Half and Half

because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.) Mark 7:19 NASB

Thus He declared – Every author has blind spots. Yes, even me! So when we read commentary and exegesis and other spiritual material, we must always keep a sharp eye for incidental, accidental and ignorant mistakes. Peter Enns comments on this passage in Mark are a good example. In general, Enns makes some very helpful remarks about the necessity of understanding the Bible in its own culture. His insights into the ancient texts of the Tanakh are extremely helpful. But it looks as if somehow he forgets all this when he comes to standard Christian arguments about the Torah. Suddenly, Jesus is a “Christian” in his theology. Paul is a renegade Jew, rewriting the Torah for Gentiles, and in this verse, even if the passage has Mark’s comments, Jesus declares the Torah to be obsolete. Here’s what Enns says:

Mark’s Gospel goes into more detail about how “evil” comes from the inside, like theft, adultery, murder, and so on. He also adds that Jesus was actually declaring that the Old Testament food laws were now null and void.

We need to be a little careful with Mark’s version. Most biblical scholars think that Jesus didn’t actually declare food laws null and void. This comment was Mark’s own creation written in hindsight and, as we saw in Chapter 3, reflects his purpose for writing—specifically, to make sure later Gentile followers of Jesus understood they didn’t need to keep those laws.[1]

While it is absolutely true that in order to understand the gospels we must understand the purpose of each author, that does not entail that Mark’s purpose for writing was to tell later Gentiles they didn’t have to follow Torah. Enns assumes this. He adopts the Church’s view of the text. He simply reads it as if it were Christian theology, not Jewish story. In other words, he makes precisely the same mistake that he objects to when it comes to understanding the Hebrew Scriptures. His paradigm assumptions about Jesus as Christian override careful textual analysis and cultural appreciation.[2]

Enns doesn’t do this deliberately. He just hasn’t moved out of the influence of eighteen centuries of Christianization of the gospels. This is an important lesson for us. Enns is very good on some points and terribly mistaken on others. He simply sees what his preconceptions tell him to see. Just like most of us. Just like me.

It takes considerable discomfort to shake loose these entrenched paradigmatic assumptions. Until they are jarred out of place, we will see the world the way we wish to see it. It will be uncomfortable, and most of the time we will deny the implications of being shaken. But the earth doesn’t stand still any more, does it?

Topical Index: food, kosher, paradigm, Peter Enns, Mark 7:19

[1] Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending the Bible Has Made Us Unable to Read It, p. 186.

[2] See Tim Hegg’s technical note of Mark 7:19b for a real textual analysis

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