That isn’t just cryptic. (What is he talking about? Excrement?) It’s positively subversive. That’s why it’s only when Jesus and his followers go back into the house, away from the crowds, that he explains what he means. The purity rules on which Judaism thrived then and, for the most part, thrives still today are (he says) irrelevant. (Pause for sharp intake of breath from those of his hearers, i.e., most of them, who knew the stories of the Maccabean martyrs being tortured and killed for refusing to eat pork.) What goes into you from the outside merely passes through and out the other end.
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