It hardly needs to be said that this verse is a contemptuous reference to the sort of regulations Paul is opposing, not a statement of his own views. NIV has, in fact, brought this out by putting quotation marks round the three prohibitions, and a question mark at the end of the verse. The verb here translated ‘handle’ ⁴⁵ is stronger than that rendered ‘touch’, thus producing a downward sliding scale (Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!) which corresponds to the upward rise in absurd scrupulosity. Examples of this sort of regulation are not difficult to find in the Judaism roughly contemporary with Paul. There is no reason either to look to pagan sources or to imagine that only when one has found a religion which said exactly what Paul here says has the correct background been located. The tone throughout the passage has been heavily ironic, and this continues to the end of the chapter. The two arguments here advanced against regulations of this sort are so close to those found on the lips of Jesus in Matthew 15:1–20 and Mark 7:1–23⁴⁶ that many scholars have suggested a conscious echo on Paul’s part. This may be judged probable whether or not the Colossians would have picked up such a reference. The first argument, these are all destined to perish with use, highlights the futility of regulations dealing with materials – i.e. foodstuffs – whose proper use is also their destruction (cf. 1 Cor. 6:13). ‘Perish with use’ does not just mean ‘may wear out in time’, but indicates that ‘the things could not be used without rendering them unfit for further use’. ⁴⁷ The second argument, because they are based on human commands or teachings, refers, like Matthew 15:9, to Isaiah 29:13, where the prophet condemns his contemporaries for their heartless outward show of religion. NIV seems to imply, with its addition of ‘because’ to the Greek original, that this clause is supposed to be the reason why foodstuffs will perish with use, but this is clearly absurd. The two clauses stand in parallel, both commenting independently on the regulations mocked in verse 21.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
One Way to Understand Colossians 2:21-22 (N.T. Wright)
N.T. Wright:
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Just pointing out that Paul had a hope that had no stomach as a spiritual being. Referring to Matthew 15 which begins and ends with washing of the hands which practised at the time was not a Torah command.
I think Acts 10:15-16 is communicating similar ideas about unclean foods, but we've been there, done that. As for N.T. Wright's comments, while it's true that washing hands is not a written Torah command although Pharisees evidently viewed it as part of the oral tradition, Wright probably has Mt 15:17-20 in mind--with the stress on "eating"
Notice that he quotes 1 Cor. 6:13: "Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food, but God will abolish both of them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (LEB).
Even anointed Christians have to eat now, even if the anointed don't eat later.
Nowhere does Peter mention anything about food when explaining the vision to anyone.
True, but I don't think that means food was not involved in the "cleansing." The main point was about cleansing Gentiles, but I believe (like Keener mentions) that the vision was operating on two levels. Acts 15 could support this understanding. Also in Eph. 2:11-18, it speaks about the wall between Jew and Gentile being abolished. The food directives (kashrut) constituted part of the wall. See later in Gal. 2:11-14 when Peter even dined with Gentile brothers until men from James arrived. The post-apostolic church later viewed foods once forbidden under the law as now cleansed. Read the Epistle to Diognetus.
Acts 15:9-11 (ESV):
"and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
Compare Acts 15:28-29.
"Archaeologically, the site of New Halos provides clues for the relationship between cultivation and animal husbandry. Zooarchaeological analysis of the material showed that domestic mammals account for 94.7% of bone remains found in the six excavated houses (Prummel 2003, 182). The animal remains come from species of horse, dog, pig, sheep, goat, and cattle. The bones found in the houses were charred and shaped into knucklebones and astragali (Prummel 2003, 215). Prummel argues that a vast amount of meat consumed by the occupants of the six houses comes from >>>left-overs of sacrifice<<<, and that due to the low age range of the animals found the animals were raised close to the city for their meat (2003, 216)."
Ancient Greek farmstead. Maeve McHugh.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bp99AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=1+century+meat+production+sacrifice&source=bl&ots=KN3HFoqm_A&sig=ACfU3U3E6pG6Oy_H6bS0OwuOCAxwFGR3AA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvzqX1joLqAhUPY8AKHUEACicQ6AEwDHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=1%20century%20meat%20production%20sacrifice&f=false
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.6.2.0188#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ijWMAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=early+christian+attitudes+toward+meat+eating&ots=Rbs2h5zyAT&sig=fvIfAVEWl9qQiuJSkYlovsTb5Io#v=onepage&q=early%20christian%20attitudes%20toward%20meat%20eating&f=false
In his NICNT for Acts, F.F. Bruce argues that Peter's experience applied to food and people. Bruce says Peter was undoubtedly present when Jesus' uttered the words recorded in Mark 7:14-19. He then writes:
The divine cleansing of food in the vision is a parable of the divine cleansing of human beings in the incident to which the vision leads up. It did not take Peter long to understand this: “God has taught me,” he says later in the present narrative, “to call no human being profane or unclean” (v. 30). Within the framework of the vision it is food that God has cleansed by dominical pronouncement, but in the wider narrative it is men and women, even Gentiles, whose hearts he has cleansed by faith (cf. 15:9). Yet the cleansing of food is not wholly parabolic: there is a connection between the abrogation of the levitical food restrictions and the removal of the barrier between believing Jews and Gentiles, for it was in large measure
the Gentiles’ eating of food which was “unclean” (not kosher) by Jewish law that made association with them a source of “defilement” for Jews (cf. v. 28).
Compare Larry Hurtado's remarks in his Mark commentary.
And Mat 15:20, is this referring to the same incident?
Noting that the NWT does not include Mark 7:16.
Asceticism has nothing to do with my arguments.
I have not labeled you an ascetic and I did not say your position is based on asceticism. The comments I recently posted were meant to address your statement that Peter's vision does not apply to food: Bruce, Keener, and I think Hurtado would disagree.
Mark 7:16 is really tangential to the case I'm trying to make: 7:19 is my primary concern.
But 7:16 does not appear in a number of Bibles, including NET Bible. Here's their note:
tc Most later mss add 7:16 “Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.” This verse is included in A D W Θ Ë1,13 33 Ï latt sy, but is lacking in important Alexandrian mss and a few others (א B L Δ* 0274 28 2427). It appears to be a scribal gloss (see 4:9 and 4:23), perhaps introduced as a reiteration of the thought in 7:14, and is almost certainly not an original part of the Greek text of Mark. The present translation follows NA27 in omitting the verse number, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations.
Even if Mt 15:20 is not the same account as Mark 7, that doesn't mean Matthew has no bearing on the Markan account or vice versa.
R.T. France comment on Matthew 15:
It is commonly suggested that in two ways Matthew has drawn back from the full implications of Jesus’ pronouncement on what it is that defiles, as compared with the Marcan account: (a) he does not include Mark’s bold editorial comment that thus Jesus “made all foods clean” (Mark 7:19);¹⁴ and (b) his concluding summary in v. 20 takes us back to the specific issue of handwashing which, however important to the Pharisees, was not a matter specfically regulated by the OT law as the matter of clean and unclean food was. It may be true that Matthew has been more cautious, and has restricted himself to Jesus’ remembered words without also echoing Mark’s comment on them, but he still records Jesus’ key pronouncement (v. 11) and the following commentary on it (vv. 18–19) no less explicitly than Mark,¹⁵ and in the light of the controversy over Christian observance of the food laws which had so occupied the church in the decades after Jesus’ death Matthew can hardly have been unaware of the radical significance of the principle that defilement comes from inside not from outside. The powerful polemic against scribal tradition in vv. 3–9 surely also confirms that Matthew, no less than Mark, is aware that relations between Jesus and the scribes have reached breaking-point.
Sorry for the confusion but it was Mark 7:19 that I had in mind, not 16. I should have read on a little further. NWT does have it.
KJV 1611 & original Tyndale NT, neither of them have it. So what manuscript evidence supports it as original?
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?dir=next&folioNo=6&lid=en&quireNo=76&side=r&zoomSlider=0
https://biblehub.com/text/mark/7-19.htm
https://biblehub.com/greek/bro_mata_1033.htm - food not meat.
William L. Lane on Mark 7:19: "The elliptical expression in verse 19b ('cleansing all meats') is almost certainly an interpretative comment of the evangelist which drew out the implications of Jesus’ statement."
See also Zerwick-Grosvenor, page 128. They note that Mk. 7:19 introduces a statement from the "Evangelist" and the participle in vs. 19 refers back to the verb's subject in 7:18.
I think you also know this, but when the KJV refers to "meats," it normally means "food"
One dictionary gives this definition for meat: "archaic
food of any kind."
Just to be clear, NWT does not have Mark 7:16, but KJV does: Sinaiticus does not have it. NWT also has 7:19.
For the textual evidence, see the note I posted from NET above. I don't have time to consult Metzger now, but that's also a helpful resource for textual matters.
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