Ep 85: Purify This! With Logan Williams

00:00So I find two examples where there's something going on which there isn't a name for, but

00:06I give it a label.

00:07And I call it the nominative absolute circumstantial participle.

00:12All right, fine, fine, if we're going to go there, let's go there.

00:18No, you need to do what the 19th century Germans did and just name it after yourself,

00:22the local rule.

00:23Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you are listening to the Data

00:38Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible

00:42and religion and combat that ever present misinformation about the same.

00:47How are things, Dan?

00:49These are great.

00:50I'm looking forward to our guests today.

00:53I'm thinking about very little else.

00:55We are interestingly right.

00:57We're recording this right after a certain election happened and I am trying not to think

01:03too much about that.

01:05So let's dive in and introduce our guest.

01:08All right.

01:09Today, welcome Logan Williams to the show.

01:12Logan is the Kirby Lang Research Fellow and New Testament up in lovely Aberdeen in Scotland.

01:20Thank you so much for joining us today, Logan.

01:23It's great to be here.

01:24Thanks for having me.

01:25Yeah.

01:26Well, we appreciate it very much and you recently published an article that we're here primarily

01:30to talk about.

01:31Hopefully we get to talk about some other stuff.

01:33Get into it a little bit regarding some Christological controversy, but you published in a journal

01:42called New Testament Studies and Open Access article, The Stomach Purifies All Foods, Jesus's

01:48Anatomical Argument in Mark 7, 18 through 19, which is addressing something that I actually

01:55talked about a little bit in a video a while ago.

01:58I was just sharing my understanding of the received wisdom and I can't remember if you

02:05responded to like on Twitter or Facebook or something like that or if somebody else was

02:10like, "Hey, man, get caught."

02:12Yeah.

02:13It was someone like, "What do you think about at Logan's argument?"

02:15Yeah, I was like, "That's not really fair because it's not out."

02:22And I remember replying like no shade on Dan, he's stating the consensus and I have this

02:28really idiosyncratic view, which some people have argued something similar before, but

02:36I was like, "Yeah, just wait until it comes out, stop being a reply guy."

02:41I give this all the time, someone, some random pastor will be like, "Jesus freed us from

02:46the food laws."

02:47And they'll be like, "But Logan!"

02:49And I'm like, "What?"

02:50Don't refer to the article came out, I'm like, "That's not helpful, what is that supposed

02:55to do for people?"

02:56I mean, I did have a video of an old presentation I did on it that the argument has developed

03:01quite a bit since then, but it was like there was some rumble before it was out, which I

03:05felt like was just not helpful because I was like, "What are people going to do?"

03:10As we get into this, one of the interesting things of this will be that this is something

03:16for non-scholars like myself.

03:19This is one of those moments where you really get a sort of window into what the world of

03:27biblical scholarship looks like because I'm not used to that world until I started doing

03:33this podcast.

03:34I was not used to the world of biblical scholarship.

03:36More article hinges on four Greek words, essentially.

03:42The minutiae that you people get into is pretty amazing, but those four Greek words, depending

03:51on how you interpret it, and you go into a whole bunch of...

03:58You bring in a bunch of different stuff, you're not just talking about four words, but it changes

04:05kind of everything.

04:07So can we just start by talking about sort of, you know, you discuss what the sort of consensus

04:17view has been.

04:19We're in Mark chapter seven.

04:21We're talking...

04:22Well, it's okay.

04:23I want to back up a little bit and just kind of orient the listener because right now they're

04:27like, "What the hell are they talking about?"

04:29But we're talking about purity, laws, legislation, purity, ideas within first century CE, Judaism,

04:37which is the world into which the New Testament is being written.

04:41And as soon as going back to my little fumble on social media, as soon as people started

04:49mentioning this, I was like, "Oh no, Matt Thieson's going to jump down my throat as

04:54well, because I should have recalled..." he wrote this wonderful book a couple years

05:02ago called "Jesus and the Forces of Death," the Gospels portrayal of ritual impurity within

05:07first century Judaism, which is kind of pointing in the same direction that you're pointing

05:15Logan, where it's engaging with this received tradition about Jesus overturning Jewish ideas

05:22about purity.

05:23And basically saying they're all invalid.

05:26And Matt here is basically making the case that, "No, these laws are still valid.

05:32Jesus is presenting himself as kind of the purifier, the solution to the problem of ritual

05:42impurity without just saying it's all invalid."

05:45And can you describe a little bit the...

05:47Describe where we're coming from in this article.

05:49What is the conventional wisdom that you're engaging in this article?

05:54Yeah.

05:55So for about maybe 150 years or so, well, let me back up a little bit.

06:05Previously the Texas Receptis or the received texts, the Greek text on which the KJV is

06:13based, had a different, had one different vowel in the first word of that final phrase

06:21in Mark 719.

06:23So Mark 7 18 through 19, translated in the NRSV, I'm going to butcher it, but from memory it's

06:29something like, "Do you not understand that whatever goes into a person is not able to

06:33defile them because it enters not into their heart but into the stomach and is cast out

06:39and goes out into the latrine," and then there's a parenthetical statement in most

06:44English translations, most modern English translations that say, "Thus he declared all

06:48foods clean," or, "Thus he purified all foods," or, "There's some more dynamic translations

06:56that say something like, "Thus he permitted all foods as permitted to eat," or something

07:02like that, right?

07:04The key point is that they take that final phrase to be something that Jesus does, right?

07:10So it's Jesus that's doing the purify.

07:13And the thing that he's doing is roughly, or the thing that they're saying he's doing

07:17is roughly that he is saying, "We don't have to worry about kosher laws anymore."

07:22Exactly.

07:23Or, you know, sometimes that's also coupled with the notion that he's also saying we don't

07:28have to care about any purity laws whatsoever, or some scholars will say Jesus' statement

07:36says that there's no such thing as impurity in the material sense.

07:41Now, we should, eventually, we should talk about the distinction between kosher laws

07:45and purity laws, how they may overlap and how they won't, but I'll back up to kind of

07:50history.

07:51We should talk about cash root versus tohora, tohora, or ritual impurity versus impure animals.

07:59Exactly.

08:00Look, I took notes.

08:01I was trying, I really worked to follow this thing because I do not have the background

08:05to really understand a lot of this.

08:07Yeah, I will say it's kind of a baptism by fire article because in order to even kind

08:13of begin the conversation, you have to, you know, I had to lay all this groundwork about

08:16cash law, and I had to assume that most scholars weren't that familiar with these categories

08:23or necessarily familiar with these categories.

08:25Some of them are who work on it, but it's kind of a niche, weird thing.

08:29So I kind of had to do a good like, you know, one third of the paper is kind of just like,

08:33let's just let's just set the ground rules here.

08:35Well, you're quoting in a lot of German too, for the, for the little reader.

08:39Yeah.

08:40Yeah.

08:41German, there's Greek, I am wading through the thicket in this thing.

08:45It's pretty amazing, but I'm very glad that you did have to lay down those, those ground

08:50rules because, you know, whatever, you know, the sc, whatever background the scholars

08:55don't have, I definitely don't have.

08:58So yeah, it's, it's, it's a, I was very grateful for all of that.

09:03So sorry, go on with what you were saying.

09:05Yeah.

09:06So back in the day, right, KJV time, right, the Texas Receptus had in the word Katharid

09:12zone, which is the word usually translated, thus he declared all clean or something like

09:17that.

09:18Right.

09:19So we'll get into that a bit later, but it's the word for purify or to declare pure, declare

09:23clean.

09:24Um, Katharid zone Greek and, uh, but that word is a participle, uh, and the Texas Receptus

09:32had a neuter participle where our modern Greek Bibles, not modern Greek, but our updated

09:38Greek Bibles have an omega.

09:40The difference with that is that if you have an omicron, which makes it a neuter participle,

09:47then it means that the subject of the sentence or the, sorry, the subject of that participle

09:52can't be a person.

09:53Right.

09:54So it, it, but now that our updated Greek Bibles have a masculine people for that reason or

10:01for similar, for some reasons that we get into it a bit, it, people think that the subject

10:05has to be Jesus.

10:06So if you have the neuter participle, what it looks like is that that phrase is a kind

10:13of big, oppositional phrase to the previous clause cast out into the latrine.

10:20And there is some evidence in Greek that Katharid zone can mean purge.

10:25Like think of you have toothpaste and you squeeze it.

10:28The toothpaste comes out and that purges the food or purges the toothpaste from the tube.

10:34And people, when they were reading the neuter, they thought, okay, this probably means purge.

10:40So what Jesus is saying is that it goes in and it goes out into the latrine.

10:46And when it goes out into the latrine, the person is purging the meats or the foods from

10:52their body.

10:53So that's how it usually was taken.

10:56Now there is some exceptions to this in, for example, origin who, who reads the masculine

11:00participle.

11:01You know, once you get the textual tradition that has the neuter, everyone thinks this

11:05is a part of Jesus' speech.

11:07Every pretty much everyone thinks that it means purge.

11:10Some people think it means purify, like make clean, but they're definitely in the minority.

11:16Then West Cotton Hort come along, right?

11:17And they do all of their reconstructed reconstruction of the New Testament.

11:24So around, what is it, Dan, like around the 1850s maybe?

11:27Like, maybe around the century, I think West Cotton Hort is, so the, basically a bunch

11:33of scholars are coming together and realizing that the textual tradition in the Byzantine

11:37tradition or the Texas Receptus is probably not the most reliable Greek text that it doesn't

11:45as faithfully represent the original as a number of other manuscripts that were found

11:50around then, including, for example, Sinaiticus and, you know, other manuscripts.

11:55And so after West Cotton Hort, our Greek Bibles change pretty much, and I haven't actually

12:01traced exactly when this happens, but sometime around the mid-19th century, our Greek Bibles

12:06change so that that word, which was Katharied Zone, becomes Katharied Zone.

12:14Now, this presents a huge issue.

12:17The neuter reading is pretty grammatical, grammatically like easy to explain.

12:23We have copious examples of a neuter participle being used in opposition to an entire clause.

12:29So the whole, it's cast out into the latrine, and this is purging all meats is a totally

12:35normal construction.

12:37What's not normal, or what's really weird about the masculine reading, is that usually

12:44a participle, the subject of a participle, latches on to something else in the previous

12:50clauses, or previous clause, and if it's functioning adverbially, which everyone would agree it's

12:56functioning adverbally here, then it has to be that if, or in most cases, if it's adverbial,

13:03the subject of the participle matches the subject of the verb that it's modifying.

13:10Now here's what's weird.

13:11The subject of the previous two verbs, it goes in, or rather that whole sequence of speech

13:21about whatever goes into a person is not able to follow them, but blah, blah, blah.

13:25The subject of all those verbs is a neuter noun, that which is going in from outside

13:31is a neuter.

13:33So the whole going in, coming out, has a neuter subject.

13:38So if the participle is masculine, then what's the subject of that participle?

13:47It can't be the subject of the proximate verbs, because that's neuter.

13:51So what people posited is, okay, well, way, way back at the beginning of verse 18, you

13:56have lege, he said, and the subject of that is Jesus, which is a masculine singular noun.

14:05So people have, pretty much since the beginning of Westcott and Hort, thought, or, you know,

14:10Westcott and Hort's Greek Bible, they thought, okay, well, it probably is the case that

14:14Catharied Zone jumps over all of these verbs and modifies lege, which means that the subject

14:20of Catharied Zone has to be Jesus.

14:24There are some exceptions to this, namely, some of the Germans, who, German scholars who

14:29argue that it's modifying the previous word latrine, and they say that the latrine period

14:35provides all foods or purges all meats or something like that, however they take it.

14:39But that definitely hasn't been the majority in English translations or in Anglophone scholarship.

14:43So that is why, if you look at translations before the mid-19th century, they will all

14:49say, pretty much all say, purging all meats.

14:53And but afterwards, all of our English Bibles say something like, thus, he declared all

14:58And it has to do with literally the change from a short O to a long O.

14:58foods clean.

15:03Wow, which would have sounded identical in the mid-Roman period.

15:11And that also changes.

15:12It changes it from reported speech to part of the narration as well.

15:16That's a necessary change.

15:17So it's this exact parenthetical.

15:20Yeah.

15:21Yeah.

15:22So yeah, the difference then becomes, is this something I'm just going to recap just for

15:30anyone who didn't follow that.

15:32I mean, we just, we just had like a Crash Course Greek lesson on Participals.

15:36Right.

15:37So, yes.

15:38Why did the opening of the podcast?

15:39So I hope, I hope people are still with us.

15:40I'm going to guess that a few of our listeners don't even know what a Participle is.

15:43I'm not saying I don't know what a Participle is.

15:46Of course I do, but some of our listeners might not have that knowledge.

15:50And that's fine.

15:52But what we're saying is the, so I'm going to read the entire verse 18 and 19 just, just

15:59again, you already said it, but it's, so we're saying, yeah, because it's basically one sentence.

16:05He said to them, he being Jesus said to them, then do, then do you also fail to understand?

16:11Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile since it enters

16:20not the heart, but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?

16:24And then, at least in the NRSV, there's a parentheses and it says, thus he declared all foods clean.

16:31And that, that is, that is the post, that is the, the more recent version of this, whereas

16:38before, it wasn't a parenthetical phrase, thus he declared all foods clean.

16:43But rather it goes into the sewer and therefore somehow that's, that, that purifies it.

16:50Yeah.

16:51Is that the difference that we're saying?

16:52Yep.

16:53So the, the ladder or the, the newer version takes it as a comment by Mark.

17:00Right.

17:00Right.

17:02An explanation of what Jesus did when he said at the beginning of 18.

17:06So the, so it takes it from a continuation of, of his sentence to this is what that sentence

17:13did.

17:14Exactly.

17:15Yeah.

17:16Correct.

17:17Okay.

17:18All right, now talk to us about your theory, which differs from the idea of turning it

17:26from, into this parenthetical and yeah, and we're going to have to get into the weeds

17:31about like the weeds purity and, you know, we, we, we sort of teased the idea of ritual

17:39impurity versus the, uh, the purity of eating, uh, specific animals, yeah, um, which would

17:46be the sort of the Torah, uh, kosher laws.

17:52So talk a little bit about that.

17:54Talk a little bit.

17:55Yeah.

17:56So I'll start with the grammatical point and then we can move to the, to the broader point

17:59about categorization of your due laws.

18:02So the difficulty is like, so I agree, and this is, um, but I agree that the, the correct

18:09reading is masculine.

18:10Okay.

18:11Uh, the masculine participle, so I think West Cotton Hort were right to change, uh, the

18:17business, the, the Texas receptus, uh, or, or propose a better reading than the Texas

18:22receptus.

18:23They didn't change the Texas receptus, right?

18:24Right.

18:25Um, uh, so, so I agree with them.

18:27Okay.

18:28Now the question then is no matter what way you cut it, this is just a ridiculously weird

18:33participle.

18:34Like it just, it, it, you have to do something odd with it because it can't modify any of

18:40the proximate verbs.

18:42So one option is to do what the modern translators have done in English and say, okay, this jumps

18:47over all of the verbs, right, going in, not able to defile, going into the stomach, not

18:53into the heart, into the latrina, all of those verbs in Greek, there's many of them.

18:57I think it was like 35 or 36 words interpreting.

19:00He said and that and like, you know, multiple, multiple verbs.

19:03And then all of a sudden that final phrase just skips over all that and modifies like

19:07the beginning verb in 18.

19:09Right.

19:10So this is, to my knowledge, there's nothing like this in Greek.

19:17I, I couldn't, I mean, of course, you know, the, the corpus of Greek literature that we

19:21have is massive.

19:22So I'm not claiming to have looked at every single participle in the world, which would

19:26take me a lifetime, right?

19:28Because it'll be sitting on the source, I think we'll break out for, you know, for years

19:31doing that.

19:32Right.

19:33Um, but I can't find or, and, and neither has anyone ever proposed to my knowledge.

19:37An example where someone says he said, and then it reports direct speech, right?

19:43Not he said that, but he said, quote, and then a long quotation.

19:49And then a random dangling participle that modifies the verb all the way before all those

19:55other interviewing things.

19:57Like there's just, I've never seen anyone propose an example of anything like that.

20:02The other issue is, and this is something Kevin Grasso brought up to me is what, what

20:07vert, what nouns and subjects and entities are in view when you're reading this, right?

20:13There's all sorts of things that go in, latrine, person, heart, stomach, right?

20:20All of these nouns are kind of in view, but Jesus, right, is not the kind of in the proximate

20:25frame of this, of this discourse finding the verse.

20:28So how likely is it that someone would just automatically, just like speed reading this

20:32native speaker in Greek, just blowing through this, would automatically pick up the Katharied

20:36zone is picking up the subject Jesus.

20:39I mean, what you would expect is, you know, as it's rendered in English, a finite verb,

20:45who toasts, you know, who toasts day, leg, a, or sorry, who toasts day, like, who toasts

20:50day, Katharied, say, ha, yay, sous, panata veramata, right?

20:53You would, you would expect a full clause.

20:56And this is one of the red flags that we have going on here is that what English, the English

21:00has to introduce a new subject, thus he, and a finite verb where there isn't a finite verb.

21:09He declared clean, but we don't have either of those in Greek.

21:14We don't have a full sentence.

21:16So this is kind of raising, right, raising the orange or red flags.

21:21This translation can be questioned.

21:24So what I did in my article is I found two examples from the Septuagint of what I think

21:32is a very, very rare construction that nonetheless exists in Greek, but might be a product of

21:38translation Greek.

21:39So I'm not entirely sure if there's examples of this in non-translation Greek, but as we

21:45all know, Septigental language that might have not been natural or kind of, you know, standard

21:51in the ancient world seeps into the speech patterns of Jewish Greek speakers because

21:58they're raised on this text, right?

21:59It's similar to the way we speak in KJV phrases all the time and we don't realize it, right?

22:03We have so many things in our vocabulary that were introduced into the English language

22:07or popularized by the KJV, and we have no idea.

22:09And that might have been weird in the original context.

22:13So it's similar.

22:14The Septuagint, you know, invites a lot of, you know, speech patterns or develops, you

22:19know, helps Jews, or incites Jews to develop certain speaking patterns that might not have

22:24otherwise been popular.

22:25So I find two examples where there's something going on which I, there isn't a name for,

22:33but I give it a label and I call it the nominative absolute circumstantial participle.

22:40All right, fine, fine, if we're going to go there, let's go there.

22:46No, you need to do what the 19th century Germans didn't just name it after yourself, the local

22:50rule.

22:51Construction.

22:52Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not that vain.

22:57And what I think is happening here is that, is that basically without getting, I'm not

23:01going to get into these weeds because we're already deep enough, but basically it's an

23:04example of a dangling participle at the end of a series of phrases where the participle

23:14is not picking up on the subject of the previous verbs, but the implied agent depicted by the

23:21verbs.

23:22Okay.

23:23So this is usually God.

23:24So it will say something, I think one of the examples I give is from the Psalms, like from

23:31the works of your hands, the earth will be fed, thus you causing green grass to grow.

23:39I forget the exact example.

23:41But it's right, the earth will be fed, and then there's a masculine participle at the

23:45end.

23:46That's not a complete sentence that just says causing grass to grow.

23:50And so what that's doing is the participle is picking up on the agent of who's causing,

23:57or sorry, who's feeding the earth, which is implied to be God.

24:01So I say this is actually, I give a little table for those who are interested.

24:04I'm not going to get two more in these weeds, but I give a table comparing these two other

24:09examples to show that actually the construction is intelligible.

24:13If we compare it to these constructions, if we consider it to be a nominative absolute

24:18circumstantial or adverbial participle.

24:20And thus what the result of that is, is that we have to, we would have to pause it, that

24:24the subject of catheterid zone is not yesus, but anthropos.

24:30That is the person that's being talked about in these verses, right?

24:34So there's nothing from outside going into a person that is able to defile them because

24:41it goes not into his heart.

24:43These are all nouns in the masculine singular that are not, that are referring to an anthropos,

24:47a human being, his heart, but it's cast out into the train.

24:52Thus the person, that person who ingested the food purifying all foods.

24:58Okay.

25:00And importantly, again, Kevin Grasso pointed this out to me, the language nerd.

25:06There's an article on foods there.

25:09So it implies IE, the food that, that particular food that's been ingested by the person.

25:14Yeah.

25:15So not all foods that exist, but all the food that he ingested becomes, becomes pure in

25:21the process of digestion.

25:24And just for those who are interested, Table 1 here refers to Isaiah 28, verses 5 and 6

25:30in the Septuagint, and then LXX Psalm 103, verses 13 and 14, where you have the list and

25:37then the implied subject of the participle, if you want to go look those up.

25:42Okay.

25:43So now that, now that we have, if, if we are to take your theory on and we have any listeners

25:51that remain, yeah, anybody still with us whatsoever, I, I'm having fun with this.

25:56This is good.

25:57But I'm going to do my, another recap and try not to be too, too wordy about it, but, but

26:02now we've implied a person, a, a new subject that is implicit rather than explicit.

26:08It has it like that, that human is not spoken, but is, but is implied.

26:15And so you're saying the participle refers to this implied now.

26:18Well, so no matter where you cut it, which way you cut it, the participle hasn't implied

26:24subject because it's not stated, right?

26:26Right.

26:27Right.

26:28Okay.

26:29Yeah.

26:30But it is explicit in the sense that there are three nouns directly preceding in, in the

26:34previous clauses that refer to the anthropos.

26:37So you have the anthropos and then two instances of the masculine singular pronoun.

26:43So three instances of a masculine nouns that are referring to the person.

26:47And so I just think like, you know, if we, we have to choose either, no matter what this

26:53participle is doing, something weird, right?

26:55So the either we say that the proximate subject that it's pulling from is the implied Jesus

27:01from he said in the beginning of 18, or, and this is the contribution of my article, we

27:07can say that it's, it's also possible that it picks up on a more proximate masculine

27:13singular noun, which is anthropos, and I just think, you know, the way that people would

27:19be processing information when they read that verse, they would immediately think that the

27:24subject is the anthropos because it's the more proximate masculine noun and not jump

27:29all the way back to Jesus who isn't even, who isn't even stated, right?

27:33It's just as leggae.

27:34It doesn't say hagiasus leggae.

27:35It doesn't say Jesus said, just as said.

27:38So yeah, so either way it's implied, but I think it's, this is the more explicit and

27:42more proximate sound that it could be picking up on.

27:44So we don't have Jesus until it's like, it's not even anywhere in the chapter.

27:51Like you gotta go back to chapter six.

27:54Yeah.

27:55It's at least in trans, the translations, I'm like, let me, I, I'm not seeing yasus, uh,

28:01anywhere in chapter seven.

28:03Um, sorry, I interrupted continuing.

28:06Yeah.

28:07Yeah.

28:08Yeah.

28:09So we, so, so here, let me just see if I've tracked.

28:12We've gone from, uh, KJV basically implying that what, uh, that what had happened was that

28:12I've tracked this.

28:19the food entering the heart, the stomach and going into the sewer, uh, somehow made the

28:28food clean or made the food pure or something or, or it just expels it from the body.

28:34So I think I think they think.

28:35Yeah.

28:36Okay.

28:37Yeah.

28:38Okay.

28:39Yeah.

28:40Okay.

28:41And we have this understanding that it's Jesus declaring all the foods clean.

28:45And now your proposal is that it is actually the ingestion of the food that has somehow

28:53made it clean.

28:54The person makes it clean by ingesting it.

28:56Yeah.

28:57Is that right?

28:58Yes.

28:59Yeah.

29:00Sorry.

29:01Digesting.

29:02Yeah.

29:03Yeah.

29:04Yeah.

29:05Yeah.

29:06Yeah.

29:07Yeah.

29:08Okay.

29:09That's interesting.

29:10We're talking about cleanliness.

29:11We're talking about purity.

29:12We're talking about, uh, these laws, you know, because, because the interpretation of thus

29:19he declared all foods clean suddenly is Jesus saying the laws from the Torah about clean

29:26foods and unclean foods don't apply anymore.

29:29Yeah.

29:30And you're saying that may not be the case.

29:34I'm probably saying it's definitely not the case, but I'm going to go on record as saying

29:41I love that you just probably definitely.

29:44Yeah.

29:45Yeah.

29:46Well, it just in the sense that I think the language of my article is is quite, I don't

29:51pull punches in it.

29:52Right.

29:53Okay.

29:54And, uh, and maybe this is like a fault of my rhetoric, but I feel like it's a bit punchy.

29:57I'm just like, you know, maybe this is just like, you know, I said go for a fault in my

30:03personality that I'm like, no, it's definitely this like, I like it.

30:07And just so you know, having been on the other end of some of your published punches, it's,

30:12it's okay.

30:13It's okay.

30:14Well, I mean, you of all people should definitely be able to handle that, right?

30:18Yeah.

30:19You can, you can dish it out.

30:20For sure.

30:21No, I, I didn't find anything you've said to be, uh, to be harsh.

30:24Yeah.

30:25You can be, you can be curt, but fair.

30:27Yeah.

30:28Yeah.

30:29So, so talk about that.

30:31Yeah.

30:32So the first, um, the first thing we have to do is, is think about how we categorize and,

30:39and understand, uh, certain laws in the Torah.

30:43And also one of the important things, actually, probably the most important thing is that,

30:47and this is just going to maybe sound weird to a lot of your peers.

30:51And also maybe not if you've watched dance channel enough, but you can't understand what

30:57second temple Judaism was like by just reading the Torah.

31:03You can't just figure out what Jews were doing just by reading the Torah.

31:09Yeah.

31:10Why is that the case?

31:11The reason that's the case is because, uh, the Torah is a really difficult text to interpret

31:17and to figure out how to apply.

31:20And Jews in the second temple period, uh, interpreted a lot of these laws in ways that

31:27we would think are really counterintuitive and, and really difficult to justify.

31:34Um, so that can you give an example of what, um, I will actually, there are really relevant

31:44examples I'm about to tell it.

31:45Okay.

31:46Great.

31:47Yeah.

31:48Sorry.

31:49Yeah.

31:50So, uh, we can, we can maybe, uh, talk about two broad categories of things, right?

31:55One is certain laws that kind of all Jews generally agreed about, about how to obey them.

32:03And they did obey them.

32:04Right.

32:05So I, I generally ascribe to what E.P. Sanders calls common Judaism in the late second temple

32:09period.

32:10Uh, right.

32:11But after the Hasmoneans after, right, the Maccabees as the owner of an Adler has really

32:15helpfully shown Jews started obeying the Torah, like writ large, right?

32:20Judeans, you dioy Jews, um, became a, a Torah observant culture, um, uh, through the Hasmonean

32:28dynasty and their implementation of, uh, the Torah as the civil law of land.

32:33Uh, and so this is why I talk about late second temple Judaism because there's very minimal

32:38evidence that in the early second temple era, Jews were actually obeying the laws that we

32:44now find in the Pentateuch.

32:46Um, so we can talk about things that generally were agreed upon.

32:50And then a lot of things that things that people disagreed on, obviously there's a lot

32:54of overlap between these things.

32:55But the reason why you have all these different sects in second temple period, right?

32:59The Sadducees and the Pharisees and the zealots and the Essenes, right?

33:03And the early Christ groups, right, um, is because there are lots of different ways of

33:10thinking about and, and construing this material from the Torah.

33:15So obviously, you know, the Sadducees and the Pharisees are the classic example of people

33:19who disagreed about what it meant to obey God's law.

33:25But there are some things that there was a consensus about and things that might seem

33:31really weird.

33:32So for example, and this is really key, uh, to the article.

33:37In Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, one through 21, 23 around there, um, you have a list of

33:45a bunch of animals that you're not prohibit, you're not permitted to eat.

33:49Or at least sorry, Israelites are not permitted to eat, right?

33:52So it says, you know, X is unclean.

33:54This is unclean, whatever this you're not allowed to eat, whatever.

33:57And it uses the language of impurity to describe these animals that are prohibited.

34:02Um, so if you just go read Leviticus 11 and say, these are unclean to you.

34:06That's Y-Z-A-B-C-D-E-F-G, whatever, bunch of stuff.

34:10And then at the end, um, it says, you know, previously, it uses the language of impurity

34:17and then it uses the verbal forms at the end.

34:19Uh, so you get Al-Tashok-Sueh-Nashr-Tay-Khan-Bakhol-A-Sharitz, uh, Hush, uh, Al-Tashok-Sueh-Nashr-Tay-Khan-Bakhol-A-Sharitz, uh,

34:30Velotitam-U-Baham-Vinitz-Nay-Tam-Bam, so that's, that's, do not abominate your souls, uh,

34:38with anything that creeps on the earth, or sorry, with anything that creeps, or any

34:41creeper that creeps, do not, uh, defile yourselves with them and so become defiled by them.

34:51That's, uh, Leviticus 1143.

34:53And then in 44, it picks up the defignment language again, and it says, uh, Velotitam-U-F-Nashr-Tay-Khan-Bakhol-A-Sharitz,

35:00Hushok-Sueh-Nashr-Tay-Khan-Bakhol-A-Sharitz, do not defile your souls with anything, uh,

35:06any creeper that roams on the earth.

35:09Now, what this, you know, would make people think is, oh, this is just the same as a bunch

35:15of the other stuff, right?

35:17That's impure in Leviticus, right?

35:18Like, menstruating women, and men that have had any kind of seminal omission, and, uh,

35:25women who have just, uh, given birth to a child, and people with what is often translated

35:31as leprosy, which is a bad translation, we'll just call it lepera, people with lepera, and

35:34houses with weird spots, right?

35:36Now, what's really weird is that those laws appear right next to each other in Leviticus.

35:39So Leviticus 11 is all about prohibited, unclean animals, Leviticus 12 through 15, and you

35:45can include 16 if you include the day of Atonement, is all about these various things

35:49that make you impure in how you have to wash yourself and how you have to go through rituals

35:53to purify yourself and whatever.

35:56Now what's wildly, you know, we'll probably seem wildly counterintuitive is that Jews

36:04in the late second temple period, so it seems, or many of them at least, just completely

36:09siphoned off 11, chapter 11, from 12 to 15.

36:13Hmm.

36:14Okay, so we'll talk about what that means in a second, but let's talk about 12 through

36:1815.

36:19You get a bunch of things, right, that make you impure.

36:24And what these texts do is they prescribe ways of ameliorating that impurity.

36:31So to be pure literally just means not to have any impurity, that's all it means.

36:37And to be impure is to have this perceived contagion, this kind of bio-theological thing

36:46that can get on you from certain sources or from certain activities or from certain things

36:50that come out of your body.

36:53And then the Torah prescribes ways to get rid of that from your body.

36:59So you can go through, usually it's just you kind of immerse, you wait until evening,

37:04and then you're pure.

37:05Other times you have to wait a long time, immerse, give a sacrifice, right?

37:10To become pure from leprechaun purity, from leprosy impurity is a multi-step process.

37:17The craziest one is in Numbers 19, where you have to go through this, what's called the

37:21red heifer ritual, where you have to do this a lot of different really interesting things

37:25to purify yourself if you touch or become impure by a dead body.

37:30So this is what we can get that kind of impurity that's transferable and that's ameliorated

37:37by certain activities, by certain ritual activities, people or scholars have called that ritual

37:43impurity.

37:44Now, I think I'm pretty sure Jonathan Clowans invents this phrase.

37:48The category itself, or the intuition that this is a specific kind of impurity, goes

37:54back through ancient Judaism.

37:59Sometimes it was called the vidical impurity in certain Anglophone scholarship earlier.

38:03Now it's just referred to as ritual impurity.

38:04So this is the ritual impurity that you can transfer, that you can get, and that you can

38:10ameliorate, and that you can pass in and out of.

38:13So it's sort of a becoming unclean and then a cleansing thing.

38:18Is that correct?

38:20Yeah.

38:20Yeah.

38:22And there's nothing in principle acquiring impurity is not immoral.

38:22Okay.

38:25Okay.

38:26Now, not doing something to ameliorate your impurity can be really bad in certain circumstances.

38:33And if you're a certain kind of person, you're not permitted to acquire certain kinds of

38:38impurities.

38:39So for example, the high priest is not allowed to ever contract corpse impurity.

38:43Right.

38:44Yeah.

38:45I did notice, like as I read through some of these, sorry, I did notice that, yeah, it

38:49doesn't say you can never do this.

38:52It just says, when you do it, when you touch this animal or when you eat this animal, then

38:58you have to do X, Y, and Z.

39:00Yeah.

39:01It doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like it's this big problem.

39:04It doesn't seem like it's this, you know, moral issue.

39:07Totally.

39:08It's just when it happens, wash your hands, wash your clothes, and then by evening, you're

39:14done.

39:15You're good.

39:16Totally.

39:17Usually.

39:18Yeah.

39:19And like, you know, every time a couple has sex, they're impure.

39:22Right.

39:23So this, this, right, having a child makes the impure.

39:26You're required in Deuteronomy 21, I think, to bury a dead body if you see it.

39:31Like, on the street, that would make you impure.

39:36So actually, there are times where in order to obey the law, you have to become impure.

39:40So there's definitely, in principle, acquiring ritual impurity is not an immoral thing.

39:45Okay.

39:46Imprint's interest.

39:47Right.

39:48There are certain circumstances where it is, but in principle, it does not.

39:54Okay.

39:55So now let's go back to Leviticus 11.

39:58Tell me, guys, you guys probably know this because you read my, read my paper, or, or

40:04actually for our listeners, for those who have read, you know, something in the Torah,

40:08can you tell me what the procedure is to ameliorate the impurity you get from eating an animal

40:16that's prohibited?

40:17Can people second to think?

40:21Yeah.

40:22I, I feel like I, I feel like I'm in school and you just called on me for something.

40:27I'm not giving you a trick question.

40:28Yeah.

40:29Yeah.

40:30Yeah.

40:31And, and this is one of the things that you, you talked a little bit about the, the Pluriformity

40:34of the different approaches to the Torah.

40:35One of the first things that they noticed when it's like, okay, here's the Torah.

40:40This is now in charge.

40:41They're going to be like a moment.

40:44I don't know if you noticed this, but one, we got a bunch of contradictions.

40:48Two, there are a lot of gaps.

40:51And so this is what the, what a lot of the halochic literature is trying to do is imposing

40:57things is trying to harmonize things, but that stuff's not written down for a while.

41:02And there were certainly competing traditions.

41:04Absolutely.

41:05And so you have, and, you know, I, I think of the Seinfeld episode where, uh, oh, suddenly

41:12there's lobster in this.

41:14And now, you know, we've been, we've been tricked.

41:17There's got to be some way of, of doing this, certainly at some point they were like, Hey,

41:22what if we accidentally, cause they asked a lot of weird questions of the Torah in, in

41:26that early literature.

41:28So yeah, and the notion they didn't have an answer is, is nonsense.

41:32So yeah, and because, you know, there's a question of whether this literature originated

41:38as actual, like, you know, ideal literature or whether it was actually implemented, right?

41:42But when you put it all together and then you try to get to, you get to people to obey it,

41:46to realize it's really not self explanatory.

41:50Yeah.

41:51Right.

41:52And this is why like you have, you know, so many volumes of Jewish law is in part, you

41:57know, in terms of the mission of the Tosefta, the Talmud, right, what all those other things

42:01is because it's actually, it's really difficult to know what to do in a, in a lot of situations.

42:07And, and lots of different schools and people had different opinions about rulings about

42:12well to obey this law in this circumstance.

42:15What does it mean?

42:16Like the classic one is the Torah does not tell you how to, how to deal with this, right?

42:23Let's say you think that circumcising a boy constitutes work and, and every Jew seemed

42:32to think that it did, okay, you're commanded not to work on the eighth, sorry, on the seventh

42:38day.

42:39Right.

42:40And you're commanded to circumcise your sons on the eighth day.

42:44So what if the eighth day of your child's life falls on a Sabbath?

42:49Right.

42:50What do you do?

42:51And you got it by our guys.

42:53Yeah.

42:54You have to, you have to systematize and you have to be able to find a way to rate commandments.

42:59And pretty much every Jew agreed that, uh, circum, circumcision overrides Shabbat.

43:06Okay.

43:07Always.

43:08Uh, but that's, but this is the kind of questions that they had to deal with, right?

43:11Once you actually start obeying it practically, you're like, Oh wait, that's not clear.

43:14Let's have a discussion and figure this out and figure out how to do it.

43:18Right.

43:19So it's, this is part, part and parcel of just like what it meant to interpret and apply

43:22the law in the late second table period.

43:23Okay.

43:24So back to the question.

43:25Right.

43:26All of you have had a lot of time to look at this, um, if for our listeners, what's the

43:30ritual?

43:31What's the, what is the purification procedure?

43:33If you ingest a prohibited animal and the answer is there isn't one, right, in the vidicus

43:4011, there isn't one.

43:41It just says, don't defile yourselves, don't abominate your souls.

43:45Don't eat.

43:46Don't defile yourselves by them and so become impure.

43:48And then the next question is, okay, well, if I do that, do I immerse myself?

43:53Do I have to go leave a sacrifice to purify myself?

43:56You know, do I give some kind of purification, purification offering?

43:58What do I do?

43:59Torah.

44:00And the Torah just goes, Hey, if any, if any woman gives birth to a child, right?

44:05Like then she's, right.

44:06It moves on.

44:07It just moves on.

44:08Right.

44:09The way that Jews understood this, um, was, okay, it must mean that actually when you

44:16eat a prohibited animal, it doesn't transmit ritual impurity to you because if it did,

44:24the Torah would tell you how to ameliorate that, but it doesn't.

44:28So we're, we're exegeting the blank in the narrative, right?

44:32The omission is, is, is significant, right?

44:35So the way that it's kind of this university interpreted was the impurity language just

44:39means this is not cool.

44:42Like don't do this, right?

44:45That's it.

44:46It's not because they transmit ritual impurity to you because that also wouldn't, wouldn't

44:50be prohibited anyways, right?

44:52In principle, um, it's just because the impurity language is a way of saying, don't do this.

44:57Okay.

44:58Now, was that in line with the original intent of Leviticus?

45:04So that might mean, right?

45:05Definitely not.

45:06Um, like there's no, there's no clear cut distinction between Leviticus 11 and 12 through 15 in

45:12terms of how they understand impurity, but this is just how, you know, Jews understood

45:17it.

45:18And the, and the clear evidence for this is if you go to the Mishnah and you open up Seder

45:22to Harot, Seder to Harot is the order, major section, major division of the Mishnah that's

45:28dedicated to all things, ritual impurity.

45:31It is very dense and it's the longest track date of the Mishnah.

45:36Like, I wish I had my Mishnah behind me, but I'm not, I'm not in my office because, you

45:40know, we had that whole experience where my internet didn't work, um, uh, but you can

45:44just look at the size of each of the track dates if they're contained in one volume and

45:49set it to Harot just like, boom, like you can just pick it out, like it sticks out like

45:52a sore thumb, nothing in that entire order concerns the prohibited animals that, or the

46:02animals that are considered not okay to eat in the vidicus 11, huh?

46:09There's not even like a rabbi that's like, hey, does Leviticus 11 come up here?

46:13And then the sages say, no, you're wrong, right?

46:16Like the dispute, no dispute arises.

46:20There's no like, oh, I might think that Leviticus 11 is relevant here as well.

46:25Not like what we see a lot in the Mishnah, right?

46:27Oh, I might think this.

46:28I might think that nothing, absolutely nothing in any of that whole order about prohibited

46:34animals.

46:35Okay.

46:36So if that, that means, you know, this is recording disputes that go back to the first

46:39century.

46:40Um, if there's not a dispute over that, it's probably, probably a pretty widespread opinion.

46:45Now someone might object to that and say, ah, well, the rabbinic tradition is a specific

46:49kind of sub tradition, right, of, uh, of Judaism and you can't project that onto all Judaism

46:54and I go, okay, you know, but can you show me a text that from the second double period

47:00that says I accidentally ate a prohibited animal and then I immersed like it just doesn't,

47:07it's not there.

47:08And so we just have to assume that even though it's super counterintuitive, the impurity

47:14of prohibited animals is not included under the category of, or as we would analyze it,

47:20ritual impurity.

47:21So eating a prohibited animal is prohibited because God says so.

47:24That's it.

47:26Not because it transmits anything to you.

47:26Right.

47:29Okay.

47:30So what does that mean?

47:31That's the kind of pillar, right?

47:33Okay.

47:34Right.

47:35So that's a, that's a really important pillar that probably is, will be difficult for a

47:37lot of people to stomach, but trust me, bro, um, you can, you know, you can read more

47:43in the, in the, in the article for it, but, uh, if you want to, you want to dig in more.

47:48Um, okay.

47:49So then we have to ask in Mark seven, there's all this impurity defilement language, right?

47:53And there, there's other kinds of, you know, categories of impurity that appear, um, throughout

47:58second temple Jewish literature, we have impurity of demons, impurity of idols, right?

48:04Impurity of sexual activities, you know, certain illicit sexual activities, whatever.

48:08Uh, and so we have to, we have to, you know, the first thing we have to do is what, what,

48:12what kind of impurity are we talking about in Mark seven, right?

48:17And the answer is really, really obvious, right?

48:20The passage opens with Jesus and his disciples and a bunch of Pharisees eating a meal together.

48:26And the Pharisees see that the disciples are not washing their hands.

48:32And therefore they have defiled hands.

48:35Okay.

48:36Well, we'll talk about hand washing in a bit, um, but the point being what kind of impurity

48:42are we talking about here, right?

48:44If presumably if they wash their hands, the Pharisees would, Pharisees would think it

48:47would purify their hands.

48:49So we're talking about impurity that can be contracted and then ameliorated.

48:54Right.

48:55So we have to be talking about ritual impurity, right?

48:58And then they say, you know, Mark adds this comment.

49:00He says, all the, you die away, whatever, I'm not sure what it means there.

49:04Um, because obviously it's not true that all Jews wash their hands because Jesus disciples

49:10are Jews and they weren't doing it.

49:13I don't know.

49:14Um, so he says, all the, all the, you die away, wash their hands before they eat.

49:18They immerse when they come back from the market and they have lots of other rules concerning

49:23cups and potentially beds, there's a textual variant there, right?

49:28They have a lot of rules about the immersion of cups and whatever.

49:32Well, this can only be one thing, right?

49:35This can only be ritual impurity, right?

49:38Um, so I just want to clarify something, uh, the end parts of the end of Leviticus 11

49:45have to do with ritual impurity, but they're not about prohibited.

49:47They're not listing off prohibited animals.

49:49Right.

49:50But the first, the first like two, three quarters of it is all about like what is prohibited

49:55and permitted.

49:56So that's, that's what I mean when I say the Leviticus 11, it's the, the prohibited animal

50:00part.

50:01Um, so anyway, so back on Mark seven, the context, we're talking about ritual impurity.

50:05We're talking about the ability for impurity to come onto hands and then be contracted

50:11onto food and then people to ingest it.

50:14And the Pharisees are like, well, if you washed your hands, you know, that would avoid that.

50:18We're talking about transfer or transferable impurity here.

50:21We're talking about ritual impurity.

50:23So the one thing that we can do is basically rule out that anyone in this passage is talking

50:28about whether or not you're allowed to eat pork.

50:32Hmm, because that's just absolutely not the topic here, right?

50:36Right.

50:37The Pharisees are not saying, why do your disciples eat what Moses prohibited?

50:40They don't say that.

50:43They say, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders by not washing

50:50their hands?

50:51Okay.

50:52So there's one, there's one other distinction that we have to add in here.

50:55The Pharisees accepted a certain oral tradition of the tradition of the elders, which they

51:01followed alongside the Torah.

51:04Now they would not have called this, in my opinion, they would not have called this an

51:08oral Torah.

51:09They would understand that this was a separate tradition and that it was subordinate to the

51:13law of God, right?

51:15So it's just, it's a bunch of recommendations, guidelines per se, about what to do in order

51:20to make sure you're obeying, you know, keeping yourself obeying the Torah.

51:24And one of the things that those elders passed down for some reason was the practice of washing

51:30your hands before you eat normal food.

51:35Now apparently, the reason for this was to avoid ingesting an impure entity or impure

51:42food.

51:43Now, was it about transmitting from your hands impurities to the food and then ingesting

51:48the food?

51:49Yeah.

51:50So the concern is, if you, if you've touched something that's impure, then your hands

51:53become impure.

51:55If you touch the food in certain circumstances, it have to include water.

51:58I've touched food that's wet, it then would take on a certain level of impurity, then

52:03if you ingest that, you'll take on a higher degree of impurity than you would if you just

52:08had hands.

52:09Now, the concern is not, you know, oh, because it's sinful to ingest something that's impure.

52:15The Pharisees accept that it's not because they don't say, again, why are you sinning?

52:20They say, why are you not following the tradition of the elders?

52:23It's just recommended that, hey, if you can like avoid becoming impure by accidentally

52:29eating impure food and inadvertently making yourself more impure, then like, that's probably

52:34a smart idea, right?

52:35Like, I, it's not sinful for me to touch a dead body, but I'm not going to like run

52:42through a, a cemetery if I don't need to, like, because that's just going to be annoyingly

52:49annoying and inconvenient.

52:51So, the dispute has to do with one, ritual impurity, and two, a body of regulations that's

53:01not even contained in the Torah.

53:03So the Torah never says you can't ingest anything that's acquired ritual impurity.

53:09It never says that you can, you know, touch something, or at least the Torah doesn't talk

53:18about this, like, having your hands separately impure and then defiling food.

53:23It never says that if you eat a secondarily defiled object, that it will make you impure.

53:28Never says that.

53:30There's some exceptions to this in terms of, like, certain things that might be able to

53:33make you impure through ingestion, but those are disputed passages, which we can talk about

53:37in a bit.

53:38So this is the groundwork.

53:39We're not talking about prohibited animals.

53:41We're talking about transmissible impurity, and we're talking about the regulations that

53:46the elders prescribed for how to deal with ritual impurity.

53:52That was very long-winded.

53:53I hope that sufficed us an answer to your question.

53:57Yes.

53:58So, yeah.

54:00So then, so we've, we've, we've bring it home.

54:04Like where, where are we, we've gotten, we've gotten through sort of the, you've laid the

54:09groundwork very, very well.

54:11So if, so what is happening then in this passage?

54:17We can skip, I'd like to come back to the stuff about Corbin in the middle of seven.

54:22But ultimately, Jesus' response to the Pharisaic view is your notion on which your hand-washing

54:32regulation is based is totally BS, right?

54:36So the basis of the view that leads to, or sorry, the view on which the practice of hand-washing

54:43is based is the notion that if you ingest something, you can acquire its impurity, right?

54:54And Jesus says, importantly, again, this is not anywhere in the Torah where if you defile

54:59food with, you know, throw a dead body or a dead crocodile at, you know, an egg you're

55:04about to eat, and then you eat that egg, it doesn't say, oh, you'll become impure by

55:08it.

55:09It's completely silent on the matter.

55:10And Jesus says, that's not possible.

55:13And therefore, your practice of hand-washing is pointless, because you're not actually

55:19preventing anything, because you can't become impure through ingestion anyways.

55:25And his argument is pretty interesting, and it has to do with how he understands the function

55:29of the, of the digestive system.

55:32So he says, hey, idiots, what are you talking about disciples here, right?

55:36He says, nothing that comes into a person can defile them, because it enters not into

55:43their heart, but into the stomach, and it's cast out into the tree, thus the person purifying

55:48all foods.

55:49So the key assumption here is that all Jews, in my opinion, although some people would

55:55argue that they're exceptions to this, I disagree with them, all Jews in the second

55:59temple period, or from what we know, thought that human excrement was always pure, which

56:07is weird.

56:08Okay.

56:09Well, yeah, that does seem to raise questions about, for instance, defecating outside the

56:15camp.

56:16Exactly, yes.

56:17I've heard that interpreted as an indication that that is, uh, richly impure, but so this,

56:23so this is another example where Jews are exegeting the blank.

56:26So in Deuteronomy 14, it says, because Adonai walks around in your camp, you can't just

56:32leave your poop there because he might step in it.

56:37I mean, it's not really clear, right?

56:40And then it's, but it calls it an ervat devard says, because it's an unseemly thing.

56:44You have to, you have to take it outside the camp.

56:46You can't leave it where, you know, Adonai is walking around.

56:50Now one might think, you know, maybe in its original context, the concern was, oh, because

56:55we know that excrement is impure because it's gross, but impurity language never comes up.

57:01Yeah, because, but impurity language doesn't appear in that passage.

57:05Yeah.

57:06So second temple Jews were going, ah, the omission of impurity language there must mean

57:12that actually excrement is pure because if it was impure, it definitely would have been

57:18mentioned here.

57:20So the omission is really significant.

57:23And so thus like the tradition, Jewish tradition just assumes like, actually, it's pure, right?

57:29We have evidence from Josephus that it's pure.

57:31We have all these texts from the, from the Essene sect, from Kumran about regulating

57:36poop everywhere.

57:37Like they're really concerned about where poop is impurity language never appears in those

57:40texts.

57:41And then we get explicitly in the early Jewish halochic literature from the Mishnah, where

57:45it says, human exquent is always pure.

57:49And so I think this must have been a really widespread view.

57:51We have lots of, you know, implied in the second temple period, pretty clear from Josephus

57:55and really explicit in the Mishnah.

57:57Okay.

57:58So then what does that mean?

57:59Right?

58:00If, if Jesus assumes that what goes in is defiled, but then what comes out is pure, then what

58:07must happen in the meantime?

58:09Well, it must be the case that the human body is transforming the quality of this food so

58:17that it nullifies its impurity.

58:20And then the question becomes, if it's a, to quote Shlomo, not a, if it's in the body's

58:27power to purify food, how would it be possible for food to defile the body?

58:35And so Jesus just says, it's not possible.

58:38Okay.

58:39So then, so the person purifies all food.

58:42So therefore nothing that goes in can defile because the body is nullifying impurity,

58:48not taking it on, and therefore the reason why you handwash before eating is dumb.

58:54Okay.

58:55Or is baseless, right?

58:57Is his, is his argument.

58:59You've built an illegitimate sense around the law with, with the, and so actually Jesus

59:03is arguing from Torah, right?

59:05He's arguing from the view of excrement that he thinks is derived or the heap that would

59:10have been derived from throughout the 14 because he thinks implicitly the law rules that excrement

59:15is pure.

59:16Jesus tells us something where we can deduce from that this whole kind of cascading series

59:21of, of, of, of conclusions from that.

59:26And we also see the same, a similar conclusion in the Mishnah, which says, hey, if you, you

59:30know, eat something, if you eat a part of a dead body, right?

59:35And if it comes out below, then it's pure.

59:41Okay.

59:42Now they don't, they don't conclude therefore that it can't defile for various reasons,

59:46which we can into later.

59:48But in principle, they say, it's like, if it comes out to the downward lemata, then tahor.

59:55It's pure.

59:56And that's Jesus is similar, it's very similar language.

59:58If it goes into, you know, East Tonna fedrona, if it goes into the sewer, the person purifies

60:06all foods.

60:07Wow.

60:08I think that, so we've, we've, we've, we've gone all the way full circle from, from Jesus

60:16sort of going against the Torah to now, Jesus is confirming the Torah, by going against

60:22the traditions that theoretically probably cropped up from the Torah.

60:28Yeah.

60:29So you, you can, I mean, there's all this argument about what, where did the, what's the origin

60:35of the hand washing ritual, right?

60:37And there's all this disagreements about what the basis is of, of it is.

60:41Yeah, here for Simberg argues that it's a kind of appropriated Hellenistic practice.

60:47I don't know what I think about that.

60:48I, I kind of like give up in my article and I just say, it's shrouded in mystery, but

60:52at least we know, I'm pretty sure I'm just like, look, I'm not going to get into that

60:55because it's this whole explosive thing.

60:58But there, there is a reference to hand washing, Leviticus 1511, the, the leper who needs to

61:04wash, or sorry, the, the Zav, who needs to wash their hands, the person with a, I think

61:09it's there, it's a person with a unnatural flow from their penis needs to wash their

61:14hands or there's certain circumstances where they defile if they haven't washed their hands

61:19or something.

61:20But that, you know, it's really hard to get from that to, you need to wash your hands

61:25before you eat in any circumstance, right?

61:27So they, so they, they understood that this was like going beyond Torah, which is not

61:31with, you know, it's principle, Jesus thinks is, is fine.

61:35And you know, as long as it doesn't undermine principles from the Torah.

61:38And he just thinks it does undermine here.

61:40Well, they're, they both seem to me to be different negotiations with the Torah.

61:47They're both chasing down the implications of these unanswered questions.

61:51And Jesus is basically saying, no, my version is better than your version because of this.

61:56And so it is, it is still a bit of a battle of traditions, neither of which has an exclusive

62:02claim to Torah legitimacy.

62:05But, you know, that's part of the rhetoric of this time period.

62:08Yes.

62:09Yeah.

62:10I mean, this is, this is key is that, you know, what I show in the article is that if we

62:13assume that Jesus isn't overturning the Torah, his view would require a relatively idiosyncratic

62:21and as unprinted, kind of not intuitive reading of Leviticus 1715 and Leviticus 22 eight.

62:29But we can see that it's not without precedent in Judaism.

62:34But it would, it would require a pretty, a pretty convoluted reading of those texts.

62:40And at the same time, though, the, the rabbinic view that the Pharisees anticipate their view

62:47also requires certain weird readings of those same texts.

62:53So I can get into it if you guys want, you know, unfortunately, we are running out of

62:59time here.

63:00So what I'm going to do is I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to wrap this up by getting

63:06to what we really need to know, which is our Christians allowed to eat pork or not.

63:10Yeah.

63:11So this is, this is always the question I get.

63:14And I didn't, annoyingly, I didn't really have space to explore in the article.

63:18But let me, this requires some hypothesizing, but I think there are, there are good reasons

63:25for it in the Torah, uh, only Israelites are, are native Israelites are required to obey

63:34Leviticus 11.

63:36And this is actually pretty explicit.

63:37So not only does Leviticus 11 say this is unclean to you, it then also permits.

63:45Sojourners, right, non Israelites, non Israelites who are dwelling in the land to eat certain

63:50things that Israelites are not allowed to eat.

63:53So you can see this in dudeonomy 14, 21, where God says, you know, Moses says, hey, like

63:59if something dies of itself, you can't eat it, but a soldier can eat it.

64:03Okay.

64:04So already we see this distinction that the way that non Israelites obey the Torah is different

64:10from how Israelites obey the Torah, but they can both obey Torah in their own way.

64:15So I generally think that what we see in the New Testament is even though I don't think

64:20there's anywhere in the New Testament, this would be controversial claim.

64:23I don't think there's anywhere in the New Testament where they just chuck out all the

64:27food laws.

64:28There's just a general consensus across early Christianity generally that Jews would just

64:34proceed obeying the law as they did.

64:38Uh, and you know, among doing other things as well, like engaging in Christ, believing

64:43communities and whatever, but then they wouldn't just throw out Leviticus 11.

64:46The real question though is, well, if we're accepting Gentiles as members of the people

64:51of God, do they need to obey the laws of Leviticus 11?

64:57And for whatever reason, the majority, you know, not everyone agreed, but at least the

65:02text we have in the New Testament, a test to a view where people go, no, no, no, they

65:07don't need to do that.

65:08Right?

65:09We see disagreement over this in Acts 15, certain Christian Pharisees say, Hey, they need to

65:14and the ruling is no, they don't, um, things like this thing sacrifice that avoid those

65:19at least.

65:20Yeah, exactly.

65:21So you have to avoid the things that are prohibited to sojourners in Leviticus 17 to 18.

65:25Okay.

65:26It's how I take that.

65:27Yeah.

65:28All right.

65:29Well, none of this sounds definitive.

65:30I'd, I'm still confused about what we're allowed to eat and what we're not.

65:33Uh, I'm glad I'm not a Christian now because I, or a Jew because that would be really confusing

65:38for me.

65:39But I am going to, I am going to, uh, let the conversation end here.

65:45People can go and find how to, how, how do people find your, this article in case they

65:49want to dive into it, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but, uh, if you just look

65:54up the stomach purifies all foods, or if you just look up the journal and New Testament

65:59studies, it'll be on, it'll be right now, at least it's, it'll be on the front page.

66:04If you're listening to this at a later date, it will be in the backlog issues.

66:08Yeah.

66:09So if you, if you just look up the stomach purifies all foods, it will come up.

66:12Excellent.

66:13Excellent.

66:14Well, Logan Williams, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

66:18We didn't get to any of the Christology stuff that Dan wanted to get to.

66:21So guess what?

66:23We're going to chuck it into the, uh, into the patrons only section.

66:26Let's do it.

66:27And all you, all you lucky patrons, uh, who are interested can join us for the Smackdown

66:34that is Dan versus Logan, uh, in Christology, I don't know what's going to happen.

66:39I'm guessing friendships are going to be ruined.

66:42We're going to see, uh, but, but join us for that.

66:45If you want to be a part of that, uh, you can go to, um, patreon.com/dataoverdogma and

66:53join up as a patron at the $10 a month or more level and there, uh, and then you'll,

66:59you'll be able to check all of that out.

67:01Uh, as well as getting an early and ad-free versions of all of our episodes, if you would

67:08like to write to us, please feel free to do so at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com, uh, Logan.

67:15Thanks again for joining us.

67:16We really appreciated you coming up.

67:18Yeah.

67:19It's been great.

67:20Thanks for having me.

67:21All right.

67:22Everybody.

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