Did Jesus Abolish the Old Testament Food Laws?
There is a very interesting passage in Mark 7:1-23 where Jesus, allegedly, abrogates or nullifies the food laws in the Old Testament.
The real center of debates appears in vv. 14-23, to be even more precise, vv. 15 and 19 about clean foods.
Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Does this mean that Jesus rejects the distinction between clean and unclean foods? Did Jesus regard the food laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as redundant? Did Jesus replace Torah’s holiness code with his own teachings about love and compassion? Many have thought so!
But I have my own take on this tricky passage, in an excerpt from my forthcoming historical Jesus book, available NOW to paid subscribers who want a preview!
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