Sanctification in the Jesus Tradition 169 way, it would still have been a great challenge to all who adhered to the entire Torah (43). “Indeed, what is dismissed now as being of lesser importance is more clearly set out in the Law than what is here regarded as essential!” (44). Even if one follows this strand of interpretation, therefore, the saying in Mark 7,15 would have been a total novelty in contemporary Judaism. As far as Mark’s understanding is concerned, he points out clearly, that he did not understand the saying in this way (7,19c), and that in his day it was interpreted as an abrogation of the purity Torah in general (45). According to S. M. Bryan Jesus’ saying initially referred to “food with second decree impurity”, i.e., food that in itself was pure but which had incurred impurity by contact with impure things, not to food that was impure in itself (like unclean animals) (i.e. to toharot over against kashrut) (46). Bryan holds that if one knew Jesus’ saying in Mark 7,15 as well as “the severely constricted significance of impurity in [his] message”, it was no big step to the early church’s accepting the consumption of food that was impure in itself (cf. Acts 10,14.15.28; 11,8-9; Rom 14,14) (47). However, if we believe that the early church was capable of taking such a step, we should at least consider whether it is not even more likely that Jesus himself took it. He taught with such authority that “the people were astonished” (Mark 1,22). It is much more difficult to imagine that the church would have taken a saying of Jesus which referred merely to human rules (namely the washing of hands) and turned it into a refutation of important commandments of the Torah. Certainly, Mark had no reason to invent a saying to this effect, since he even “has to explain the Jewish customs about —————— say with any confidence that Jesus called for a total disregard for the laws of clean and unclean. But he did indicate, in typically prophetic fashion, that moral impurity should be regarded as more serious than ritual impurity”. (43) Cf. M.D. HOOKER, The Gospel According to St Mark (BNTC; London 1991) 179. There is, of course, a discussion on the “weightier things” in Rabbinc Judaism (cf. CASEY, An Aramaic Approach, 74-75). But it did not generally downgrade ritual law over against ethical law in the way Mark 7,15 does. In Jesus’s day the purity Torah was a major concern to all of the main Jewish groupings. (44) HOOKER, Mark, 179. (45) Cf. HOOKER, Mark, 179. (46) S.M. BRYAN, Jesus and Israel’s Traditions of Judgement and Restoration (MSSNTS 117; Cambridge 2002) 165; cf. BOCKMUEHL, Jewish Law, 11. (47) BRYAN, Jesus, 168. According to BRYAN, “such a conclusion would not have been driven by the belief that Jesus had revoked the laws against forbidden meats, but that such laws had been eschatologically obviated”.