This leads on to Peter’s mission. Significantly, the immediate problem for Peter is not over female uncleanliness or about circumcision but over unclean food.96 Law scarcely appears in this episode in Mark. That is why I have chosen it for this lecture. Law is there, but is scarcely noticed. Yet it is fundamental. Rudolf von Jhering emphasized this aspect of law in his Law in Daily Life.97 Law is all-persuasive: in mounting a bus, entering a supermarket, crossing the road, going to a football match. This episode in Mark is not quite ‘everyday life,’ but it is ‘daily life’. In Judaism law and religion are deeply intertwined. One may say that law is religion, religion is law. There is, of course, a switch of emphasis. In this episode the silent emphasis is on ritual, hence legal, purity. The man living in the tombs overshadows corpses, hence is unclean. Swine are emphasized, and they are always unclean. Uncleanliness is not mentioned nor need it be: it is part of everyday life, and all readers of Mark would understand. Significantly there is no indication that Jesus made himself unclean. (In the succeeding, combined, episode of the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus’ daughter, Jesus becomes unclean and that would be clear to everyone. But the social context is different: Jesus becomes unclean by contact with Jewish women. second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. 96 I have set out elsewhere my views on Jesus and food prohibitions: Alan Watson, Jesus, a Profile (Athens, GA, 1998), pp. 56 ff. 97 First edition, 1891 English translation, 1904. XI
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