Do you really think that Paul the apostle meant we should eat whatever is put before us when he made this statement (see graphic below) in 1 Cor 10:27, even if it violated the biblical dietary commandments? Yet many in the church will use this Bible verse to attempt to prove the biblical dietary laws — along with the rest of the Torah-law of Moses — have been “done away with.” Hey church, it’s time to start using your noggins a little instead of thinking with your belly!
(This graphic was sent to me via Facebook and was too good to pass up, yet I don’t know whose graphic it is. If someone knows, please let me know, so I can properly attribute it.)
Nathan, Praise our Father for your teachings, you are helping me see so clearly. I am so proud to find this sight and continue to learn our Fathers word and his ways. I can not tell you how much help you are to me. Thanks you so much.
Thank you for your kind and encouraging remarks. May YHVH be praised! You might want to check out our YouTube channel and website too. Type in “Natan Lawrence” in the Google search engine and it’ll take you there. Blessings!
This makes sense; however, in Jesus’s own words from Mark 7, trumps your logic. He declares that all food entering the stomached doesn’t make you unclean; it’s your “heart.”
Thank you for your comment. However, what you’re saying is the standard, anti-Torah Christian interpretation for this verse. Sorry. Now let’s step back and think about this for a second. If Yeshua is telling us we can now eat pork or other unkosher food, then this makes him into a liar and a sinner. I don’t really want to go down this track because this is, quite frankly, blasphemy. The church needs to admit that they have some really bad and blasphemous teachings! How is this? If Yeshua advocates going against the biblical dietary laws which forbid eating unclean/unkosher meats (see Lev 11), then he’s violating his own law making him a sinner. He’s also going against his own word (e.g. Matt 5:17–19) making him a liar. As Paul said several times in a similar context, “God forbid! May it never be so!”
So what is the truth behind the Mark 7:18–19 passage? Here is my commentary on Matthew 15:11 — the parallel passage to Mark 7:18–19. This will answer the question.
Matthew 15:11(also Mark 7:18-19),
These are parallel passages in that they record the same events. Mark’s account reads, “And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?” (KJV) The Hebrew Roots Version, which is a translation from the Aramaic, confirms the KJV rendering of this verse. However, some of the modern texts (e.g., the NIV and NAS) add the phrase to the end of this verse, “In saying this [Yeshua] declared all foods clean.” This variant phrase in the newer English translations is the source of the confusion in the minds of many who read this.
The KJV is translated from the Greek family of manuscripts called the Textus Receptus or Received Text, which until the end of the nineteenth century was accepted as the most authoritative and purest manuscripts by the Protestant church. On the other hand, the newer translations derive from another family of Greek manuscripts that were rejected by early Protestant scholars as being inferior to the Textus Receptus, but liberal scholars from England challenged these beliefs of earlier scholars and were instrumental in popularizing the variant and previously rejected family of Greek manuscripts (called the Western family of texts).
The debate has raged on for more than 100 years as to which family of manuscripts is the oldest and most reliable in accordance with the actual autographs. But since no one knows for sure which family of manuscripts are the oldest and purest, can we approach the issue of determining whether the added words in the newer English translations, “In saying this [Yeshua] declared all foods clean” are accurate or not to the original language? Was Yeshua saying here that the dietary laws delineated in the Torah are now nullified? If so, would this be consistent with the rest Yeshua’s teachings?
Briefly, what was Yeshua’s stand on the Torah? In Matthew 5:17-19 he said,
Yeshua here instructed his followers to not think that he came to annul the Torah-law.
Then in both Matthew 15:6-9 and Mark 7-9 Yeshua rebukes the religious folks of his day for nullifying the Word of Elohim by their man-made traditions. What did he mean by the phrase Word of Elohim? When he made this statement there was no “New Testament,” but only the Tanakh (or “Old Testament”). He was rebuking the Jews for changing YHVH’s Word of which the biblical dietary laws in the Torah were a part. So for him to rebuke the Jews for changing the Word of Elohim, and then a few verses later to be advocating the annulment of the dietary laws found in that Word would have made Yeshua not only a hypocrite, but a Torah-law breaker and thus a sinner (1 John 3:4). To suggest that Yeshua was a law-breaker is utter blasphemy(!) and nullifies the entire gospel message and the entire “New Testament.” Yeshua could not have been advocating the violation of the Torah-law, and at the same time be the Word of Elohim made flesh and be YHVH’s sinless redemptive lamb, as the newer translations imply by the addition of the phrase, “In saying this [Yeshua] declared all foods clean.” Therefore, we utterly reject this phrase as a corruption of the original text.
By looking at the context, we see that the issue in these passages in Matthew and Mark was not about eating kosher versus not eating kosher, but whether it was allowable to eat with unwashed hands or not. According to Jewish non-biblical oral tradition it was imperative for one to go through an elaborate hand washing ceremony for mystical reasons before partaking of food. These commandments were rooted in traditions of men, not in the Torah-law of YHVH. Yeshua is taking the Jews to task for placing more emphasis on man-made traditions rather than on the pure and firm Word of Elohim. This seems to be a chronic problem in many religious circles even in our day. Sunday worship replaced the seventh day Sabbath. Christmas and Easter replaced the appointed feasts of YHVH such as Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. And the list goes on.