In Mark chapter 7 we don’t find Yeshua abrogating the Torah, or superceding previously stated commands with his own doctrine. Let us look at a few more verses from this passage. 18 And He said to them, “Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.) (NASB) Wait a minute! Isn't Yeshua declaring what we previously read in Leviticus as null and void? Isn't he saying that ALL food is clean? Surprisingly, he IS saying that ALL food is clean, something previously established in the Torah. Yet we commonly make our mistake when we assume that just because "all is clean,” that "all is (also) food.” This would be in direct violation of the text of Leviticus. Yeshua was discrediting the departure of direct biblical injunction in favor of man-made rules. He was not discrediting the Torah itself. On the contrary, in his own words of Matthew 5:17-20, he did not come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill it. "All is clean,” yet, "all is not food.” My cryptic statement above means that all that the Torah defines as food is ritually clean without having to submit one’s hands to a man-made ceremonial washing before consuming it. Conversely, everything (all) that we in the 21st century church ostensibly call food is not recognized by the Torah as such. Mark’s editorial statement “thus he declared all foods clean” must be understood within the context of Yeshua’s immediate didactic teaching, as well as within the Torah and the Judaisms of the 1st century: neither Yeshua, nor his talmidim, nor the Pharisees, and certainly the Torah, would ever consider everything that we moderns call food as food! We have failed to grasp the central elements of the passage if we walk away believing that “thus he declared all foods clean” means “there is now no longer a distinction between pork and lamb: both are food and meant to be eaten with thanksgiving.”