Jesus' Eating Transgressions and Social Impropriety in the Gospel of Mark: A Social Scientific Approach

Abstract

Food events are an integral feature of the Markan narrative. Frequently they provide the occasion during which serious controversy erupts over certain, significant religious practices in Judean society. This article seeks to interpret these food incidences and the debate they generate from the perspective of social-scientific categories. Accordingly, the themes of food, eating, and household are set into the dynamic context of an anthropology of eating, honor/shame, and kinship/household. Eating and food in the world of antiquity furnish a menu in which to debate and redefine intensely held beliefs concerning holiness/purity, gender, and group identity, where honor and shame, their loss and gain, were at stake. Food events provide an opportunity for Mark to portray Jesus in fierce debate with the religious elite from which he emerges an honorable man but for which he is eventually executed. Eating and food are occasions for Mark to present Jesus, not only as popular hero, but also as subversive sage.

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