The Jewish Gospels (22 page)

32
.
Carsten Colpe, “Ho Huios Tou Anthrōpou,” in
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:420.

3. Jesus Kept Kosher

1
.
This is partly dependent on the very common view that Mark himself, the author of the Gospel of Mark, was a believer from the Gentiles for whom the practices of eating kosher were entirely foreign and off-putting. The consequence of these two positions when put together is that at its earliest moment, the Jesus movement was characterized by a total shift in ideas about how to serve God, becoming entirely other to Judaism. The other evangelists, especially Matthew, who openly portray a Jesus who is much more friendly toward the Torah as practice, are understood as the product of communities referred
to by names such as Jewish-Christian or Judaizing communities, themselves terms of art in an ancient Christian discourse about heresy.

2
.
Adela Yarbro Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
ed. Harold W. Attridge, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 356. It should be emphasized that Collins does not consider this necessarily the meaning of Jesus' original pronouncement at v. 15, but she does so read v. 19, which is a gloss by the evangelist Mark, thus rendering Mark (like Paul) the beginning of the end of the Law for Christians.

3
.
Robert A. Guelich,
Mark 1–8:26,
Word Biblical Commentary 34A; Mark; I–VIII (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1989), 380.

4
.
Joel Marcus,
Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), 450. It should be noted clearly, lest there be anything misleading here, that Marcus does consider Mark a “Jewish Christian,” albeit a much more radical one than Matthew (more on this below in this chapter).

5
.
See too for instance, “Mark, our earliest gospel, offers a more reliable standard [than Paul]; and it says that Jesus abrogated laws of food and purity and violated the Sabbath”; Robert H. Gundry,
Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993, 2004). This may be “a known fact” for Gundry; hardly for me.

6
.
See different translation here offered below.

7
.
Substituting the literal “curses” for the NRSV's “speaks evil of.” I may be able to suggest a solution to a hermeneutic problem here. Marcus writes: “But, wrong as it may be to withhold material support from one's parents, how is it equivalent to
cursing
them?” (Marcus,
Mark 1–8,
444) If we think of the Hebrew, however, this is perhaps less of a problem. In Hebrew the verb for “to honor” is literally to “make heavy,” perhaps something like “to treat with gravitas.” On the other hand, the word for “curse” is to “make light.” So in Exodus 20, the verse reads, literally, “Make heavy your father and your mother,” while in 21:17 it reads, “All who make light their father and mother shall surely die.” If to make heavy (to honor) is to provide with material support, then to make light (to curse) is the opposite,
so not feeding one's parents is tantamount to cursing them. If this interpretation is appealing, then it would be evidence for at least a stratum in Mark that was much closer to the
veritas Hebraicas.

8
.
Following Martin Goodman, who writes, “Jesus (or Matthew) was attacking Pharisees for their eagerness in trying to persuade other Jews to follow Pharisaic
halakah”;
Martin Goodman,
Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 70. This is surely not the only possible interpretation, but it is the one that makes the most sense to me.

9
.
To be sure, the confusion has been partly engendered by the biblical usage itself. There is one area in which the terminology is muddled. Of the animals that we may eat and may not eat, the Torah uses the terms “pure” and “impure.” Nonetheless, the distinction between the two systems—what makes foods kosher or not and what makes kosher foods impure or not—remains quite clear despite this terminological glitch. In the later tradition, only the word “kosher” is used for the first, while “pure” means only undefiled.

10
.
These words usually translated “and all the Jews” make no sense according to that usual translation, as they almost directly contradict the point of the whole pericope. Why attack the Pharisees alone if their practice is simply the practice of all the Jews? For “Judeans” as one legitimate translation of
Ioudaioi
, if not the only one always and everywhere, see most recently Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,”
Journal for the Study of Judaism
38, nos. 4–5 (2007): 457–512. It should be noted also that the translation “Judaeans” rather than “Jews” obviates comments that suggest that Mark by writing this is indicating a position outside of Jewry. Cf. Guelich,
Mark 1–8: 26,
364.

11
.
Marcus,
Mark 1–8
, 439, but on 441 he is still doubtful. I, of course, agree with the translation, disagree with the doubt.

12
.
See also Stephen M. Reynolds, “
(Mark 7:3) as ‘Cupped Hand,'”
Journal of Biblical Literature
85, no. 1 (March 1966): 87–88, supported by the late great talmudic scholar Saul Lieberman, my teacher (in a letter to Reynolds): “The custom of
shaping the hands like cups when they were washed for ritual purposes from a vessel was most probably very old. The opening of the [vessel] was usually not a large one; water in Palestine was valuable. When one forms the hand like a loose fist the narrow stream of water covers at once the entire outer and inner surfaces of the hand. Water is saved in this way. For purposes of cleanliness it was sufficient to pour some water on part of the hand, which could subsequently be spread all over the hand by rubbing both hands. Pouring water on ‘cupped hands' immediately indicated ritual washing in preparation for a meal.” Unfortunately, this highly attractive and significant interpretation had been almost totally ignored until just the last two decades or so, despite its being obviously correct in my opinion. Cf., for instance, “Standaert (Marc, 472–73) also repeats Hengel's argument from an earlier work (‘Mk 7,3 Πυγμ
ῇ
: die Geschichte einer exegetische Aporie und der Versuch ihrer Losung,'
ZNW
60 [1969] 182–98) that πυγμ
ῇ
in Mark 7:3 is a Latinism, but the derivation and meaning of πυγμ
ῇ
are so obscure that no firm conclusions can be drawn about it (cf. Guelich,
Mark 1–8:26,
364–65), 16”; Joel Marcus, “The Jewish War and the Sitz Im Leben of Mark,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
111, no. 3 (1992): 444n15. Many scholars, especially Europeans, seem still to hold that Mark must be a Gentile, in part owing to his alleged ignorance of Jewish practice. I hope that this book will at least unsettle this view some.

13
.
The hermeneutic logic here is similar to that of Marcus in re Mark 2:23 (Marcus,
Mark 1–8
, 239) where the emphasis on “making a way” is taken as an allusion to the way that Jesus is making in the wilderness (the field). I am suggesting that Mark's emphasis on “with a fist,” which is in itself quite realistic but seemingly trivial, has a similar symbolic overtone.

14
.
Yair Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating the Body: A New Understanding of Contamination in Mark 7.15,”
New Testament Studies
54 (2008): 178.

15
.
Tomson, 81, has brought this text to bear on Mark 7. It should be further pointed out, according to the Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 14a, that Rabbi Eliezer holds an even stricter standard than this; it is still within the category of rabbinic
(Pharisaic) innovation or the “traditions of the Elders,” just as Jesus dubs it.

16
.
Furstenberg, “Defilement,” 200.

17
.
Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
350. Given, however, that she so precisely articulates this, I cannot understand how on the next page she approves of Claude Montefiore's statement that “the argument in vv. 6–8 is not compelling.” It is as compelling as can be as described above: “Why, Pharisees, are you setting aside the commandments of God in favor of the commandments of humans—handwashings, vows—as the Prophet prophesied?”

18
.
Pace
Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
356.

19
.
Marcus,
Mark 1–8, 444.

20
.
In chapter 2, there is also a passage that is, I think, illuminated by such a perspective. In vv. 18–22, some people wonder why other pietists (the disciples of John and the Pharisees) engage in fasting practices, while the disciples of Jesus do not. Jesus answers that they may not fast in the presence of the bridegroom, which is clearly a
halakhic
statement interpreted spiritually to refer to the holy, divine Bridegroom of Israel. As Yarbro Collins makes clear, this is another indirect claim on Jesus' part to be divine (
Mark: A Commentary,
199).

21
.
“It seems that this is not the only occasion on which Jesus defends a conservative halakhic stand. In the woe-sayings in Matt 23, Jesus twice rails against Pharisaic law and offers an alternative halakhic opinion. In both matters, that of oaths (vv. 16–22) and the subject of purifying vessels (vv. 25–26), Jesus objects to the leniency of the Pharisees and offers a stricter ruling. This point is stressed by K.C.G. Newport,
The Sources and Sitz im Leben of Matthew 23
(JSNTSup 117; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 137–45” (Furstenberg, “Defilement,” 178).

22
.
Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic
Paradosis,” Harvard Theological Review
80 (1987): 63–77.

23
.
This is close to the view of Seán Freyne,
Galilee, from Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 323
B.C.
E. to 135 C.E.: A Study of Second Temple Judaism,
University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity, 5 (Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1980), 316–18, 322.

24
.
Seeing Mark this way thoroughly reorients our understanding of its relation to the Gospel of Matthew as well. Let's look at the crucial parallel text from Matthew 15:

¹⁵
But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.”
¹⁶
Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding?
¹⁷
Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?
¹⁸
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.
¹⁹
For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.
²⁰
These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

The Matthean text makes explicit that which might be ambiguous in Mark as we've read it. From beginning to end of the passage, it's not about anything but washing of the hands. There is not the slightest suggestion in Matthew that Jesus abrogated the laws of permitted and forbidden foods: Matthew's Jesus certainly kept kosher, a fact that no one can deny. But is Matthew a “Judaizing” revision of Mark, as many commentators have it, one who backed off from the radical implications of Mark's Jesus? Is it genuine, “original” Christian orthodoxy to hold that the kosher laws written in Moses' Torah mean nothing (and by implication all of the other so-called ritual laws of the Torah), with Matthew a temporizing voice that actually serves to neutralize the authentic Christian message on the Law as represented by Mark and Paul, namely, that Christianity is a whole new religion, an entirely different way of serving God from the way that the Israelites and Jews have understood it? On my reading, it is not. Whether Mark comes first (as I believe) or Matthew comes first (as a few scholars still hold), either way Jesus kept kosher and thus was kept kosher. Torahabiding Jesus folks are not aberrant; they simply are the earliest Church.

25
.
Weston La Barre,
The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 254.

4. The Suffering Christ as a Midrash on Daniel

1
.
Joseph Klausner, “The Jewish and Christian Messiah,” in
The Messianic Idea in Israel, from Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah,
trans. W.F. Stinespring (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 519–31.