The Gospel of Mark as a Test Case

At the same time that bold new assessments were being raised in regard to the relations of Jews and followers of Jesus in Matthew, Paul, and John, there was relatively little rethinking of the situation in the Gospel of Mark, and this Gospel could become a test case for the old view. It has long been assumed that, regardless of the original meaning of Paul’s letters, Mark understood Paul as Paul’s followers did. The following assumptions seemed secure:

1.Mark was influenced by Paul and inherited a Pauline doctrine of faith.

2.Mark reflected a mission that was like Paul’s; in Mark, Jesus moved into gentile territory to demonstrate an openness to gentile converts (Mark 7–9).

3.Mark must have been a gentile, because there are inaccuracies in regard to Jewish practice in the passion narratives and elsewhere, and Mark explains basic Jewish practices, often inaccurately (7:3–4).

4.Jesus is depicted as rejecting kosher laws across the board (7:19).

Now, however, these conclusions have also been challenged. First, it is not at all clear that Mark knew Paul’s theology of faith in contrast to law. Faith was a constant element in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Jewish discourse of the period. The Hebrew word ’aman (“to believe, have faith”) and its related forms (in Aramaic as well) can be found behind the use of “amen” in liturgy and are related to the word truth (’emet, derived from ’aman), and to the “faithful ones” (ne’emanim) among the Pharisees (m. Demai 4:6). In Neh. 9:38, the restored community in Jerusalem joins in a “faith covenant” (’amanah). The use of this root by Jews speaking Hebrew or Aramaic, and of the pist- root by those speaking Greek, only increases in the Hellenistic period. Thus, although the use of the language of “faith” and “believing” in Mark is pronounced, it was also common in Judaism, a fact that is almost totally ignored in assessments of Jewish-Christian relations in the first century. Further, the language of “faith” and “believing” in Mark is not explicitly contrasted with law as Paul would have it; it is used in the same way as other Jews were using it. (Parallels between Mark and Paul are often listed, but the Pauline passages are almost all found in Romans. Were Paul’s words in this letter carefully chosen to respond to the Jewish discourse on faith in which that community would have been schooled?)

Second, although in Mark, Jesus does move into territories occupied by gentiles, these were also (with one exception, 7:1) part of the ancient borders of Israel. The Maccabees and their descendants had already conquered these lands in order to reestablish the boundaries of ancient Israel; so might we regard Jesus’ itinerary in Mark as also reconstituting “Israel”? Jesus also heals gentiles, but so had the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 5); was the latter also “gentilizing” Israel? Third, Mark’s Gospel does seem to include many apparent inaccuracies concerning Jewish practices, but these, too numerous to mention, are in some cases found in other Jewish texts or taken over in the “Jewish” Gospel Matthew, and other cases are much less clear than once thought (A. Y. Collins).

Last, we come to the argument that has often seemed conclusive: Mark’s apparent cancellation of all kosher laws in Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees and scribes at 7:1–23. The relevant verses are displayed here side by side with the equivalent section of Matthew. The parallel columns allow one to read Mark’s words closely while at the same time noting the differences found in Matthew’s treatment of this important issue. (Luke and John do not include this passage.)

Mark 7:1–23 (in part)	Matthew 15:1–20 (in part)
1 When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem	1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem,
gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;
4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.
5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,	and said,
“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”	2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat?”
[Several scriptural and legal arguments follow here.]	[Several scriptural and legal arguments follow here.]
14 He called the people to him again and said,	10 He called the people to him and said,
15 “There is nothing outside a person which by going in can defile, but the things which come out are what defile.	11 “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles.
18 Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,	17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth
19 since it enters not the heart, but the stomach,	enters the stomach,
and goes out into the sewer?”	and goes out into the sewer?
Thus he declared all foods clean [literally, “Thus he cleansed all foods”].
20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles.	18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.
21 For it is from within, from the human heart,	19 For out of the heart come
that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.	evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.
23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”	20 These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Mark’s words here are traditionally interpreted in a “Pauline” way, that is, that Jewish law now no longer applies among the followers of Jesus. However, challenges to that interpretation of this passage have also arisen. Jesus’ debate with Pharisees about eating food with unwashed hands may not be a rejection of Jewish law but a debate within Judaism. Mark here may actually have Jesus endorse the majority Jewish position against the stricter Pharisees. Was the view Mark attributes to Jesus actually more typical of Jewish practice in the first century than the Pharisees’? One also notices that the run-on sentence in 7:3–4 may have resulted from the combination of a simple, and accurate, statement about Pharisees and additional comments about practices of “all the Jews” that were added later. (Note that these verses are not present in Matthew.) But Mark’s explanation of Jewish customs may also not be as out of place in Jewish discourse as once thought (A. Y. Collins, 345; Regev 2000, 180–81, 188–89). To be sure, the passage indicates (if it was not inserted later in its entirety) that Mark is including gentiles in the audience of the Gospel, but it does not necessarily reveal a gentile author. Mark’s reference to the practices of “all the Jews” certainly seems to distance himself from them, but we encounter here a hidden problem with English that affects interpretation. An English-speaking Jew might say, “All Jews do such-and-such,” but not “All the Jews do such-and-such.” The English definite article has the power in this construction to separate off the group in question and to distance the speaker from the group. In Greek, however, usage of the definite article is often quite different from English, and it is not clear that it would distance the speaker in this way. Did Mark mean, “All Jews wash their hands”—which could include Mark—or “All the Jews wash their hands”—which seems to distance the Markan Jesus from the Jews?

The last half of this passage has also been reassessed. The central statement—“There is nothing outside a person which by going in can defile, but the things which come out are what defile”—may not be a rejection of purity concerns, as long supposed, but simply an insistence that moral purity is as important, or even more important, than ritual purity. The prioritizing of moral motives over observance was well known in the Jewish background (Mic. 6:6–8, Hosea 6:6), but the insistence that Jewish observance remains in effect as well is also found in New Testament texts: “You Pharisees tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God. It is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others” (Luke 11:42; Klawans, 147–48).

But Mark also broadens the discussion by the insertion of 7:19c, “thus he declared all foods clean” (katharizōn panta ta brōmata). This awkward and intrusive phrase, which does not appear in Matthew (the section as a whole, as noted, is lacking in Luke and John), may have been inserted later in the textual history of Mark (Booth, 49–50, 62–65), but even if these were Mark’s own words, it is also possible that this clause has an entirely different meaning. The Greek literally says, “Jesus cleansed all foods,” but translators, stumped by what that would mean, have chosen a paraphrasing translation that made perfect sense in the twentieth-century consensus: “Jesus declared all foods clean.” This translation means that the “Pauline” Jesus was instituting a new policy canceling all kosher laws. However, in the ancient period, it was sometimes stated, in both Jewish and Christian texts, that at the end of time, for the special, saved community, there would be a cleansing of foods, vessels, or people. From Ezekiel (36:22–31) to Zechariah (14:16, 20–21) to 1 Enoch (10:17–11:2) to Qumran (1QS 4:20–21), there are discussions of a shower of purity on the saved community, however that community is described (see also Jub. 1:17, 23; 4:26; 50:5; Abot R. Nat. B 42; b. Erub. 100b; Regev 2000; 2004). Indeed, with this notion in mind, one may look at other passages in Mark as well. Consider Jesus’ healing of a leper, phrased in terms of “cleansing” (the kathar root in Greek).

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can cleanse me [katharisai, cf. 7:19, discussed above].” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be cleansed [katharisthēti]!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed [ekatharisthē]. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing [katharismos] what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” (Mark 1:40–44)

Although this passage is often understood, from the perspective of later Christianity, as the rejection of purity laws about leprosy, a close reading reveals that Jesus miraculously returns the leper to a state of being clean, but does nothing to alter the Jewish laws concerning purity. In fact, the man is instructed to go to the temple to make the offering that Moses commanded (Leviticus 14). The point is important. Technically, in Jewish law, a leper is not pure until after the temple offering is made, but the point of Mark’s story is that purity is now made miraculously available as an eschatological event (see Regev 2000; 2004). In the similar but not identical case in the Hebrew Bible mentioned above (2 Kings 5), the prophet heals Naaman the Syrian from his leprosy. But just as it is not generally suggested in Jewish or Christian tradition that Elisha is opening Israel to gentiles, it is also not suggested that he is canceling Jewish purity laws concerning leprosy. And Mark is not the only Christian text to describe an end-time cleansing of the saints; in an otherwise puzzling passage, Paul finds a new cleansing in the community members themselves; note the juxtaposition of “cleansing” with holiness language (the hag- root in Greek):

The unbelieving husband is made holy [hēgiastai] through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean [akatharta], but as it is, they are holy [hagia]. (1 Cor. 7:14; see Johnson Hodge)

So just as the leper in Mark 1:40–45 is cleansed—purity rules are not abrogated—and in 1 Corinthians 7 an unbelieving spouse is made holy and the children cleansed, so in Mark 7 it is likely that in anticipation of an eschatological change, Jesus cleanses foods, as the Greek actually states. Thus, even if this verse was in Mark’s original text, it may not have meant that Jewish kosher laws were being rejected, but that for this community, there is at the end of time a dispensation of purity that overwhelms impurity, and also defeats “impure spirits,” Mark’s more Jewish term for “demons.” If, as Zech. 14:20 says, all vessels can be rendered pure at the end of time, and if, as 1 Corinthians 7 says, spouses can be rendered holy, why not lepers in the community, and foods? At the end of time, all heaven breaks loose, but only on the holy community, the hagioi (“saints”). There is a division of humanity for a simultaneous cleansing and judgment. The canceling of Jewish food laws, which is how Acts 10, for instance, has been traditionally interpreted, has been too hastily read back into Mark (see also Rom. 14:20).

This passage, then, which had been treated by scholars as a clear confirmation of the Pauline theology at the center of Mark, is much more ambiguous than was once supposed. Paul’s letters were often used to justify a gentile mission and identity, but was Mark part of that development (as were Luke and Acts), or was it, like Matthew, part of that segment of the movement, perhaps the larger part, that had not abrogated Jewish law? What was once considered unlikely in regard to Mark now seems quite possible.