GOP Gospel: On Defilement I
Mar. 11th, 2021 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinDay 19 of my Lent project. For background, please read this.
A reading from the Gospel according to the GOP:
*Sirach 13:1 – Sirach (a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus) is a book in the Apocrypha, a collection of religious writings whose inclusion in the Bible has been disputed practically from the beginning. They date from the 'silent' period between the Prophets and Jesus, and (as far as I know) are generally regarded as interesting but not necessarily divinely inspired. The chapter preceding this famous line is all about only helping the righteous and spurning the unrighteous, an opinion which Republican Jesus might be expected to hold, but which Biblical Jesus blatantly disregards. I've blended the King James Version and NRSV for the wording of the quote here.
Matthew 15:10-20
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?" He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit." But Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us." Then he said, "Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, formnication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."
Some background on Jewish hygiene laws is probably valuable here. The early books of the Hebrew Bible contain great lists of rules around cleanliness and uncleanliness; looked at from a modern perspective, a lot of these make sense from a health and safety perspective, especially for an occasionally nomadic society living in a desert, millennia before refrigeration and antibiotics. There are rules around what you can and can't eat – the banning of pork being the most famous – as well as forbidding unsanitary practices, like anal sex, which is a great way to get an E. coli infection. Certain objects, like corpses and menstruating women, were also taboo. And, relevant to this passage, you had to wash your hands thoroughly before eating, and wash the food thoroughly before cooking it. Before germ theory, and a more scientific understanding of the forces at play, these rules separated the 'clean' from the 'unclean': as long as you stuck to the clean, you were fine; if you somehow became unclean, either deliberately or by accident, you were ostracised from society until you underwent the obligatory cleansing process for your particular transgression and were allowed back in. More on this tomorrow...
A reading from the Gospel according to the GOP:
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: If you wish to remain pure and holy before the Lord, do not associate with ungodliness. For as it is written: 'He who touches pitch shall be defiled.'* Rather, remove yourself from sinners and from the objects of sin, so that your reputation is not tarnished by association with them, for if you allow the unclean into your life, you also will be unclean. Garbage in, garbage out: your Father in heaven does not want you to be garbage."
*Sirach 13:1 – Sirach (a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus) is a book in the Apocrypha, a collection of religious writings whose inclusion in the Bible has been disputed practically from the beginning. They date from the 'silent' period between the Prophets and Jesus, and (as far as I know) are generally regarded as interesting but not necessarily divinely inspired. The chapter preceding this famous line is all about only helping the righteous and spurning the unrighteous, an opinion which Republican Jesus might be expected to hold, but which Biblical Jesus blatantly disregards. I've blended the King James Version and NRSV for the wording of the quote here.
Matthew 15:10-20
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?" He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit." But Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us." Then he said, "Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, formnication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."
Some background on Jewish hygiene laws is probably valuable here. The early books of the Hebrew Bible contain great lists of rules around cleanliness and uncleanliness; looked at from a modern perspective, a lot of these make sense from a health and safety perspective, especially for an occasionally nomadic society living in a desert, millennia before refrigeration and antibiotics. There are rules around what you can and can't eat – the banning of pork being the most famous – as well as forbidding unsanitary practices, like anal sex, which is a great way to get an E. coli infection. Certain objects, like corpses and menstruating women, were also taboo. And, relevant to this passage, you had to wash your hands thoroughly before eating, and wash the food thoroughly before cooking it. Before germ theory, and a more scientific understanding of the forces at play, these rules separated the 'clean' from the 'unclean': as long as you stuck to the clean, you were fine; if you somehow became unclean, either deliberately or by accident, you were ostracised from society until you underwent the obligatory cleansing process for your particular transgression and were allowed back in. More on this tomorrow...
