Exegetical on Mark 7:1-23 - Essay Example

Exegetical Essay on Mark 7 23. The gospel of Mark was written down between AD 65 and AD 70, some 30-40 years after the events which are described.1 By this time the early Church has been established, Paul has been visiting areas where new Christian communities have emerged, and the first major doctrinal differences are beginning to arise. It is a critical time in the history of the Church and the passage in Mark 7:1-23 must be seen against this particular historical background. There is one major theme throughout this passage, and that is the difference between purity and defilement, and the key motivation of Jesus appears to be to announce a very significant shift from Jewish to Christian thinking. It is a transitional passage, therefore, and this can be seen in two ways. Jesus signals a transition from the Old Covenant based on the law, to something that transcends the law, and he shifts his mission from the Jewish heartlands to the Gentile territories. These two dimensions are, of course, connected. The passage in question introduces a phase of preaching and teaching in the Gentile territories. The major difference between Jews and Gentiles is the observance of Jewish law by the Jews only. As a Jew himself, Jesus attracted much criticism from Jewish authorities for his liberal attitude to some of the Jewish commandments, and no doubt also some apprehension from the Gentiles who would need to know whether following Jesus would mean converting to Judaism with all that this entails. It is clear from the text that some of the followers of Jesus observed the Jewish dietary rules, and some did not. The issue was, therefore, not clearly settled and this was a potential cause of disunity in the early Church. In fact this issue is documented again and again, as reported in Acts2 and in the letters of Paul.3 The gospel passage spells out what the Jewish laws entail, even though the disciples are already well aware of these rules. This detail is evidence that the teaching of these points is designed for Gentile listeners in the first instance, to explain what the issue is about and invite them now to join with the followers of Jesus on an equal basis, not constrained by the laws that had previously separated all those of Jewish heritage form all those of gentile birth. In other words, this is a message intended for non-Jews. This point is raised now because it is necessary in order to remove social boundaries that could hamper Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles.4 The issue is not completely resolved, however, and commentators note that the position of Jews who became followers of Christ is left open, suggesting that continued observance of the dietary laws is an option for them.5 In the first part of the passage, Mark 7:1-14 the writer of the Gospel clearly is setting down a definitive teaching here which absolves Gentile followers from having to obey the Jewish laws. The position for the disciples is further discussed in the remainder of the section, and in this case the message is taken to a different level. Some commentators suggest that the passage signifies a departure from the old Jewish laws: “the Markian Jesus declares that in fact all people are defiled – not by what they eat and drink but by what they will say and do”.6 This utterance signals a departure from the situation that pertained when God gave the law to the Jews, since, in the words of Boring it is “not descriptive, but performative; not explaining what has always been the case, but changing the situation by Jesus’ authoritative declaration”.7 The distinction between purity and impurity is maintained, but the source of defilement is now defined in terms of what a person does, and not what kind of food he or she eats. It opens the door for Jesus to go on and mingle with lepers, male and female Gentiles, and all kinds of sinners without fear of defilement in the traditional Jewish sense. When Jesus or his disciples are accused of defilement, he responds “by dismissing these boundaries as “human” and calls for a different basis rooted in one’s personal relationship with God.”8 This is no doubt true but it would be incorrect to suggest that Jesus throws out the whole of Jewish tradition. In his response to response to Pharisaic criticism he expressly uses quotations from the Jewish scriptures to interpret how Jewish law should be understood. By weighing one part of Jewish scripture with another, in true Pharisaic fashion, Jesus shows that he can argue within the Jewish tradition as well as outside it. In this case the quotation from Isaiah 29:13 emphasizes the difference between lip service, which comes via the mouth, and true devotion which comes from the heart. Jesus turns the accusation of rejection of God’s law back to the Pharisees saying “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (Mark 7:8). It seems, then, that what is important is holding to the spirit of the law, and not to the letter of the law, and this is the point that the Pharisees have been missing. Many of the Jewish customs and practices were indeed human additions that crept in through the ages, and this is a lesson that incidentally can also apply to the modern Church. Jesus is saying that these things are of secondary importance, and that clinging to them is wrong if they distract a person from the duty to hold on to the true core of God’s commandments. Guelich9 interprets the statement about God’s commandment as referring to the commandment of Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Later, in verse 10, there is reference to the specific commandment in Deuteronomy 5:16: “Honour your father and your mother” which commentators note is to be interpreted as both giving respect that is due, and providing practical aid in their old age, such as food, clothes and support to move from place to place.10 There is no suggestion that Jesus sees these core commandments, as they were delivered to Moses, as being obsolete or wrong. In fact his emphasis on the spirit of the law of God reinforces their validity. If anything he is more exacting than the current Pharisees are in his interpretation of these original laws, since he demands that they take precedence over all human additions that have come later. It is important to distinguish here between the Gentile audience, for whom the issue of dietary laws is very important, and the audience of disciples, who are Jewish. For the Gentiles the dietary laws are an unnecessary barrier to the Christian faith. For the Christians, they are a source of division. Byrne points out that this passage immediately precedes the miraculous feeding of the five thousand and that this whole theme of feeding and bread links with the concept of preaching and teaching.11 This declaration of the purity of what comes into a person can also apply to the teachings that a person hears, and this is undoubtedly a response to the accusations of Jewish authorities against the teaching of Jesus in general. The teachings of the Pharisees may well be referred to here, also, with their discussion of fine points of legal interpretation and their hard and fast rulings on small variations. In Jewish history there is a long tradition of factions and division, caused by different branches following the teachings of particular leading rabbis. It seems that Jesus is shifting the debate out of this worldly domain of human bickering, into a spiritual domain, where purity comes from the core of a person’s beliefs, and not from the tiny detail of observance. This matches his observation elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel: “You will know them by their fruits”.12 The reference to “Corban” in Mark 7:11 is cited by way of an illustrative example. The term is connected with Pharisaic traditions which have been allowed to creep into common usage. Jesus reveals the duplicity of some legalistic Jews who use the law to avoid looking after their parents in old age. By promising their worldly goods to the Temple treasury, these people argue that they cannot use this resource to support their parents. Jesus exposes this hypocrisy, which Brown explains as follows: “v. 11 describes a person acting not so much rashly as coldly: cynically seeking a way to freeze assets so that they could be preserved for later use – much as declaring bankruptcy can function today.”13 The whole theme of washing hands is linked with Pharisaic tradition, because this ritual act is not set down as part of the formal law as handed down from God, but rather it is part of the Jewish tradition that has grown up over the centuries. It has resonance also in connection with the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate, who called for a bowl of water to wash his hands in order to signify his separation from the evil deed that was carried out before him. Significantly, he passed all responsibility, and by implication therefore also all guilt, to the Jewish authorities, leaving himself pure. Seen in the light of this passage in Mark 7, this is a futile gesture, since it applies to the external body only, and does not apply to the heart. The list of vices cited in Mark 7:21-22 follows a generic biblical format, since it contains some plural terms, which seem to indicate repeated actions, and some singular terms, which look more like attitudes or character traits. Byrne calls them “a kind of checklist, to which we could add examples for our time.”14 It is not so much each specific item that is being highlighted, in a legalistic attention to detail, as a general and more exacting exhortation to avoid all this kind of thing. The second part of this passage begins at 7:15 with a shift away from the Gentile audience and towards the disciples themselves. In fact the disciples and their particular position, caught between the accusations of the Pharisees and these new radical teachings of Jesus, are the key to understanding this whole passage. One theory is that the mission to the Gentiles was provoking division between the disciples, and so this passage of teaching is designed for their benefit, to teach the relative irrelevance of superficial rituals as compared with genuine belief from the heart.15 These detailed points identify the main teachings of Jesus but there is another message hidden in the context of this passage. The whole discussion about the law, in combination with eating and all the underlying references to teaching, recalls the early history of the Jews. It is as if Jesus is treading a parallel path, giving out a new, simplified law, coming from the heart and based on love of God and of fellow humans, and a new manna from heaven, in the form of his teaching, which he goes on to symbolize in the feeding of the five thousand in the following section of the gospel of Mark. The old law is not rejected or replaced, but it is brought back to its original purity and simplicity, and crucially also, it is opened up for all people, and not just Jews. This is the major significance of the passage, and the arguments about what foods are pure and impure fall away in the face of this radical new message. References Boring, M. Eugene. Mark: A Commentary. Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006, pp. 196-205. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York, London and Sidney: Doubleday, 1997. Byrne, Brendan. A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel. Strathfield NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2008. Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writers. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Guelich, Robert A. “Mark 1-8:26”. In Ralph P. Martin, (Ed.) Word Biblical Commentary. Volume 34A. Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1989. Marcus, Joel. “Mark 1-8. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary”. In The Anchor Bible. New York, London and Sidney: Doubleday, 1999. Moloney, Frances J. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002. Read More