brenmcg said
Stephen said
brenmcg you’re starting from a faith position I don’t share. Your arguments strike me as ad hoc when they’re not simply circular.
Matthew 15:11 “what enters a man’s mouth does not defile him but it is what comes out of his mouth that defiles him”. Therefore Matthew’s Jesus rejects all levitical dietary laws.
Would you describe that argument as faith based, ad hoc or circular?
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
-Isaiah 1: 11 – 17
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Amos 5: 21 – 24
brenmcg, do you think Isaiah and Amos were actually calling for an end to the Jewish sacrificial cult? Or were they crying for genuine devotion without which pious ritual becomes empty and fruitless? This argument is as old as Judaism itself. Assuming that the historical Jesus actually expressed the ideas attributed to him by Matthew, he is just voicing his own version of this old argument.
Stephen said
brenmcg, do you think Isaiah and Amos were actually calling for an end to the Jewish sacrificial cult? Or were they crying for genuine devotion without which pious ritual becomes empty and fruitless? This argument is as old as Judaism itself. Assuming that the historical Jesus actually expressed the ideas attributed to him by Matthew, he is just voicing his own version of this old argument.
No I think you’re right about Isaiah and Amos.
But when Jesus says nothing you eat can make you unclean he means nothing you eat can make you unclean.
Notice in both Matthew in Mark this statement occurs right before Jesus meets the Canaanite/Syrophoenician woman.
bencmg stop proof-texting and read Jesus’ comments in context.
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
– Matthew 15:10-20
Matthew is not having Jesus call for the abrogation of dietary laws. Jesus is calling for sincerity of belief. Like Isaiah and Amos.
I find it strange that a teacher of the law argued like a disbeliever in the sense of “its just a pig and it’ll get digested and excreted” If you ask jewish people, eating food sacrificed to other than god metaphysically defiles.
sacrificing a pig to yhwh instead of lamb is metaphysical defilement
Eating pig and saying that it gets digested and does not defile completely ignores metaphysical defilement .
Bibles consistent message is that you do yhwhs laws and legalism otherwise bad things will happen.
to be consistent jesus argument could be used on sacrifices. What does it matter if you use a pig to do ritual sacrifice and sprinkle its blood? Its just flesh which will be eaten ,digested and some of it buried, so why not use a pig ?
unless it has nothing to do with abrogation of the law and everything to do with sincerity
jakejones said
“No I think you’re right about Isaiah and Amos.”Maybe isaiah and amos had hatred for the entire sacrificial system
“your hands are full of blood”
What is this symbolic for?
From Robert Alter’s commentary-
11.Why need I all your sacrifices?
This is not a pitch for the abolition of sacrifice but rather an argument against a mechanistic notion of of sacrifice, against the idea that sacrifice can put a man in good standing with God regardless of human behavior. The point becomes entirely clear at the end of verse 15, where the prophet says that it is hands stained with blood stretched out in prayer that are utterly abhorrent to God. Thus the grain offering is ‘false” (or “futile”) because it is brought by people who have oppressed the poor and failed to defend widows and orphans.
15. Your hands are full of blood.
This shocking detail is held back until the end of these two lines of poetry: the palms lifted up in prayer are covered with blood and that is why God averts his eyes, because He can’t bear looking at them. It should be noted that Isaiah’s outrage, as it is spelled out in v17, is not chiefly with cultic disloyalty, as it would be in the school of Deuteronomy, but with social injustice — indifference to the plight of the poor and the helpless, exploitation of the vulnerable, acts represented here as the moral equivalent of murder.
Stephen said
bencmg stop proof-texting and read Jesus’ comments in context.Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
– Matthew 15:10-20
Matthew is not having Jesus call for the abrogation of dietary laws. Jesus is calling for sincerity of belief. Like Isaiah and Amos.
The context is the teaching of the elders and whether they should be followed or not.
“Every plant not planted by the father will be uprooted“. Any teaching not originally taught by the father should not be obeyed. “Nothing that enters the mouth defiles a man” puts dietary laws in the non-planted-by-the-father category.
Matthew 19:8 “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts. But it was not this way from the beginning.” Puts divorce in the non-planted-by-the-father category.
“You give tithes of mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” Here Matthew’s Jesus is doing as you claim – calling for sincerity of belief. The equivalent for dietary laws should have been – “don’t defile yourselves with unclean foods but evil thoughts that come out of mouth from the heart defile you even more”.
Matthew’s Jesus is passing judgement on the law. Some laws are planted by the father and should be obeyed, some have human origin and should not be.
Robert said
Matthew’s edits of Markan text make it very likely that Matthew is not interpreting Jesus’ statement here to apply to all dietary laws given in scripture (Mark’s interpretation), but rather merely to man-made traditions about washing hands before eating.
Really? Did Matthew forget what he was doing when editing 7:15?
Mark 7:15 “Nothing outside a man can defile him by going into him. Rather it is what comes out of a man that defiles a man.”
Matthew 15:11 “Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles them.”
Mark’s version could be interpreted in a purely spiritual sense, Matthew’s supposed edit would make it explicit that Jesus is talking about food.
That the text containing Jesus “declaring all foods clean” is original to the one without it is one of the more ridiculous claims of Markan priority.
Stylistic changes aren’t relevant to priority. Mark’s style will show up regardless of whether he is writing first or second.
But what are we to believe? That Matthew wants his Jesus to preach obeying the levitical food laws but that eating otherwise clean foods with unwashed hands is ok? and that to that end he edits Mark to read “Not what enters the mouth defiles a man but what comes out of the mouth defiles him”? That’s his edit to make Mark’s gospel more acceptable to a Jewish audience? To remove Mark’s claim that Jesus is abolishing the food laws?
How about we leave Markan priority in the dustbin of history and see Matthew writing first about a Jesus who challenges received religious instruction for a more spiritually guided faith and later Mark making explicit for a growing gentile audience that “all foods are clean”. Doesn’t that make much more sense?
Doesn’t the transition “isn’t this the son of the carpenter” to “isn’t this the carpenter” make much more sense in a religion which claims Jesus is the son of god?
Matthew’s Jesus is passing judgement on the law.
No. You are looking at Matthew’s text through a duetero-Pauline lens. Jesus is arguing with an interpretation of the law. Judaism itself is one big ole internecine argument.
Matthew’s edits of Markan text make it very likely that Matthew is not interpreting Jesus’ statement here to apply to all dietary laws given in scripture (Mark’s interpretation), but rather merely to man-made traditions about washing hands before eating.
Precisely! If Matthew wanted Jesus to abrogate the dietary laws here was the perfect opportunity.
Thanks Robert for the reference to Meier’s book. I subsequently found this Wikipedia article which covers some views on the topic of which Old Testament commandments Christians are required to follow. ** you do not have permission to see this link **
It is still puzzling to me how such a foundational question for the Christian faith seems to be ignored or glossed over by theologies of the Christian faith that I own.
I don’t think that there is a lot of discussion because most Christians just accept the Ten Commandments (subject to interpretation), and if they apply anything else, it is just what they pick and choose (mostly to justify their own preferences, or to control the behavior of other people).
I think the reason Christians obsess over the Ten Commandments is because in the story they were given by Yahweh himself. The perception is that they’re still binding in a way that maybe other texts in the OT no longer are since in their conception Jesus “fulfilled” the law by doing away with it.
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