Did Jesus do away with the Jewish dietary laws? Many Christians point to Mark 7.15-19 to say that he did, which is understandable, considering the common translation of Mark 7.19, “Thus he [Jesus] declared all foods clean.” In this video, I present five reasons why it is implausible that Jesus eliminated the Jewish dietary laws and then offer a reading of Mark 7.15-19 that makes better sense of Jesus’s argument in its Jewish context.
Note: Between 25:03 and 25:24, I mention that "pork is not in itself unclean" and that defilement comes through a Jew's disobedience to God's command not to eat pigs. In Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, pigs are not ontologically unclean; they are not unclean period. They are unclean for Israel, the Jewish people, because God declares them to be such. Jewish disobedience to the food laws, in particular, is a matter of intention. For more on this, along with the references to this perspective in Jewish literature, see Dr. David Rudolph's essay "Paul and the Food Laws: A Reassessment of Romans 14.14, 20"
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Video on Matthew 5:17 (Did Jesus End God’s Covenant with Israel? | Live at MJAA Messiah Conference 2022)
Does Colossians Teach Against Jewish Practices? (Colossians 2.16-17)
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Works cited: Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012), 102-128.
David Rudolph, "Jesus and the Food Laws: A Reassessment of Mark 7:19b," Evangelical Quarterly, 74 (2002): 291-311.
John MacArthur, “The Inside Story on Defilement (Mark 7.14-23),” June 12, 2012.
Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Matthew Thiessen, "Abolishers of the Law in Early Judaism and Matthew 5,17-20," Biblica 93, no. 4 (2012): 543-56.
Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels' Portrayal of Ritual Impurity Within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 187-195.
Yair Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating the Body: A New Understanding of Contamination in Mark 7.15,” NTS 54 (2008): 176-200
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