The Traditions of the Elders

When the conversation turns to food, one verse comes up almost every time. Here is the claim in full.

“Yeshua declared all foods clean. It is right there in Mark 7:19. The food laws ended in the Gospels, from His own mouth.”

In many English Bibles, Mark 7:19 ends with a phrase in parentheses: “Thus He declared all foods clean.” If that is the verse you were shown, it seems to settle everything.

But a single line has a chapter around it, and the chapter has a question that started it. We will take Mark 7 in two steps: here, the question and the answer Yeshua gave to it; in the next chapter, the verse itself.

The Question That Started It

Mark 7:1-5 The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with koinos κοινός koy-nos'(common, worldly) hands — that is, unwashed — they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they purify themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe — the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots and couches. The Pharisees and the scribes asked Him: "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?"

The question comes in verse 5, and what is missing from it matters. Nobody asks about pork, and nobody asks which animals may be eaten. The disciples were eating bread, and bread is clean by any reading of the Torah. The complaint was about their hands.

The rule they were said to break is named twice: “observing the traditions of the elders,” and “the tradition of the elders.” Mark even explains it for readers who did not know it: the washing of hands before eating, purifying after coming “from the marketplace,” the washing “of cups and pitchers and copper pots and couches,” and “many other things which they have received in order to observe.” The word for tradition is paradosis παράδοσις par-ad'-os-is, what is handed down. These were rules passed on by men.

Verse 2 deserves a second look. The disciples were eating “with koinos(common, worldly) hands — that is, unwashed.” Where many English Bibles render “defiled,” the Greek word is koinos, common. That is not the Torah’s word for unclean animals. It is the word the elders’ tradition used for hands that had not been through the ritual, so Mark names the issue before Yeshua says a word.

A Fence That Swallowed the Field

How did a washing rule come to stand beside the commandments of God? The Mishnah, written down around AD 200, opens its tractate Avot with a saying it gives to the Men of the Great Assembly, teachers who lived centuries before Yeshua: “make a fence around the Torah” (Avot 1:1). The thought was that if rules were added around a commandment, no one would come near to breaking it.

Picture a farmer who builds a fence around his field to keep the cattle out, which is a sensible thing to do. Then he builds a second fence inside the first, and a third inside that, until the fences take up so much ground that no room is left to plant. In the end he is tending fences rather than a field.

That is what Yeshua saw in Mark 7. The fences had begun to take the place of the field.

The Answer Yeshua Gave

Yeshua does not answer the question about hands by saying that the law is finished. He answers by defending it.

Mark 7:6-8 And He said to them: "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain) is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'" "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men — the washing of pitchers and cups and many other such things you do."

He quotes Isaiah against them, “teaching as doctrines the precepts of men,” and then states His charge: “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.” He does not accuse them of keeping God’s commandments too carefully. He accuses them of putting men’s precepts in the place of God’s commandment.

He does not leave this rebuke general. He gives an example taken straight from the Ten Commandments.

Mark 7:9-13 He was also saying to them: "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said: 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death'; but you say: 'If a man says to his father or his mother, "Whatever I have that would help you is Corban" (that is to say, given to God),' you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the logos λόγος log'-os(word) of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that."

Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother.” Yet a man could declare his goods “Corban,” given to God, and their tradition then allowed him to refuse help to his own parents. Yeshua calls that “invalidating the logos(word) of God by your tradition.”

The first half of Mark 7, then, is not a place where the Torah is set aside. It is a place where Yeshua demands that the Torah be kept, against a tradition that was pushing it aside. He stands on the side of the commandment.

The Same Verb, Turned Around

Matthew tells the same story and records a detail that makes it sharper still.

Matthew 15:2-3 "Why do Your disciples parabaino παραβαίνω par-ab-ah'-ee-no(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread." And He answered and said to them: "Why do you also parabaino(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

The verb is parabaino (παραβαίνω), to step across, to transgress. The Pharisees ask why the disciples parabaino “the tradition of the elders.” Yeshua answers with the very same verb: why do you parabaino “the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?”

They accused His disciples of stepping across a line drawn by men, and He accused them of stepping across a line drawn by God. There are two lines here and two lawgivers, but only one verb, and Yeshua is plain about which line matters. Anyone who heard Him that day and walked away thinking He had come to erase the commandments of God would have heard the opposite of what He said.

To the Crowd

Then Yeshua turns from the Pharisees to the people.

Mark 7:14-15 After He called all the crowd to Him, He began saying to them: "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can make him koinos(common, worldly) if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what make the man koinos(common, worldly).

The verb here is koinoo κοινόω koy-no'-o, to make common, formed from koinos, the word used of the hands in verse 2. The question was whether unwashed hands make a man koinos when he eats his bread, and Yeshua says no. What makes a man common and worldly comes out of him.

Keep the setting in view. The thing going into the man in this conversation is bread, eaten with hands that had not been through the elders’ washing, and whatever a Jew put into his mouth was food as Scripture defines it. Nobody in the crowd heard “pork.” What they heard was that their hands do not make their bread unclean.

What Mark 7 Has Said So Far

Up to this point, nothing in Mark 7 touches Leviticus 11. The chapter is about hands and about the tradition of men, and Yeshua stands with the commandment of God.

Then He leaves the crowd and goes into a house, where His disciples ask Him to explain. Matthew tells us which disciple asked: it was Peter.