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Tosefta Oholot

Tosefta

How wide must the crack be? Beit Hillel says as long as it is filled by a plumb line, and Rabbi Yosi says, quoting Beit Hillel, it must be a handbreadth wide. Rabbi said, 'I am astonished if Rabbi Yosi said it must be a handbreadth. He only said this regarding an olive-sized portion of a corpse.' If the impurity is inside and the vessels are outside, even if the crack is only filled by a plumb line, it serves as a barrier. A se'ah measure overturned on the mouth of a barrel, or two domes placed one on top of the other, and a stone placed on top of the dome, bring impurity. A se'ah measure placed upright, a barrel placed upright, an inflated wineskin placed upright, a se'ah full of straw, a cushion full of feathers, or clothing full of handkerchiefs, two stones one on top of the other, or a dome on top of a stone, do not bring impurity. A dog that ate the flesh of a corpse and entered a house does not make the house impure, because anything swallowed by a person, an animal, a beast, or birds is pure.⁠ But if it vomits, the house becomes impure. If a corpse remains in the intestines until the living being survives for three days, from moment to moment, then it is considered alive. In the case of birds and fish, it is immediate. Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira says, for fish it is immediate, but for birds, it is from moment to moment. Rabbi Eliezer says in the name of Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira, both are from moment to moment.

Texts in conversation

Compare Mark 7:18 and Tosefta Oholot 12:3

New Testament · Rabbinic

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Summary

In Mark, Jesus contrasts food that enters the body and actions that come out of the body, arguing that food cannot cause impurity. This resembles Rabbinic debates in Tosefta Oholot which also discuss the boundaries of impurity and permitted foods.

Passages

Mark 7:18

New Testament
17 He said to them, “Are you so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? 18 For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.” (This means all foods are clean.) 19 He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him.
60–75 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Mark

Tosefta Oholot 12:3

Rabbinic · Tosefta
A se'ah measure overturned on the mouth of a barrel, or two domes placed one on top of the other, and a stone placed on top of the dome, bring impurity. A se'ah measure placed upright, a barrel placed upright, an inflated wineskin placed upright, a se'ah full of straw, a cushion full of feathers, or clothing full of handkerchiefs, two stones one on top of the other, or a dome on top of a stone, do not bring impurity. A dog that ate the flesh of a corpse and entered a house does not make the house impure, because anything swallowed by a person, an animal, a beast, or birds is pure. But if it vomits, the house becomes impure.
190–230 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Tosefta Oholot

References

"... The reasoning of Galen and Aristotle, I think, is similar to the implicit reasoning of Mark’s Jesus in Mark 7:18–19. For Galen and Aristotle, the fact that food entering the body is qualitatively different from excrement that comes out of the body entails that the stomach enacts a qualitative change. For Mark’s Jesus, the fact that food entering the body – even if ritually contaminated by defiled hands – comes out of the body as ritually undefilable excrement entails that the stomach has a purifying effect on anything that enters it. We see precisely this kind of reasoning about purity, excrement, and the stomach in texts from the Tosefta. Tosefta Miqvaʾot 7:8–9 provides the following ruling ... A similar pattern of reasoning emerges in Tosefta Oholot 12:3 ... In the first passage, the corpse and impure liquids are made pure because, unlike something vomited up, that which is digested is ‘purified in the body’. Like Jesus’ argument, this view of the stomach arises from the assumption that excrement is impervious to impurity. Note also how the claim (appearing in both passages) that ‘everything that is swallowed by a human … is pure’ bears a striking resemblance to my proposed interpretation – the human body purifies any ingested food from ritual impurity ..."
Logan Williams, “The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus’ Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19,” NTS 70 (2024): 371–391.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Mark 7:18 and Tosefta Oholot 12:3

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