The Historical Jesus and the Laws of Kashrut: Problems of Interpreting the Pericope of Mk. 7:14–19

This article deals with the problem of interpreting the Gospel text from the pericope of Mark 7:14-19. The harshness of the discourse has prompted some scholars to see in it a justification for anti-Semitism and the break of the ‘historical Jesus’ with Judaism, while others have tried to reconstruct a context where it would have sounded softer. We have looked briefly at how biblical scholars have interpreted these speeches as part of the search for the ‘historical Jesus’. We also conducted a critical analysis of the contemporary Aramaic theories of Maurice Casey and Thomas Kazen.