Koinos and Akathartos

In English a handful of words run together: common, unclean, impure, defiled, and profane. Most of us hear them as one idea, something bad and dirty that God used to care about. And when a single verse in the New Testament seems to say that something is no longer unclean, we take it to mean that the whole idea is gone.

That is the claim behind many of the verses ahead, even when nobody states it: “Clean and unclean was one old system, and the New Testament set it aside.”

The Torah, however, does not use one idea. It uses two pairs of words, and it tells the priests to keep them apart. Before we open Mark 7, Acts 10, or Romans 14, we need those two pairs, because without them several passages are read backward.

The Priest’s Job

The two pairs appear together in one commandment, given to Aaron right after the death of his two sons, an event we return to in Chapter 34. For now, the words themselves are what matter.

Leviticus 10:8-11 And the LORD spoke to Aaron, saying: "Wine and strong drink you shall not drink, you and your sons with you, when you go into the tent (ohel אֹהֶל o'-hel) of appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade'), that you do not die; it is a statute (chuqqah חֻקָּה khook-kaw') forever throughout your generations; and to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean; and to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke) which the LORD has spoken to them by the hand of Moses."

The priests were “to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.” That is two pairs, not one.

The first pair is holy and common. Holy is qodesh קֹדֶשׁ ko'-desh, what is set apart for God: the Sabbath, the altar, the tithe. Common is chol חֹל khole, the ordinary things of daily life. A common thing is not a sin. A Tuesday is common, and so is a kitchen bowl. Neither is set apart, and that is all the word means.

The second pair is unclean and clean. Unclean is tame טָמֵא taw-may', clean is tahor טָהוֹר taw-hore'. This pair concerns the states and things that the Torah itself names: the ones that keep a person from coming near to the holy place until he is cleansed, and the animals God said are not food.

These are two different lines, both drawn by God, and the priest’s work was to teach Israel each of them.

Koinos and Akathartos

When the New Testament speaks of these things in Greek, the same two lines appear. The word for unclean is akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos. The word for common is koinos κοινός koy-nos'.

The last row shows that koinos is not a bad word in itself. The first believers held “all things in common.” Paul calls Titus his “true child in a common faith.” Jude writes about “our common Salvation.” Koinos means shared, belonging to everyone.

In the tradition of the elders, however, the same word had taken on a second use. Hands that had not gone through the washing ritual were called koinos, and a Gentile was called koinos and even akathartos (Acts 10:28). That use did not come from the Torah. It came from men.

Akathartos is different. It is the word for what God Himself declared unclean. It is used for the animals of Leviticus 11, and it is used for the spirits Yeshua cast out.

A simple picture holds the two apart. Think of a coffee mug in an office kitchen. Everyone has used it, and it sits in the sink, so you might want to rinse it before you drink from it. That is common. Now think of a cup filled with paint. No amount of washing the cup makes the paint something you drink. That is unclean. The mug is common only by custom, and a rinse settles it; the paint is not a drink no matter who is holding it.

Read Backward

Keep those two words beside you, and watch what happens in the passages ahead.

In Mark 7, the Pharisees complain that the disciples eat with koinos hands, and the verb many English Bibles render “defile” all through the chapter is koinoo κοινόω koy-no'-o, to make common. In Acts 10, Peter names both words, koinos and akathartos, and the voice from heaven answers with only one: “no longer consider koinos(common, worldly)” (Acts 10:15). In Romans 14, Paul uses koinos three times in one verse, and akathartos not once in the chapter.

When the two words are blurred into one English word, each of these passages seems to say that God’s line between clean and unclean animals was erased. When the two are kept apart, the passages say something quite different. We will read each of them in its own chapter.

Two Branches of Unclean

The Torah’s uncleanness itself runs in two branches.

The first branch is the uncleanness of food, body, and contact. Leviticus 11 through 15 and Numbers 19 set it out: unclean animals, childbirth, skin disease, discharges of the body, and contact with the dead. Much of this branch is part of ordinary life. A mother who gives birth, a son who buries his father, a husband and wife: each could become unclean for a time without sinning. The Torah provides washings, waiting until evening, and days of cleansing, so that the person can come near again. Leviticus 11 closes the food laws in this branch with their purpose: “to make a difference between the unclean and the clean” (Leviticus 11:47).

The second branch is the uncleanness of sexual sin, idolatry, and bloodshed. This uncleanness is sin, and it defiles not only people but the land. After the list of forbidden unions, Leviticus 18 says: “And the land was defiled, and I visited its iniquity upon it, and the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25). We will read the whole passage in Chapter 25. The prophets used the same words about Israel. Ezekiel says that the house of Israel defiled their land “by their way and by their doings,” and that God poured out His fury “for the blood which they shed upon the land, and for their idols with which they defiled it” (Ezekiel 36:17-18).

Both branches are called by the same Hebrew words, tame and tumah. In Greek, both are akathartos and akatharsia ἀκαθαρσία ak-ath-ar-see'-ah. The same vocabulary covers what goes into the mouth and what a person does with his body and his worship. The two are not the same thing, yet God called both by one word.

The Spirit Causes Us to Walk

God promised to deal with both.

Ezekiel 36:25-27 And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean; from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) I will put within you; and I will remove the heart of stone out of your flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr'), and I will give you a heart of flesh (basar). And my spirit (ruach) I will put within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim), and you shall keep my judgments (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt') and do them.

The promise reaches both branches: “from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” Then come a new heart and His own Spirit, and the Spirit is given for a stated purpose: “I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim), and you shall keep my judgments (mishpat) and do them.”

In Ezekiel the Spirit does not cancel the statutes; He causes us to walk in them. The cleansing is God’s work, and the walking is its fruit.

What This Chapter Gives Us

With the two pairs and the two branches in hand, we can follow the Torah’s laws of clean and unclean one by one. The first is a food law older than Sinai, given to Noah as he came out of the ark, which the apostles required of believers from the nations from the beginning: the law of blood.