Is It Unchristian to Wash Your Hands for Dinner?

Traduttore, Traditore is an Italian saying that means that a translators are traitors, because translations easily involve misrepresentations. They are sometimes unavoidable, because there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the words in two languages. The meanings and connotations of words in different languages overlap, they do not coincide, and we see that in Mark 7.

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? He said to them, Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.
—Mark 7:1-8, NRSV

Translating Wash in English and Greek

English-language translations of the New Testament do not distinguish between the two meanings of βαπτίσωμα (mikvah bath and Christian baptism), which is a form of washing. They sometimes translate βαπτίζω (ceremonial cleaning) as if it were λούω (hygienic washing)—which is a possible translation, but in this case, it refers to a religious rite, and that causes confusion in Mark 7, especially among people who misunderstand mikvah baths as the process for making things kosher. Some people who preach on this sermon go by the translation and end up telling children they don’t have to wash their hands before dinner, which can cause problems.

1 Peter 3:31 makes it clear that βαπτίσωμα as part of a church rite does not refer to hygienic washing:

And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience
1 Peter 3:21 NRSV

This does not mean that the water part of baptism is unnecessary, because the ancient church was unanimous in considering water an essential part of baptism. Rather, it means that baptism as the church rite is not a method of getting dirt off your body.

Therefore, we cannot presume that βαπτίσωμα refers to hygienic washing in Mark 7:1-8.

Mikvah Baths

Βαπτίσωμα (baptism), standing alone, is the New Testament term for a mikvah bath. John the Baptist was preaching a Jewish revival in which the participants took mikvah baths. Gentile converts to Judaism are required to take a mikvah bath as part of the conversion process, but Jews can take mikvah baths as often as they want. There are facilities for mikvah baths in most major cities, and in some cases, it is possible to schedule a mikvah bath online.

See also: Baptism

What’s the Problem with Mark 7:1-8?

Now we can understand what was not going on in Mark 7:1-8

The English translation says that the Pharisees always washed their cups, pots, kettles, food, and hands before meals, and they criticized Jesus’ disciples for not doing this. In this passage, Jesus calls this a human tradition, which makes us think that the kosher laws in the Torah are somehow misplaced human tradition.

The confusion comes from the fact that the Greek word βαπτίσωμα overlaps the English words baptism and washing. In fact, the Pharisees were baptizing, not washing, their cups, pots, kettles, food, and hands. They were giving everything a mikvah bath, which was a human tradition not required by the Torah.

Giving mikvah baths to kitchen equipment, food, and hands isn’t required and has no effect. It doesn’t make anything kosher that was not already kosher. Jesus was calling out the Pharisees because their unnecessary and obsessive culinary mikvah baths were just showy, pointless, and empty rituals whose sole purpose was to impress lay people with their piety. Requiring lay people to do it imposed a burden on them.

Jesus did not rebuke the Pharisaic rabbis for obeying the kosher laws, nor was He criticizing them for hygienic practices. He was rebuking them for misguided excessive piety, and, at the same time, He was teaching Torah to lay people who might have been taken in.

Please wash your hands before dinner, but you don’t need to baptize your dinnerware.