5
Mark 7:1-23 and parallels introduce us to the next major conflict between Jesus
and certain Jewish authorities. This time the controversy involves issues of ritual purity
and the dietary laws. Even if Mark 7:19b ("In saying this, Jesus declared all foods
clean") reflects a Markan parenthesis, not fully understood under after the episode of
Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10, clearly Jesus is being portrayed here, at least
retrospectively, as having abrogated not merely various oral Laws of the Pharisees but
even one large category of the Mosaic Law.
12
Little wonder he received such criticism--
either Jesus speaks as only God can to revoke what previous Scripture had seemed to cite
as irrevocable or he has blasphemously transgressed fundamental Jewish boundaries.
We should not be surprised then, as we come to the last week of Christ's life, to
find the polemic at a fever pitch. In clearing the temple, Jesus refers to it as a "den of
robbers" (Mark 11:17 par.), perhaps best understood with C. K. Barrett as implying a
"nationalist stronghold."
13
Jesus' brief warnings against the hypocrisy of many scribes in
Mark 12:38-40 are narrated in considerably greater detail in Matthew 23 as a series of
passionate invectives against both Pharisees and scribes, who cannot discern "the more
important matters of the law" (v. 23) and who burden others with responsibilities they
themselves are not prepared to shoulder (v. 4). They exemplify the temptations of
religious leadership in every time and place--those who prefer outward show and the
attention of others to true godliness and who set up elaborate casuistries to justify their
self-centered attitudes and behavior.
14
A very different kind of opponent emerges in Jesus' Olivet Discourse (Mark 13
pars.). Verses 5-6 and 21-23 both predict that many will emerge as false Messiahs,
12
See esp. Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 228-30.
13
C. K. Barrett, "The House of Prayer and the Den of Thieves," in Jesus und Paulus, ed. E. Earle Ellis and
Erich Grässer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1975), 16.