Acts Chapter 10 Full Review

I apologize that writing out all of my posts takes a little longer than expected; I also hope this lets you churn through the content I present and ask questions.  It also provides me the ability to document my proof texts better.

Acts Chapter 10 has three major elements to its internal story:

1. Peter’s Vision
2. Peter encounters Cornelius
3. Peter’s interprets the vision

It often helps to start at the end to help us provide interpretation along the path we are taking.

How Peter interprets the vision

“God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”[1]   The first thing to notice is that Peter does not assume the food laws are in question, only that God shows him not to call any person common or unclean.  The food laws and any abrogation are essential because standard Christian doctrine claims that the vision has done away with the food laws.  Calvin’s conclusion is classic eisegesis, or reading more into the text than the context, grammar, or historical, sociological inference can condone. 

He speaketh of meats; but this sentence must be extended unto all parts of the life. It is word for word, That which God hath made clean, do not thou make profane;  but the sense is, it is not for us to allow or condemn anything; but as we stand and fall by the judgment of God alone, so is he judge of all things (Romans 14:4). As touching meats, after the abrogating of the law, God pronounceth that they are all pure and clean.[2]

Calvin of course, is not alone in this view.  F.F. Bruce provides additional insight by calling on Mark 7:14-19 as further evidence.

14–16 This was all wrong, as Peter’s ancestral conscience told him. Unclean animals could not be used for food at all, and even “clean” animals had to be slaughtered with ritual propriety before their flesh could be eaten. Peter’s protest against the divine injunction took verbal shape much as the prophet Ezekiel’s protest had once taken when he was commanded to prepare and eat “abominable flesh” (Ezek. 4:14): “No, Lord; I have never eaten anything profane or unclean,” said Peter (with the implication: “and I am not going to begin now”). Back came the heavenly voice: “You must not regard as profane what God has cleansed.” Three times over this interchange took place; then the sheet went up with its contents and the vision dissolved.

The abolition of barriers was pressed home in the vision with special reference to Jewish food restrictions, but Peter soon learned that its range was much wider. Perhaps, as he thought about the vision, he remembered hearing similar words on an earlier occasion, though he had not then grasped their import. No doubt he was present when his Master, in a debate with Pharisees and scribes, insisted that it is not what goes into someone’s stomach that conveys defilement, but what comes out of one’s heart (Mark 7:14–19a). This was in effect an abrogation of ceremonial food laws and much else of the same character, but it was not until later, as a result of his experience on the roof at Joppa, that Peter appreciated this. It may well be to Peter that we owe the comment appended by the evangelist to Jesus’ pronouncement on this subject: “Thus he declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19b). [3]

We have to look at Mark 7:14 as F.F. Bruce suggests to understand what our Lord said.

We have to start with the context of the Marken quote.  It starts in 7:1-5:

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And 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?”[4]

The Pharisees were not questioning whether the disciples were eating unclean food but were defiling the food by eating with unpurified hands.  You may ask where does the concept of defiled hands defiling food come from?

According to Josephus, the Pharisees were the most strict or accurate interpreters of the law.[5]  The Pharisees are using the Traditions of the Elders as their proof texts.  These are not Biblical or Torah laws but doctrines that may differ between sects of Judaism. Mark provides some of the contexts in our passage.  Pharisees do not eat unless they wash their hands, especially if coming from the marketplace and they observe other traditions regarding cups, pots, copper vessels, and dining couches.  According to Neusner:

one primary mark of Pharisaic commitment was the observance of the laws of ritual purity outside of the Temple, where everyone kept them. Eating one’s secular, that is, unconsecrated food in a state of ritual purity, as if one were a Temple priest in the cult, was one of the two significations of party membership. Moreover, the agricultural laws, just like the purity rules, in the end affected table-fellowship, namely what one may eat.[6]

Remember the concept of ritual purity tied to the Temple.

What purity issues are the Pharisees concerned with (Mark gives us a clue speaking of the marketplace).  Second Temple Period (STP) Jews, even those living in Judea and Galilee, did not live in purely Jewish cities or towns. Since the Seleucid conquest of Judea, Jews were under to dominion of Greek or Roman rulers for close to 400 years.  One aspect of marketplaces in the Greco-Roman world was a common practice to offer a small sacrifice to bless the days selling.  To many Jews, this tainted the food as being offered to an idol. In addition, much of the meat sacrificed in Greco-Roman temples that was not consumed immediately was sold in the marketplace. (Victor Paul Furnish, “Food Offered to Idols,” ed. Mark Allan Powell, The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated) (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 294.) While there isn’t any specific Torah command against eating meat offered to a pagan idol, God certainly seems to frown on the practice.[7]

Let me take you back to a STP marketplace.  A pagan priest offers a small sacrifice to Zeus or Bacchus to bless the days selling. Many would consider all the food sold in the market as offered to an idol and tainted. In addition, there is likely meat being sold that was part of a pagan sacrifice earlier. Meat and vegetables are being chopped as part of the selling; small pieces of food drop to the ground and mix with the dust, which is kicked up as people walk by and lightly covers everyone in the market and even potentially the town. As a Pharisee you would consider this dust as defilement unless you did a ritual washing of your hands.  See the connection to the story in Mark?  How does Yeshua (Jesus) rebuke the Pharisees in Mark 7?  He criticizes them for elevating the traditions of men to the level of Torah, then he comments on how they use those same traditions to invalidate a Torah commandment. Finally, he explains that only what comes out of a person (his words and thoughts) can defile him; the food he eats is digested and deposited in the latrine. The final statement is a declaration that all food is clean.  Ponder this, what would a Jewish audience consider food in the STP?  The word used for clean in Greek is kartharizo is the same word used in the vision scene.

Let’s finish section 3.  Peter’s interpretation of the vision does not explicitly say anything about the food laws, only that God instructed him not to consider people as common or unclean.  These two words are crucial in understanding Acts 10 and Mark 7 in a STP Jewish context.

Section 2 – Peter’s encounter with Cornelius

In verse 17 we are told that Peter is perplexed about what the vision meant—you mean he didn’t immediately recognize that ham was on the menu now (sarcasm).  Some men come to the house to escort Peter and they tell him that Cornelius is a God-fearing man, well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, and in the opening verses, we are told he gave alms and prayed continually. Cornelius is not a normal Roman Centurian.  Cornelius is a God-fearer, a person who believes in the Jewish God but can’t convert to Judaism (it would be a death sentence for a Roman).  As a God-fearer in Judea is Cornelius eating Christmas Ham for dinner (obvious sarcasm).

Peter encounters him, detours him from praying to him and then announces that it is unlawful for a Jew to eat with or even enter a Gentile house.  Where is that in the Torah? It’s not there, it is an additional tradition of the elders that many Jews took upon themselves.  In the Talmud (Jewish 4^th-century texts that purport to detail earlier conversations), multiple sections deal with the question of whether a Jew can have table fellowship with a Gentile. The Talmud doesn’t provide answers, he provides the arguments so students can discuss come to a decision.  The ideas presented fall into two basic camps. The first camp is the most strict and conservative one.  It says that Gentile houses are defiled and all Gentile meat is defiled, a Jew cannot enter or eat with a Gentile.  The more liberal views say that table fellow can be held as long as the Jew takes precautions to make sure that any meat was not offered to an idol and no libation offering to Bacchus was made with wine being drunk. A suggestion was made that the Jew might bring his own meat and wine and his own servant to ensure no trespass is inadvertently done. Peter, in announcing that entering a Gentile house is unlawful, shows his conservative understanding of Halakah (or traditions to live by).

By giving his interpretation of his vision, Peter firmly tells us God told him to set aside his traditions of men and not consider any man common or unclean.

Section 1 – The Vision

In Peter’s vision God presents him with a sheet with many different types of animals on it and he is instructed to kill and eat.  Ok, the first thing is the words in Greek are Sacrifice and eat.  Sacrifice is a term only used in terms of Temple sacrifice and must be done with pull purity in place (I told you to remember Temple purity). Peter’s response is No Lord, I have never eaten anything unholy (common) or unclean (permitted to it, but ritually pure at this time).  Remember, common and unclean are important concepts in Jewish food laws.  Some animals (pork for example) are common—they are never to be eaten.  Others are normally clean (Kosher—you knew that term) but may be temporarily unclean for many reasons.

Two crucial items consider.  Peter’s answer is almost exactly the same as Ezekiel’s answer to God in Eze 4:12-15 where God instructs Ezekiel to bake cakes using human dung.  Cakes were baked in Ezekiel’s day by placing them on the coals to cook them. Placing the cakes on human dung would defile them, and Ezekiel cannot eat defiled food as a priest.  God does not rebuke Ezekiel for not eating but instead allows Ezekiel to use cow dung, which is permissible as fuel.

God does not rebuke Peter for not eating, instead he rebukes him for his understanding that there are unclean animals on the sheet (do not call common what I have made clean).  Once again, it is important to understand the difference between common and unclean.  Common can not be eaten. Unclean meats return to ritual purity at a later time, they always start Kosher.  How does this relate to Peter’s very conservative understanding of the traditions of the elders (Peter’s interpretation of the vision)?

I have a thought problem from the Talmud for you.  You have a ritually pure pitcher of water.  You pour it into a glass, that for some reason, is ritually impure at this moment.  The water in the glass is unclean (defiled).  What about the water in the pitcher?  Does the impurity of the glass flow up the stream of water and enters the pitcher?  If you are a conservative Pharisee the answer is yes.  If you’re liberal, the answer is no.

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[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 10:28.

[2] Calvin’s Commentary on Acts, 1585:322

[3] F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 205–206.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 7:1–5.

[5] Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 2:162

[6] Bradley Byron Blue, “Food Offered to Idols and Jewish Food Laws,” ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 307.

[7] compare Exodus 34:11-16.  ¹¹ “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹² Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³ You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim ¹⁴ (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶ and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.