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(1)
Thom 14:5 [listed as 14:3 in Crossan]
(2) Mark 7:14-15
(3) Matt 15:10-11
(4a) Acts 10:14b
(4b) Acts 11:8b
/14:1/ Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, /2/ and if you pray, you will be condemned, /3/ and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits. /4/ When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them. /5/ After all, what goes into your mouth won't defile you; what comes out of your mouth will." [Complete Gospels]
/1/ Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, /2/ they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. /3/ (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; /4/ 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.) /5/ 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?" /6/ 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; /7/ in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.' /8/ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition." /9/ Then 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."
/15:1/ Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, /2/ "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." /3/ He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? /4/ For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' /5/ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,' then that person need not honor the father. /6/ So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. /7/ You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: /8/ 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; /9/ in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'" /10/ Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: /11/ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles."
(a) Acts 10:14b
/10:9/ About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. /10/ He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. /11/ He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. /12/ In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. /13/ Then he heard a voice saying, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." /14/ But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." /15/ The voice said to him again, a second time, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." /16/ This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
(b) Acts 11:8b
/11:4/ Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, /5/ "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. /6/ As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. /7/ I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' /8/ But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' /9/ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' /10/ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.
John Dominic Crossan
Item: 19
Stratum: I (30-60 CE)
Attestation: Multiple
Historicity: +Crossan considers this to be the principal complex in a set of clusters around the deal of open or egalitarian commensality [see Historical Jesus 262]. He comments:
As advocated in parable and acted out in practice, it involved very specific challenges from mesocosmic table to macrocosmic society. There is, first and above all, 19 What Goes In [1/4], a complex that negates any value to food taboos or table rituals. The same point is made in 102 Inside and Outside [1/2]. Together, they insist that the inside and what comes from inside out are more important than the outside and what comes from outside in. There is no need to presume that Jesus was speaking against the fully developed table rituals of the Pharisaic sect. An open table and an open menu offend alike against any cultural situation in which distinctions among food and guests mirror social distinctions, discriminations, and hierarchies.
The sayings attributed to Jesus in Thomas, Mark and Matthew were considered by the Seminar at its 1989 session in Sonoma, while the Acts material was addressed at the Spring 2000 session in Santa Rosa in response to a paper by Joseph B. Tyson.
Text
Item
Source
JS Mtg
%Red
%Pink
%Gray
%Black
W Avg
Color Thom 14:5
25
K, T
89Son
25
50
25
0
0.67
Pink Mark 7:14-15
25
K, T
89Son
39
39
14
7
0.70
Pink Matt 15:10-11
25
K, T
89Son
11
67
22
0
0.63
Pink Peter had a vision in which his traditional views on acceptable and unacceptable food were modified.
00Spr
0
5
32
64
0.14
Black Peter clamed to have divine authority to pronounce judgments about acceptable and unacceptable food.
00Spr
0
27
18
55
0.24
Black Peter was described by others as having divine authority to pronounce judgments about acceptable and unacceptable food.
00Spr
5
36
45
14
0.44
Gray Petrine claims of authority to pronounce judgments about acceptable and unacceptable food were challenged by others in the early church.
00Spr
5
50
35
10
0.50
Gray Peter himself ate with Gentiles.
00Spr
73
23
0
5
0.88
Red Within a decade or two after the death of Jesus, some Jewish Christians abandoned the Jewish dietary regulations and thus opened the way for Gentile and Jewish Christians to eat together
00Spr
33
48
14
5
0.70
Pink Acts 10:9-16
00Spr
0
0
32
68
0.11
Black Acts 11:4-17
00Spr
0
0
0
1
0.00
Black
Luedemann [Jesus, 48f] notes that vs. 15 is the oldest element of tradition in Mark 7:1-23. Since the logion does not directly address the issues in dispute (it concerns what may be eaten rather than the issue of cleanliness), it may have been handed down as an isolated tradition and inserted into this context by Mark. He cites the criteria of difference, rarity and coherence in support of the authenticity of the saying. While defending the historicity of the saying, Luedemann argues [Jesus, 597] that Thom 14:5 is dependent on Mark 7:15 because he judges Thom 14:4 to be dependent on the Q material seen in Luke 10:7-8.
Meier [Marginal Jew III,527f] notes that Jesus' attitude to table fellowship and food purity laws was so different from the sectarians at Qumran that "they did not exist in the same spiritual universe." He contrasts this with the Pharisees who, while differing with Jesus over points of interpretation and application, shred sufficient common ground to make dialogue and debate possible.
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