Jesus Kept Kosher

What follows is a review of chapter 3 in Daniel Boyarin’s new book The Jewish Gospels. I intend to review all the chapters but this was the first chapter review I finished. In this chapter Boyarin’s thesis is simple: Despite centuries of interpretation otherwise Jesus did not, in any way, abandon the Torah and not only that but, he is representative of an older more conservative Judaism not a heretical liberal spin-off. The old misinterpretation, he claims, results from the misreading the controversy story found in Mark 7.

¶ Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 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.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

9Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— 12 then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

14  Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” 17   When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Traditionally, this text has been thought to teach that Jesus was abandoning the Torah’s restrictions on food. This interpretation has seemed unavoidable due to the interpretive gloss found in v. 19 “Thus he declared all foods to be clean.” Boyarin quotes a few top scholars to give a sense of the consensus but he then proposes in contradistinction, “Jesus was…not fighting against the Jews or Judaism but with some Jews for what he considered to be the right kind of Judaism.” Not only does Boyarin’s view claim that Jesus was Torah observant he takes it a step further and claims that the Pharisees were the “dangerous innovators” of the day.

His argument rests on two major observations: 1) Scholars have not often distinguished between the forbidden and allowed paradigm and the clean and unclean paradigm. 2) Christianity is not, as has traditionally been thought, an anti-Jewish movement. It is a movement from within Judaism and is in opposition to a current view within their religion (that of the Pharisee’s).

As for the first point, I must say that this is a brilliant distinction that makes complete sense. The argument is not about the legality of food but about purity. Jesus’ remarks are not changing scripture by allowing what it had not allowed but they are meant to attack the “traditions of the elders” which contradicted the original intent of the deeper meaning of the instructions. Jesus is simply stating that food cannot make one impure since food does not operate within that sphere of understanding. Food is either allowed or it is disallowed. To eat from the forbidden foods would be an act of rebellion i.e., a moral act. Purity did not connect to morality in the same way. One may become impure through no fault of his own and would not be guilty of sin. (Of course, to partake in ritual while unclean is a moral issue but that is not what Jesus is talking about.) Scripture did not teach that food could effect purity. So, when Jesus is said to “declare all foods clean” he is only saying that Scripture has not said that food should be thought of in those categories and not that now all food is “allowed.”

Jesus is not anti-Jewish he is anti-Pharisee. He also points out that this dispute is not a dispute over Halakah (how to apply the commands of the Torah) but is a dispute over the purpose of the Torah. Jesus wants the “deeper” truths that the Torah points toward to be fundamentally involved in the application while the Pharisees desire to focus on only the outward reality. So, Jesus’ claim that only things that come out of the body can render one impure (i.e., bodily fluids, etc.) is rightfully applied to actions since the also originate “inside” and are completed “outside.”

The second observation, that Christianity was originally conceived as true Jewish religion, is not new but Boyarin adds an interesting twist to this view. He claims that Christianity was not, as many Christian and non-Chritian interpreters have sought to demonstrate, a liberal view but instead is the conservative view in distinction from the ultra conservative view of the Pharisee’s. That is why the passage on foods being “clean” (or, unable to make one “impure”) is connected to the teaching on Qorban. The Markan Jesus is claiming that these so-called “traditions of the elders” (the Qorban) are in opposition to God’s commands (honoring father and mother) and therefore are wrong as they do not understand or sustain the teaching of Scripture. So, this Pharisaic movement, which would eventually (as is supposed) from into the Rabbinic movement, was being exposed by the Markan Jesus as being the too-far-to-the-right Scriptural interpreters and thus enemies of YWHW.

(This observation, according to Boyarin, also helps shed light on Jesus’ claim, in Matthew, that they sought to “convert [other Jews]” since they were not the “only” form of Judaism in the day but they merely were in the ascendent in the certain geographical parts of Judea.)

My takeaway from this chapter is that it just another example of Boyarin’s brilliance − whether his view is accepted or not. Jesus was Jewish, Christianity was/is Jewish. The division between the two religions only exists because of later Creeds. The only thing that would have made the chapter better is if he had engaged with the word of Crossley on this. The rhetoric of the chapter makes the reader believe that this view has not been proposed when it has, by Crossley*. Beside that minor quibble I must commend this chapter for its intriguing thesis.
* Crossley, J G. The date of Mark’s Gospel: insight from the law in earliest Christianity. Vol. 266. T&T Clark, 2004.