” (Mark 1.24). Even when confronting sources of defilement, he does not contract impurity, so he has no need for purification rituals. When he engages unclean people, he restores them to cleanness. This aspect of purity is crucial for Mark’s Christology (p 112).
Secondly, we need to read Torah, like any other part of Scripture, in its canonical, cultural and historical context. The Pharisees’ approach involves a literalism which fails to attend to the effect of theological principles in their cultural context; to this extent, Jesus is (as often) challenging them at the level of interpretation.
(For a great study on how to read the Law in its context and well, see Philip Jenson’s Grove booklet. Philip points out that within the Torah itself there are different ‘levels’ of law, and some laws are clearly specific, detailed application of other laws which are more general principles.)
The food laws were not part of the original creation intention of God, but were given to Israel in its specific context in its life in the land, and so are not continued in the new covenant in Jesus, where there is ‘new creation’. By contrast, the vision of sexuality and sexual relations, in both Testaments, are rooted in the creation by God of humanity ‘male and female’, to be fruitful and multiply. In the first creation, this happens through marriage and childbirth; in the new covenant, it also happens through single celibacy and the generation of ‘spiritual’ offspring through repentance and faith in response to the proclamation of good news—as Jesus and Paul themselves exemplify.
Thirdly, both Jesus and Mark are in this passage pointing to the true goals of both Torah and all spiritual disciples. The slightly secondary goal is the redemption of the human life to live in holiness, not merely to regulate action (note that the Ten Commandments flow out of God’s prior redemption action in calling Israel out of slavery to freedom in the Promised Land). But the primary goal is to direct us towards God.
The law, rightly understood, is the gracious gift of God to allow his people to live in holy fellowship with him, and so it must be received with understanding of that to be its purpose. If the fault of the Pharisees, as depicted in this narrative, is to focus on the outer rather than the inner, then it arises from seeing obedience to Torah as the goal of life, rather then obedience being a means to the greater goal of knowing, living in, and expressing the love of God. As James Edwards summarises:
Mark labours to clarify that the essential purpose of the Torah, and hence the foundation of morality, is a matter of inward purity, motive, and intent rather than of external compliance to ritual and custom. The controversy thus cannot be interpreted as a case for Christian antinomianism but rather for the recovery of the true intent of the Torah. “Uncleanness” can no longer be considered a property of objects but rather a description of inner attitudes, a condition of the heart. The goodness of a deed depends not solely on its doing, but primarily on its intent. The judgment of Jesus stood in sharp contrast to that of the Essenes, for whom purity was determined by allegiance to the community; and also in contrast to that of the Pharisees, for whom purity consisted of a directory of observances and proscriptions.
This points us back to the person of Jesus, who is not only the one who can authoritatively interpret the Torah for us, but is the one who, by giving himself for us in death and resurrection, is the only true source of our purity.
Join James and Ian as they explore these issues and the application in preaching here:
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Ian, be careful when talking to Jews about saying Jesus was “Torah observant”, because ‘Torah’ means ‘teaching’, and may include the traditions that Christians and Karaite Jews take to be of man rather than of God. Even saying that Jesus “kept the laws of Moses” doesn’t overcome the ambiguity, because the rabbinic traditions were held to be given to Moses as an oral supplement to the Pentateuch and not to be written down (‘oral Torah’). In conversation with Jews you should speak of Jesus keeping “the written laws of Moses”. That’s unambiguous. Jesus regarded the rest as being of man – some good, some bad, but all human.
The rabbis have a chain of transmission of the oral Torah from Moses to the time it was written down in Talmud. This chain is specified in Pirkei Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”). But the written laws of Moses never refer to the oral laws, whereas the oral laws refer copiously to the written laws. Evidently the oral laws began as commentary on the written laws, and Pirkei Avot is a pious fiction. The oral laws are more rigorous than the written laws and the idea is that if you try and fail to keep them all then you are more likely still to be keeping the written laws. This is known as the ‘fence’ viewpoint and it places an unbearable load on people. The correct way to deal with sin (i.e. failure to keep the written laws) is to be remade better.
Of course the Oral Torah came first. Hebrew was not written down before the 10th century (and the language of the Siloam inscription, for instance, is very different from the Old Testament.) Judaism has never been keen on sola scriptura. It’s a heresy. It’s the written law that are a systematisation of the oral tradition.
But that’s not what the rabbis of the first century and after meant by ‘the oral Torah’. They believed that Moses wrote out the Torah as we have it and additionally gave the oral law or the interpretation of Torah to the elders who faithfully transmitted it down to the Pharisees.
We can see what I assume was one of the earliest extant examples of reasoning based on the Torah in Neh 10.34, which refers to a wood offering “as it is written in the Law”. The Pentateuch makes no specific reference to a wood offering, but since there must be a continual fire on the sanctuary alter (Lev 6.12-13), there is obviously a duty to supply wood.
They believed Moses taught the Torah as they received it, but most certainly do not see the ‘oral law’ as an addition to it. You’re assuming the Torah she-beal pe, the oral Torah was never written down in any form prior to the Mishna. Why is that?
I didn’t say the oral Torah was an “addition” to the written Torah but that Moses (receiving it from God on Mt Sinai) gave it “additionally” or in addition to the written Torah (or so the Pharisees and their successors believed). To say it is an interpretation of the (written) law or a clarification is certainly how I imagine most of it arose: religious teachers dealing with obscurities or contradictions in the text, and giving some force to every letter of the Torah. Of course, this was one of the big differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and after the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of so many Jews after the Bar Kochba revolt, the Pharisees gave rise to the Rabbinic tradition that produced the Mishnah, while the Sadducees and the Essenes disappeared. Tradition says that Judah haNasi codified the oral Torah in the Mishnah because of the dangers of it being forgotten after the disasters of the second century.
This twin theory of Torah reminds me of the traditional Catholic idea that God communicated his revelation both through the Bible and through oral teachings (on purgatory, Marianism etc?) not explicitly taught in Scripture. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 10.1) states that Moses wrote out the Torah received from God.
“I didn’t say the oral Torah was an “addition” to the written Torah but that Moses (receiving it from God on Mt Sinai) gave it “additionally” or in addition to the written Torah.”
So yes, you believe the oral Torah to be an addition.
“additionally” or “in addition” is just another way of saying “and”. I know Orthodox Jews believe Moses wrote out Torah AND communicated the Oral Torah. I also know that plenty of other Jews in the first century (Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes) and later Karaites didn’t believe this.
And neither do I. I have no idea how developed the Oral Torah was in the first century but have long believed Jesus was rejecting its authority in his disputes with the Pharisees.
And they certainly did not believe that ‘Moses wrote out the Torah.’ G-d did.
Which God did?
If it was God, is it accurate, reliable, without error, and unrevisable, understandable, for all time ?
Of course, historical, higher criticism denies that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (or any of it?) let alone God.
“I hear you’re an Orthodox Jew now, Father. Should we all be Orthodox Jews? What’s the Church official position on that? It’s just that the farm takes up all my time and at night I just like to sit with a cup of tea. I might not be able to devote much time to the old yeshiva t’ing.”
As it happens, James, half of my family is Jewish. I did manage an MA in oriental languages, somehow; Hebrew being my first. Your church’s official position on Judaism, after centuries of pogroms, can be read in Nostra Aetate. John XXIII’s decree De Iudaeis is also rather good.
the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
‘in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.’
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
“My” Church, Lorenzo? I’m an Anglican priest, not a Roman Catholic, and a lifelong Zionist, as well as a Hebraist. I don’t think the Church of England has ever supported pogroms, forced conversions or auto da fe’s. I do have a high regard for Thomas Aquinas’s theological method, but so do a number of evangelicals (Nash, Geisler etc) who have bothered to study his work, particularly as this is mediated by Kreeft and Feser.
Sorry to answer in such piecemeal fashion, but the oral law is most adamantly not ‘the interpretation of Torah’, it is the Torah. You’re importing your Scripture vs Tradition protestant Christian thing into the argument here.
In what language and alphabet did God write the Ten Commandments on the tablets at Sinai?
You tell me.
You seemed to deny that the ancient Israelites had a written language before the 10th century. The account of the inscription of the Decalogue suggests otherwise, does it not?
There is absolutely no evidence they did. Whatever scant evidence we have is of a “proto-Hebrew’ for want of a better word from a few inscriptions. It’s def not the same language as the Old Testament, so-called, which is a Babylonian recension.
Denial of the supernatural in scripture again. Why then accept the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus?
But it was not classical/Babylonian Hebrew.
The Hebrew language, and the Hebrew alphabet, being the first alphabet, which Israel invented. More here:
https://www.earthhistory.org.uk/genesis-6-11-and-other-texts/the-primeval-tradition
It’s utter rubbish, Steven. There are no Hebrew inscriptions before the Siloam one (bar maybe one a decade older) and the language is barely recognisable as Hebrew. Then again, if you believe in a ‘New approach to earth history,’ which I suppose boils down to creationism, I cannot help you. Farewell.
Steven you announced here last year that the end would come in September last year. https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/who-are-the-antichrist-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-beast/
Were you wrong about that too?
Egyptian?
I have recently completed a course which had as its main theme is the evolution of the language of Biblical Hebrew, I feel able to comment on the Siloam inscription which featured in the course. It is an inscription recording the completion of the tunnel bringing water into Jerusalem which was built/dug at the time of Hezekiah.
The script is, of course, paleo-Hebrew and not the script we are familar with, which is basically an Aramaic script. Interestingly, it has dots between the words.
The spelling reflects the start of the use of matres lectionis, the use of consonants to represent vowels. At this stage they are used only at the end of words.
The writing style reflects significant similarities with Biblical narrative of the first temple period. There are words in the text not found in the Biblical text but this is not surprising. The Biblical language does not necessarily use every word in the language used at the time.
So, it is generally held that the language of the inscription is a reasonable match to that of those Hebrew texts dating from the first temple period. The language of later texts such as Ezra/Nehemaiah and Chronicles is different in some ways – on a continuum with later developments such as the Qumran scrolls and then the language of the Mishnah.
So, I would say that the language of the Siloam Inscription is similar to earluier Biblical Hebrew.
Another helpful article.
But the answer to the question ‘So how does this passage help us in our decision about how to read the Torah for ourselves?’ is more straightforward for new covenant theologians.
They see that canonical Torah (bearing in mind Anton’s point) was for national Israel only and is not mandatory for believers who are bound only by the ‘law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2).
In other words, although we can learn lessons from the Torah, we are only morally bound by what the NT teaches, or the NT affirms about the OT including, as you point out, all the teaching about sexual morality —including divorce and remarriage which I argue Jesus reaffirmed.
You suggest “Such a partial citation of the Ten Commandments, intended to communicate the whole of them” — but as many will know all the Ten Commandments are repeated and expanded on in the NT — except for the Sabbath day — which many believers see as being replaced by the concept (as per Martin Luther) of the ‘Lord’s Day’.
However, I have pointed out previously that N. T. Wright sees the Mosaic Covenant as coming through to the new covenant (as does Sarah Whittle whom you mention) which I see as a misunderstanding about ethnic Israel’s role in the Bible’s redemptive story — nonetheless, Anglicanism shares that same understanding with the Presbyterians.
But for myself, I think it is difficult to read Galatians and Hebrews and argue for that concept.
I am not denying it still leaves the conundrum of what lessons we can learn from the OT when such are not specifically articulated or expanded on in the NT.
But regarding the Sabbath day I am with B. B. Warfield who suggests, ‘Christ took the Sabbath into the grave with Him and brought the Lord’s Day out of the grave with Him.’
His understanding seems to suggest that if one of the Ten Commandments can be ‘buried’ with Christ, perhaps other (all?) Torah teaching can be similarly understood.
Are Christians sinning if they don’t go on strike on Sunday in North Korea?
Anton – I’ve absolutely no idea where your question came from in relation to what Colin Hamer wrote. I don’t imagine that any Christian would take a job that required working on Sundays – unless of course it was connected with emergency services or proclaiming the Word. I’d say that signing a job contract which explicitly requires working on Sunday – and then striking because one is required to honour the contract that one has signed – is immoral and sinful.
We see (at least) three creation ordinances in Genesis 2: Jesus explains (just in case there are people who want to contend with the obvious) that the one man and one woman principle is all about marriage. Another creation ordinance is work (instituted in Genesis 2) and the third creation ordinance that we see there is the Sabbath rest. If we take marriage very seriously, then it is difficult to see how we can be relaxed about the Sabbath rest.
I disagree. There is no such command to all mankind in the early parts of Genesis, or command outside Israel in the Pentateuch. You are arguing by analogy only. Blessed is the nation that mandates its workers all have the same day off every 7 days, but nobody is sinning if they work for 7 days consecutively for themselves, and the fact that the church in North Korea would cease to exist by mid-September if Christians there went on strike every Sunday suggests that you are unknowingly applying European historical standards more broadly than God intends.
Anton, Sabbath breakers were supposed to be stoned to death, just like gay peeps, and they did not mean Sunday. Even the earth is supposed to have a sabbath every seventh year. And a jubilee every seven times seven years… it’s cosmic in scope.
Dear Jock and Lorenzo
Do you consider that Christians in North Korea (who are typically put to death on discovery), and Christian slaves who refused orders from pagan masters on a Sunday in ancient Rome, were sinning before the Lord? Please include a clear Yes or No in any answer.
No, Jock. They were not sinning. gentiles are not asked to keep the sabbath if not living in the holy land anyway. It’s a stupid thing to be martyred for though.
Anton – yes – Sabbath breaking is a sin – the Holy Writ is very clear on this.
Also, Lorenzo – I agree – there are situations where it would be a stupid thing to get martyred for. There are situations where one may have to perpetrate one sin in order to prevent an even greater sin.
The Sabbath rest (Genesis 2) is clearly eschatological – it is something that we’ll experience fully in the next life; we can’t hope to see anything but a very pale imitation of it in this life.
As Lorenzo points out, it is something that is taken very seriously in the Pentateuch; people take a sabbath one day in seven, the land is supposed to have a sabbath rest one year in seven. In the Pentateuch and the Prophets it is very clear that God takes a dim view of Sabbath breaking.
The important point here – if the North Korean Christians whom you are talking about really are Christians, this means that John 3:16 applies; they have passed from death to life, their sins past present and future (including any sins past present and future connected with Sabbath breaking) have been nailed to the cross and they bear them no more. They will (of course) think very seriously about the will of God before going out to work on Sunday.
Rather than the North Korean Christians – who may have very good reasons for working on Sunday (on pain of execution) – I’m more concerned about the South Korean ‘Christians’ whom I met in Los Angeles, who had their church services on Sunday afternoons in order to let a substantial part of the congregation do their trading on Sunday mornings. I found this somewhat gratuitous.
Church ministers are their busiest on a Sunday. Rather ironic dont you think? And they all view that as their ‘work’, as evidenced by the fact that they typically take another day off during the week.
As for Christians keeping the Sabbath, very many work on Sundays and many are not in the emergency services or ‘proclaiming the Word’ (where are the exceptions in the Bible for those two?). If you put your kettle on on a Sunday, that requires electricity generation which means workers at the power plant. By boiling your kettle you’re requiring them to work, some of whom may be Christians.
Sorry Jock, I dont agree with you on that one.
Peter
Jock – tell me where in scripture there is any command on persons outside ancient Israel to keep the Sabbath, at least if their nations have no such legislation.
As we are supposed to obey God above man, you must presumably believe that the North Korean church, if it were faithful, should end next week for doing something that scripture does not command.
Anton – I’ve absolutely no idea where your presumptions come from – unless your understanding of the church, what it is supposed to be doing and how it is supposed to operate are completely different from mine. It goes deeper than that – I think your understanding of Salvation and what Christ achieved on Calvary is fundamentally different.
Wherever there are saved people, there is the church (and that includes North Korea). Saved people keep on sinning (Romans 7:14-25 – the ‘wretched man’ discourse, written in the present tense by a mature Christian). Your presumption would imply that you believe that if people keep on sinning, then they are no longer part of the church (i.e. they aren’t really saved) and that therefore ‘the church’ as an organisation should be closed down.
The principle of the day of rest is set out clearly in Genesis 2 – and I very much hope that you are not trying to tell us that this creation ordinance does not exist or is in some sense irrelevant or that it no longer applies. The application to the law of the land for Israel at the time of Moses was unworkable then – and is clearly even more unworkable now – especially when the concept of a ‘Christian state’ (or for that matter ‘Zionist state’) no longer exists.
I pointed out how this ‘salvation’ business works – and if you understood this (let alone agreed with this), then you would never have been able to make the presumptions you did. When a person comes to faith, (i.e. believes in Him), that person passes from death to eternal life – where eternal means eternal. It isn’t a ‘Schrodinger’s cat’ thing – it isn’t something that can subsequently be taken away from that person for ‘bad behaviour’, or continuing to sin, or failure to adhere to all the points of canon law (otherwise Samson could never have been classed as a man of faith – as he was in Hebrews 11).
With the principle set out in the creation ordinance, I’d expect people to generally agree that if a day is set aside for Spiritual rest, then things work better than if there isn’t. People need it. If we have any sense, then we do our best to adhere to the principle – and for those of us who do trust in Christ – in his crucifixion and resurrection (that in Him my sins have been dealt with and forgiven) we understand that all our problems with Sabbath observance have been forgiven.
Dumping the principle of the creation ordinance because we can’t see how it could do any good for the Christian community in North Korea is, frankly, ludicrous.
Jock,
I have no idea why you have changed the subject from the 1-in-7 pattern and its implications today, to soteriology. I’m not going to quiz you on the latter and I presume we share identical views of that subject.
On the former subject, I’m well aware as a research scientist of the role of rest-and-review after creating something, i.e. a scientific paper. In the absence of any divine command to take a day off every seven outside ancient Israel, you are arguing by precedent, and I suggest that the precedent that is relevant is the one I have just stated.
Anton – oh well, perhaps I misunderstood you, but it seemed to me that you were the one who suggested that a corollary of what I wrote (Sabbath observance something to be taken seriously) was that the church in North Korea should be closed down, since Sabbath observance there seemed to be out of the question. This would imply that nobody there was actually saved, because wherever there are saved people, there is the church. So the connection between salvation and Sabbath observance was at least implied by you.
If we conclude that people of ancient Israel were committing sins when they violated the laws governing Sabbath observance, but that we aren’t when we don’t take Sabbath observance seriously, then there seems to be a bit of a problem here. Either God was imposing impossible laws on these people in order to punish them (‘as a source of innocent merriment’ as the Mikado would put it), or else he changed his mind on this matter (which we don’t believe).
The ordinance of Sabbath observance is given in Genesis 2, before the fall. The fall certainly makes Sabbath observance much more difficult, but surely we consider that the rules for ancient Israel are supposed to represent a ‘vision of glory’ and are supposed to be a pointer towards the heavenly kingdom. I’m therefore not prepared to accept that the rules governing Sabbath observance given in the Pentateuch are of no value, completely obsolete and they can therefore can be safely ignored; I believe that failure to take the Sabbath rest seriously is sin; I believe, though, that for those of us who believe in Him, Christ died for our sins; they are forgiven and nailed to the cross.
There is (of course) some sort of inherent contradiction – God created nature, governed by the natural laws – which seems wholly in opposition to the idea of a Sabbath rest. Nature keeps pressing on regardless. I’d say that the contradiction is already there before any fall.
Anton – I’ll relate an anecdote that I heard about a mathematician who was an observant Jew. He won a Fields medal. He had a brilliant idea, but unfortunately for him, he had the idea on a Saturday. He tried to forget the idea, but couldn’t. So, after much anguish and soul searching, he wrote it up and got the medal. This was related to me over lunch one day by people whom I consider to be reliable.
Jock,
I’m willing to believe that story. The Jewish tradiotion in mathematics and the sciences is superb – just see how many Nobel gongs they have won.
Where the true church is, there is persecution!
Thankyou,Very interesting comments.
It is interesting to note that in v17 the Authorized version omits
(By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.) which is included in many modern translations, usually in brackets. However, the Greek Text does not have it.
The original censure about none washing of hands is not recorded in the Law anywhere.
Jesus says it is they who do not keep the Law, they annul it, replacing it with “Traditions of the Elders”
In effect they had “lost their first love”. Jesus goes on to show how they defiled and set aside the Law for their traditions.
I wonder if we moderns abandon the Law for “traditions of the elders”?
Some years ago I was in a church where the people were invited to “share” any thoughts;
No doubt mimicking the early church “If any man has a revelation or a Psalm etc.
After sharing a revelation or insight on a Bible passage I was subsequently taken to severe task.by, I assume, a leading “elder”, who had, I could detect, been designated to give the offence.
After some personal remarks he declared “We have our own Teachers,” perhaps referring to authorized
Licensed ones. Ironically this same chap, perhaps an official “reader” gave the Bible reading, the Corinthian love passage! I could not, alas, suppress an audible laugh.
On other invitation occasions in similar types of churches, if commenting on scripture the organ would start to play after 2 minutes or a hand placed on the back to indicate “don’t overstay your welcome”. Such officials are ignorant of the injunction to “let the rest judge what you say”.
There are similarly other traditions but my piece is already overlong.
The point is that the law is a law of love and as such the moral law is retained by the Apostles if not the rituals.
For a very learned understanding of this topic see a Messianic Jew’s viewpoint on the doctrines of the Pharisees and of Jesus.
https://biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/who-were-the-pharisees/
and /biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/did-christ-declare-all-foods-clean-misunderstandings-regarding-mark-719/
Alan, I wonder about the accuracy of your comment:
‘It is interesting to note that in v17 [sic. v19?] the Authorized version omits
(By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.) which is included in many modern translations, usually in brackets. However, the Greek Text does not have it.’
Using the STEP Bible’s ability to put different versions in parallel, I can see that v19 [sic] has the phrase καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα in the Tyndale House edition, and the UBS. The Byzantine text and the TR (following that) have the similar καθαριζον παντα τα βρωματα
So, which Greek text do not have this phrase?
There is no textual omission. However, the Greek is mistranslated. It should read in English ‘since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and goes into the sewer, which cleanses all the food.’ The Greek word ‘cleansing’ agrees grammatically with ‘sewer’. ‘Thus he declared all foods clean’ is an inept paraphrase arising from not understanding the text. There’s no ‘thus’, the word for ‘sewer’ is ignored, and καθαρίζω does not mean ‘declare clean’.
If Jesus had explicitly declared all foods clean, Peter would have ceased to have qualms about the clean/unclean distinction and would not have objected vehemently when in Acts 10 he was told to regard all foods as clean – for that is how he understood the vision. It turned out, of course, that ‘all the quadrupeds [not ‘all kinds of animals’] and reptiles [creeping animals] and birds of the air’ were symbolic of the nations.
Acts perhaps gives us the clue to understanding why certain foods considered acceptable after AD 30 were previously deemed unclean – unclean, that is, for Israel and Judah. The food laws were one way in which Israel could recognise that they were to keep themselves apart from the nations. This was the essence of them, not the intrinsic properties of the foods themselves. When, by his atonement, Jesus abolished the Jew/Gentile divide, the distinction between clean and unclean foods necessarily went too.
Going back to Mark 7:19, the verb which I translated by the simple word ‘go’ is ἐκπορεύομαι, the same verb as in v. 20, 21 and 23 – more literally ‘proceed/go forth’. This is deliberate on Luke’s/Jesus’s part, to accentuate the contrast between the outward physical things and the inward matters of the heart, and the same English verb should be used when translating.
So Steven following your link and looking at the stuff about the end times let me ask you again, in case you missed my question earlier in this thread.
You announced around this time last year that the end was coming on September 16th – The day of trumpets, you called it.
https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/who-are-the-antichrist-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-beast/
Can you tell me what happened on that day? Why didn’t the end come?
Of course, the difficult passage is Matthew 5:17–20 — but I am persuaded by the argument that when Jesus refers to the ‘least of these commandments’ — he is referring to what he is articulating in the ‘sermon on the mount’, which is the fulfilment of the law.
From my perspective it is particularly interesting that the antithesis running through the passage is where a more literal understanding (‘A’) is contrasted with a broader application (‘B’). But when it comes to divorce in Matthew 5:31–32 — ‘B’ is a repetition of the Deuteronomic teaching of divorce — that a husband can only divorce for his wife’s sexual immorality.
After further research I unashamedly offer the following on Washing
First, they already made up their mind about Jesus. Second, they did not evaluate Jesus against the measure of God’s Word. They evaluated Him against the measure of their religious traditions.
The religious leaders meant elaborate ceremonial washings, not washing for the sake of cleanliness.
They even had an accompanying prayer to be said during the ritual washing: “Blessed be Thou, O Lord, King of the universe, who sanctified us by the laws and commanded us to wash the hands.” (Cited in Lane)
Exo 30:17 – Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
Exo 30:18 – “You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base also of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. And you shall put water in it,
30:19 – “for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it.
Exo 30:20 – “When they go into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the LORD, they shall wash with water, lest they die.
The bronze laver was God’s wonderful provision for that inner cleansing. It stood between the bronze altar and the entrance into the Holy Place.
At the laver the Priest was to wash his hands and his feet before he could enter into the Holy Place to serve God.
The priestly washing in the tabernacle symbolized certain great truths. First of all, true washing must come from God. Aaron and his sons were to wash themselves at the bronze laver in the tabernacle. They were not to wash themselves in their own homes. Instead, the washing had to be done in the sanctuary of God. Self-purification will not do. We cannot cleanse ourselves from the defilements of sin. Sin is not skin deep as some may suppose that it can be washed away by the touch of our hands and a bar of soap. The stain of sin is dark and deep in our very nature and only the cleansing done through the blood of the Savior can wash it away.
In God’s plan the justification received at the bronze altar must always be followed by sanctification received at the bronze laver. Altar and laver are inseparable companions. The blood was for forgiveness, the water for cleansing. I do not want you to infer from this that there are two fountains given to us for salvation: one for forgiveness and the other for cleansing. Both point us in the same direction — they point us to Christ. Water and blood are closely joined together in God’s Word.
In Numbers 19, for example, the unclean person was to be declared cleansed only after being sprinkled with water but the water was to be mixed with the ashes of a sacrificed heifer. The water and the sacrifice were joined together. The Apostle John wrote, “This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with water only, but with the water and the blood” (1 John 5:6).
How can we forget this scene: “But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out” (John 19:34). The Heidelberg Catechism uses this passage as proof that Jesus was truly dead; but it also proved that Jesus is the one, complete sacrifice replacing both the bronze altar and the bronze laver.
Jesus was fulfilling the role of the laver providing the necessary cleansing for the disciples. When Peter protested, Jesus said, “If I do not wash you, you will have no part with me” (John 13:10). Peter was a disciple forgiven and saved. For him the sin question was settled. But what about his daily walk?
The beautiful words of 1 John 1:9 come to us: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins [the bronze altar] and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (the bronze laver).” God promises not only to forgive, He also promises to cleanse. He provides not only the altar, but also the laver; not only the forgiveness of our sins but
Making us Holy and acceptable fot entrance into the Holy of Holies to partake of His Holiness.
Cleansing thru the blood refers to a removal of the desire to sin. As the priests saw their reflection in the bronze laver [It was constructed from the mirrors of the ladies, edit]]
and as we look at our reflection in the Law of God, even though we are forgiven we still have the desire for sin in our hearts. God said through the prophet Ezekiel, Ch. 36 vs 25 – 27
Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from all the filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments, and do them.
a cleansing of the heart. God says, “I will give…” The cleansing that is our sanctification is a gift of God given freely to His own. By faith we receive the Lord as our Savior; by faith we acknowledge our sins are forgiven through His once-for-all sacrifice upon the cross. He has removed our sin from us. Now we can move to the laver where, not only are we forgiven, but our hearts are made clean. [sanctified]
That is what God does: “I will give you a new heart.” True purification must be of the heart and the soul.
Revelation 7 tells us that without it we cannot enter into heaven. The saints in heaven are those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
The last Beatitude in the Bible teaches, Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the Tree of Life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
Revelation 22:14
In the blood of the Lamb at at the bronze alter and in the the bronze laver our garments are made white; our hearts are cleansed and made pure.[Holy]
http://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/bronze-laver
We are to walk as He walked and preach a full Gospel, seldom heard, alas, in my long experience. We are to be Holy as He is Holy.
A niggle: some of the commandments pertaining to food were indeed given as part of G-d’s creative intention: it’s in so many places in the Talmud. Adam and Eve were not allowed to kill animals to eat their flesh. The eating of meat was allowed for the first time to Noah and his family after they left the Ark, which is why G-d at that time added the seventh commandment, which prohibits the eating of meat that was severed from a living animal (even if it was stunned and insensitive). Gn 9:4: “But meat, with its soul in its blood you shall not eat.” It is reiterated in Acts 15 unanimously by ‘all the apostles and elders with the consent of the whole church’ as still binding on the gentile converts as it is one of the seven Noahide laws.
Also the laws regarding purity (which Jesus disregarded in Mark) are completely different from the laws of kashrut and had become obsolete when the Gospels were written anyway as the Temple had been destroyed, making purification impossible. Rab. Daniel Boyarin wrote at some length about this.
For those desirous of preaching a Full Gospel
The saving From Sin and saving To Holiness there is additional rich thought @truthsfromthetabernacle.wordpress.com/sacrifice-redemption-and-cleansing/the-brazen-laver/
That we can enter the Holy of Holies and find in God’s presence there is fullness of Joy and Pleasures for evermore.
Selah.
From Peter Leithart, for consideration;
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/you-are-animal-eat-bible-dietary-laws/
Thanks Geoff the food link was helpful.
Sabbath.
Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. He is our Sabbath rest.
God rested not because He was tired, but because he was finished, satisfied as it was very good.
In Christ the work of redemption is finished on the Cross completed in the new Sabbath Resurrection.
His Sabbath invitation is to rest in Him in His finished work.