Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 7

The devout must hope Mark was wrong about Jesus here

 
If the Judeo-Christian god truly had the welfare of humanity at the center of attention, it’s hard to understand why he/she/it didn’t include a major book in the Bible about health and hygiene. This missing book could have included detailed information about germs, exactly why we get sick, and ways to stay healthy and fit. Was this god satisfied that it would take thousands of years for humans to discover the realities of disease? In the meantime, we suffer, so what? So much of the Bible is useless nonsense: what harm would it have done to include a major book explaining the realities of human biology and contagion?

 
Wash your hands before eating….or not. 
 
I pose this question because of verses 1-23 in the 7^th chapter of Mark, in which we find Jesus and religious authorities in a heated exchange about washing hands before eating. “So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?’” (v. 5) Jesus responds in verses 14-15: “Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’” Later he scolds the disciples for being dense: “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (vv. 18-19)
 
This is not to suggest that the religious authorities had figured out germs and sources of infection, but they may have noticed a connection between eating with dirty hands—and from unwashed dishes—and getting sick. Tim Sledge discusses the problem of the Jesus-script in Mark 7 in a chapter titled, The Germ Warfare Problem, in his book, Four Disturbing Questions with One Simple Answer: Breaking the Spell of Christian Belief:
 
“Not only did Jesus fail to mention germs, but he steered his listeners in the wrong direction when he told them not to worry about washing their hands.” (p. 41) 
 
We can’t fault the Jesus-script about the sources of moral defilement: “And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’” (vv. 20-23)
 
Tim Sledge acknowledges this, but presses the point: “Jesus was focused on the importance of inner spiritual change over our religious ceremony. But wouldn’t this have been a great time to explain that they should wash their hands for health purposes, a good time to tell people about germs, a good time to talk about why they should be careful where they get their drinking water, along with a few tips about sewage disposal?” (p. 42)
 
“God had been watching silently for thousands of years by the time Jesus came along. It was late in the game, but couldn’t the son of God—the one described as a Great Physician—have made a greater contribution to human health than healing a few people while he was on earth?” (p. 46)
 
We can suspect that Jesus—or rather, Mark the supposedly divinely-inspired creator of the Jesus-script—dropped the ball on this very important issue impacting human health and well-being. 
 
Was Jesus’ message for everyone…or just a few, the lost sheep of Israel?
 
In Matthew 10 we find this Jesus-script, instructions addressed to his disciples: 

“Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” (vv. 5-7) 
 
Apparently this mindset guided the Jesus-script created by Mark as well. In Mark 7:24-30 we read about Jesus’ encounter with a gentile, a Syrophoenician woman. She sought him out to beg him to cure her daughter, who was possessed by a demon. He couldn’t be bothered. In fact, when Matthew copied this story, his Jesus was more uncaring: “But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”  (Matthew 15:23-24)
 
Back to Mark—and Jesus is even nasty: “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” (vv. 27-28) This scolding worked: Jesus changed his mind, and assured her that her daughter was no longer possessed by a demon—and as soon as she arrived home she saw that the demon was gone. 
 
How can the devout who read this story be happy with Jesus’ arrogance in responding to this woman? And aren’t we now in the realm of magical thinking, indeed superstition? Demons were an explanation for mental illness or weird behavior. We know better today. Maybe some of the devout are in awe that Jesus had remote control over demons. But most of the devout surely would hope that Mark has made a mistake here; this cannot be an authentic story about their beloved Jesus.  
 
The unknown author who added an ending to Mark’s gospel—we don’t even know who wrote the gospel—overruled the don’t-go-to-the-Gentiles message. This is the Jesus-script found at Mark 16:15: “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.’” 
 
Anyone who reads the gospels carefully, critically, can spot these discrepancies.
 
Healing a severely handicapped man by touch.
 
The final seven verses of Mark 7 depict Jesus’ encounter with a man who was deaf, and “had an impediment in speech.” Those who brought him to Jesus begged that “he lay his hands on him.” Jesus stuck his fingers in the man’s ears, and “spat and touched his tongue.” Does this mean that Jesus put his own spit on the guy’s tongue? His holy spit worked? Mark wanted to assure his readers that their holy hero had a magic touch. Jesus’ fingers could do the trick. The gullible folks back then wanted to believe that this was a true story, and apparently the same applies to far too many gullible people today. They’re sure their wonderful Jesus is present in the world today. If that’s the case, why doesn’t Jesus work this magic for deaf people every day, throughout the world? 
 
This is another example of Mark indulging in the use of miracle/magic folklore so common at the time. His Jesus had to be as wonderful as other holy heroes of the ancient world. 
 
As we’ve seen in the previous articles in this series, the author of Mark’s gospel does not qualify as a historian. His agenda was to promote the break-away Jewish sect that idolized Jesus. He never mentions his sources, so it’s likely that—writing about forty years after the death of Jesus (assuming that Jesus wasn’t an invented holy hero)—he created stories from his imagination, fueled by the mythologies and folklore of his time. 
 
For more on the impossibility of taking Mark’s gospel as history, see Richard Carrier’s July 2024 article, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark.
 
 
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
·      Guessing About God (2023),
·   Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available. 
·      Everything You Need to Know About Prayer But May Not Want to Admit (2025)
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.