Ray McDonald: Well, hello. Thanks for joining us. I’m Ray McDonald, and with me is my wife, rosalind. We work with Leket Israel, the national food bank, providing food for Israel’s needy. We are joined once again by Peter Sheer. Peter is an expert on food in the Bible. Peter, thanks again for being with us.
Peter Sheer: You’re welcome. Happy to be here.
Ray: So, Peter, you’re involved in a lot of different activities. You’re educating Christians about the roots of their faith. You’re kind of like a gardener, nourishing people’s roots and helping them figure out where things began.
Peter: Well, thank God.
Ray: We thank you again for being with us. We talked a little bit last time about kashrut, kosher, clean and unclean, and what that all means. Today we want to dive a little bit into the New Testament. Food in the New Testament is, of course, a big issue. Even today, people often get together for a business meeting or fellowship over a meal or breakfast.
I can tell you a funny story. My boss is in Israel and frequently meets with Christians who are visiting the land. He had a breakfast meeting with a megachurch pastor. They sit down, the pastor looks at his plate, shakes his head, and says, “I really miss my bacon.” I thought that was pretty funny.
Peter: Yeah. A lot of Christians don’t realize when they come to Israel that the typical Israeli breakfast is going to be dairy. That means there will be no meat of any kind. You don’t mix meat and cheese, so dairy becomes the main protein. If you have to have protein and can’t just do oatmeal, fruit, or cereal, it will be all sorts of cheeses and yogurts. That’s a typical Israeli breakfast.
Ray: If you picture the very beginning of the church in the first century, Jews and Gentiles eating together was a major issue. When my boss told me about meeting with this pastor who missed his bacon, my mind went back to the first century and some of Paul’s writings.
Let’s look at Mark 7 to set the stage. Some Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. Mark 7:1 notes that some of the disciples were eating food with hands that were defiled, meaning unwashed. The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash first. They observed many other traditions, such as washing cups, pitchers, and kettles. We have this expression about putting a “hedge around the Torah,” and perhaps there’s something happening there that you can talk about. So, the Pharisees asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
What’s happening here, Peter? There isn’t a mitzvah, law, or commandment regarding washing hands before dinner.
Peter: “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” they say, right? But no, there’s no commandment in the Torah that says you must wash your hands before you eat. It’s a tradition. As you see in Mark—and in Matthew 15, a parallel passage—this tradition comes up. Jesus actually followed this tradition a lot of times, but this time his disciples did not wash their hands.
Let me explain the intricate part here. The Pharisees were a very particular group in Israel who believed in eating apart from everybody else. They didn’t even eat with other Jews who didn’t share their way of thinking because they believed you could be defiled through food. If the food is clean, you should eat it and everything will be fine, unless that food was treated inappropriately and became defiled. They believed defilement could pass from whatever the source was to the food. Let’s say my hands are defiled from touching things I shouldn’t have. We live in a very clean world right now with hand sanitizer, but the ancient world was not like that. Plumbing didn’t really exist. If you walk the streets of Jerusalem today, you’ll see little trenches in the middle of the street for water runoff; in ancient times, that would have been sewage.
So, you’re walking through sewage and then walking off the street into a person’s house to start eating. You can see how that could be an issue. People washed their hands for practical and ceremonial reasons. They realized, “I’ve been walking around the marketplace, touching things. Who knows what other people have been touching? Did they wash their hands after going to the bathroom?” There were a lot of purity concerns. The Pharisees believed impurity attached itself to an item and passed on like a contagion if you consumed food with unwashed hands.
Ray: Like a ritual impurity.
Peter: Yeah, impurity is impurity. God says there are certain things you do not touch, and when you do, you become impure. Becoming impure is not a sin; it’s a fact of life. It’s just something that happens to you. The only way to cleanse yourself is to wait out a period of time and do a washing ceremony, as the Torah says. For example, if a person touched a dead body, they were supposed to wash themselves and their clothes, and after a day passed, they could go worship in the temple. But they can’t just touch a dead body and walk into a temple. It really has to do with God, because God says, “You don’t approach me this way. You are unclean. You are defiled.” It’s all about our relationship with God.
The Pharisees believed that when we sit down to eat, we invite God. We say a blessing and commune with Him. We thank God for the food and recognize it comes from Him. It’s a meal shared in God’s presence. What if there’s impurity involved? That would not be correct. To prevent this, the Pharisees voluntarily followed many of the rules that the priests followed in the temple. They didn’t have to; they just felt worshipping God was so important that they took all necessary precautions not to offend Him. They transferred ritual purity rules for priests into everyday life.
But not all Jews in that era believed in that. That’s what you’re seeing in Mark and Matthew. You have a group of Galilean Jews who don’t quite follow those teachings, and a group of Pharisees who do. They challenge Jesus, asking, “Rabbi, why do your disciples eat with unwashed hands?” Jesus gives them a long answer about what goes in and what comes out, what’s clean and what’s unclean. That’s where we get the statement, “And thus he declared all foods clean.” This was actually just a parenthetical, explanatory statement by Mark. If you read the whole story, you’ll understand that what they were eating was bread.
Ray: So, did he declare that the bread was basically good enough to eat?
Peter: Yeah, exactly. I realize a lot of Christians say, “Well, he declared all foods clean.” But guess what? They weren’t eating all foods; they were eating bread. There was no lobster on the table. It’s not like he pointed to a lobster and said, “I say it’s clean, let’s eat it.” The question at hand was whether it’s okay to eat with unwashed hands, and he said it’s okay. He explained that defilement is internal rather than external—that it comes out of human beings, not into them. On that point, he disagreed with the Pharisees.
Ray: Very interesting. Many Christians take that declaration—”Thus he declared all foods clean”—too broadly, assuming Jesus was taking the dietary laws right out of Leviticus and wiping them clean.
Peter: They were not talking about that at all. That was not the issue of their dialogue. It’s like if you and I are discussing something, and I take a specific point you made and apply it to something completely different. Sometimes our words can be used against us by taking them way too broadly, and that’s what people do with Mark 7. Plus, remember, Jesus wasn’t even talking to Christians or Gentiles. These are Jews talking to other Jews about what’s right and wrong. The entire Talmud is filled with Jews disagreeing with each other, and that story in the Gospel is no different.
Unfortunately, people take that passage and transfer it to themselves. If they need a license to eat whatever they want, it doesn’t come from that passage. It comes from the fact that God has not asked the whole world to eat the way He asked Israel to eat. People feel guilty, thinking they should be following Levitical laws, but that Jesus freed them from it. But wait a minute—why did He need to free you from something you were never accountable to begin with? If you didn’t stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and agree to the contract, how could you possibly be held accountable to it? People feel guilty, so they quote Mark 7 as their “get out of the contract” clause.
Ray: Interesting. In our next time together, I’d like to talk further about the requirements of Jews and Gentiles. But regarding the phrase “Thus Jesus declared all foods clean,” in 20th-century America, we think of “food” as a pretty wide range of items on the menu. But to the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, Jesus, and his disciples, they wouldn’t have even considered shrimp and lobster as food.
Peter: Just like most Americans do not think of cats and dogs as a food category. If I declared “all foods clean,” no one is going to have a barbecue and throw their pet dog on it, because dogs are non-food items for us. It was the same thing for them.
Ray: Exactly. I want to quickly cover another food-related New Testament scene: Peter in Joppa. He’s up on the roof, sees a vision of various animals, and hears a voice say, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter says, “No way, absolutely not.” But he hears the voice three times. What is Peter seeing here? Is this about what Peter is going to have for dinner tomorrow?
Peter: It’s another fascinating, controversial passage. The vision is not really about food. If you read the entire narrative of Acts 10 and 11, you’ll realize it’s really about Cornelius. It begins with Cornelius praying, and God tells him He’s going to send him someone special. Then God tells Peter he needs to go see these people. While Peter is rejecting the animals in the vision, Cornelius’s men are knocking at his door. The vision was a sign telling him, “Go to Caesarea, visit this man.”
The problem was that Cornelius was a non-Jew. Going into a non-Jewish house meant they were going to offer hospitality, which meant sharing a meal. People assume that eating with a non-Jew meant being served shrimp and bacon, but realistically, most diets back then were very vegetable-heavy. The real issue wasn’t what they were eating, but who Peter had to eat with. In Acts 11, when Peter goes to Jerusalem, his friends confront him: “You went into the house of a Gentile and you ate with them.” They didn’t accuse him of eating bacon or shrimp; they were upset that he ate with an outsider.
The food in the vision was a representation of the nations, which Peter considered untouchable. God was visually telling him, “I know you don’t feel like it, but this is what you’re being asked to do.” Peter had to overcome serious cultural barriers to bring the Gospel to Cornelius. Later, in Acts 15, Peter uses Cornelius as an example, arguing that the Holy Spirit came upon them without them needing to become Jews or follow the Torah.
Ray: Excellent. I want to unpack that further next time. One of the verses I like in Acts 10 is the description of Cornelius as a just man, one who fears God and has a good reputation among the Jews. Was Cornelius like Ruth? A “your God is my God, your people will be my people” kind of guy?
Peter: There were non-Jews in that era who intersected with Judaism. Some realized there was something special about the Jews and their God. They chose to live within the community and be like them without fully converting. Cornelius was what they called a “God-fearer.”
If a man got circumcised, he became a proselyte—a full convert who had to follow all the rules. But a God-fearer lived on the fence. They were respected outsiders who respected Jewish laws, gave to charity, and supported the Jewish community financially. Cornelius probably learned the Torah and shared many Jewish beliefs, but he didn’t quite cross the line of becoming one. Because Cornelius already lived much like a Jew and knew the boundaries, Peter went to him. If a Jew came to his house, Cornelius wasn’t going to roll out the bacon. Just like if you invite a vegetarian over, you wouldn’t cook a big roast for them. You accommodate your guests.
Ray: Interesting. And of course, converting to Judaism required a physiological change.
Peter: That was a big stigma. For a Roman centurion like him, full conversion would have been a huge cultural stigma. He would have lost all his connections, influence, and standing among his own people. So, he chose to get close to the Jews without taking that final step.
Ruth was in a completely different category. She crossed over all the way, saying, “Your people will be my people, your God will be my God. I will live where you live, I will die where you die.” There was no sitting on the fence with her; she was fully in the camp. Because of that, the Bible treats her as an Israelite, and she is mentioned as an ancestor of King David in the opening verses of the New Testament.
Ray: Exactly. The last thing I want to mention, Peter, before we finish is returning to Peter on the roof. The voice said, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” If God was announcing that He was changing the dietary laws for Israel, you’d think Peter would have made a big issue of this new revelation when he met with church leadership in Jerusalem in Acts 11. But he doesn’t announce that God changed the dietary laws.
Peter: Clearly, he did not understand the vision that way himself. He didn’t even think the vision had anything to do with food. When Peter enters Cornelius’s house, he says, “Now I know that God shows no partiality.” He recognized the vision was about Cornelius, not about food. Today, people feel guilty because the Torah says to eat a certain way, so they try to find a “get out of jail free” card in the New Testament to justify themselves. That’s not what the passage was intended for.
Ray: Thank you very much, Peter. Next time, we want to talk about Gentiles, kosher laws, and what clean and unclean mean to us today. Thank you very much.
Peter: Check out my site at PH.com.
Ray: Yes, check it out. The link is below. Great book—it’s not your latest, but it’s really good.
Peter: It’s very recent, yes.
Ray: Words have meaning and context; we need to delve deep beneath the surface of God’s word. If you want to be involved in what God is doing in Israel, don’t just be a student of the Bible or prophecy—get involved.