Quantifiers and determiners in Mark 7:19 (and Rom 11:26 and 1 Tim 2:4)

Noun types and how they combine with πᾶς and ὁ

In sections 18.4.3.2 and 19.3.3.2, we noted that the basic syntactic pattern with πᾶς is that the singular is found without the article and the plural is found with the article. This typical pattern is reflected in the difference between πᾶν δένδρον (Matt 3:10; 7:17, 19; Luke 3:9; Rev 7:1; 9:4) and πᾶντα τὰ δένδρα (Luke 21:29). As is often the case, however, the picture becomes more complex when the full range of data is considered. Sometimes a singular noun is found with the article (e.g. πᾶσα ἡ πόλις in Matt 21:10), and a plural noun may be found without the article (e.g. πάντες ἐργάται in Luke 13:27).

How do we explain this? We begin with the assumption that the syntactic contrasts we find are not random – there is a reason why πᾶς has the distribution it has (see Semantics A). Because πᾶς combines with a noun, we should also assume that it is the kind of noun that causes the variation we see. More concretely, there is some property or feature of πόλις that allows it, and not δένδρον, to be used with the article with singular πᾶς. Likewise, there is a semantic reason why ἐργάται can be used without the article with plural πᾶς. If we can determine how πᾶς combines with different kinds of nouns (and what it is referring to with those nouns), we can then apply these insights to the specific noun phrase πᾶντα τὰ βρώματα.

The “normal” pattern we have noted applies to count nouns that are not decomposable into smaller parts (this has been called “atomic units”). By this, we mean that no part of the thing being referred to can be broken down into a smaller part and can still be called that thing. For example, the word tree refers to something with parts (bark, leaves, roots, branches, etc.), but none of those parts can, in and of themselves, be called tree. Hence, the noun δένδρον refers to a thing that can be counted, and it cannot be decomposed into smaller units. Other nouns can be decomposed into smaller units, and this is the feature that allows them to be used with πᾶς and the article in the singular. These kinds of nouns are called collective nouns, since they refer to a group of individuals. The word πόλις ‘city’ falls into this category, particularly when it refers to the people in the city. Because a plurality of entities is being referred to, collective nouns are very similar to plurals, and like plurals, they normally take the article with them when they combine with πᾶς. Of the 84 occurrences of sg πᾶς plus a definite noun in the NT, 51 fall into this category. The remaining nouns fall into the following categories:

(216) Mass 2 καὶ συνάξω ἐκεῖ πάντα τὸν σῖτον (Luke 12:18)

And I will gather there all the grain

(217) Stative/abstract property 3

• οὐδὲ Σολομὼν ἐν πάσῃ τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ περιεβάλετο ὡς ἓν τούτων
• Nor was Solomon in all his glory dressed like one of these (Matt 6:29)
• (218) Spatial 4
• ὡς ἐγένετο λιμὸς μέγας ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν
• When a great famine happened over all the land (Luke 4:25)

None of these noun categories refer to countable entities. Thus, the feature that allows them to be used in this syntactic construction is [-count]. In order to demonstrate some of the complexities of the issues (and to exemplify how to do linguistic analysis), let us look more closely at how οἶκος combines with πᾶς. In some instances, οἶκος has the [+count] feature:

• (219) Instance of οἶκος ‘building’ as [+count]
• πας γὰρ οἶ κος κατασκευάζεται ὑπό τινος (Heb 3:4)
• For every house is constructed by someone

In this example, the physical entity of a house is being referred to, which does not have individual members. This instance, then, is not collective, and it combines with πᾶς as expected in the sg, namely without the article.

Because one sense of οἶκος is [+count] does not mean that every sense is. Indeed, we might expect the ‘household’ sense to be collective and so to have the article with πᾶς. This prediction is borne out:

(220) Instance of οἶκος ‘household’ as [+coll]

• σωθήσῃ σὺ καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκός σου (Acts 11:14)
• You and your whole household will be saved

In the above example, the article specifies that we should think of οἶκος as referring to a collective entity, i.e. an entity composed of individual atomic units. However, a ‘household’ is also potentially a countable entity, since there can be multiple households; thus, this sense would be [+count] and [+coll]. The use of the article with οἶκος treats the noun primarily as a collective and makes reference to the noun’s individual atomic units. To refer to multiple households without reference to the collective nature of each individual household, we would expect οἶκος without the article. This brings us to another use of οἶκος in πᾶς οἶκος Ἰσραήλ:

• (221) οἶκος as ‘nation’ without article
• πᾶς οἶκος Ἰσραήλ (Acts 2:36)
• All the house of Israel

The vast majority of English translations interpret Acts 2:36 as referring to ‘all the house of Israel’ (ESV, NASB, NET, etc.), and a minority translate it as referring to all people in Israel (‘all Israel’ for NIV and ‘everyone in Israel’ for NLT). These translations suggest a meaning of οἶκος that directly refers to a nation where ‘Israel’ specifies what that nation is. This would be another sense of οἶκος as both [+coll] and [+count], but it would differ from ‘household’ in that it refers to a larger group, i.e. an entire nation. Without the article, we would expect a meaning that refers to the whole nation but does not make reference to each individual within Israel (against NLT). Indeed, when the article is used in the phrase πᾶς ὁ οἶκος Ἰσραήλ, reference does seem to be made to the individual members of the nation of Israel:

• (222) οἶκος as ‘nation’ with article
• οἱ ἀδελφοὶ ὑμῶν, πᾶς ὁ οἶκος Ἰσραήλ, κλαύσονται τὸν ἐμπυρισμόν (Lev 10:6)
• Your brothers, everyone of the house of Israel, will mourn the burning

In the above example, ‘your brothers’ refers to individuals, so πᾶς ὁ οἶκος Ἰσραήλ should likewise be understood as referring to the individuals of which the nation of Israel is composed. It is these individuals who will mourn. Thus, the noun οἶκος conforms to the pattern we expect if we account for the meaning in the context as well as the particular sense activated. For each noun, we must carefully determine the features of the relevant sense and its features (whether count, collective, or something else) as well as how that sense is being used (as referring to its parts or to each plural entity as a whole). Only this careful attention to detail allows us to explain the data we see.

Finally, there is a class of plural nouns that may also lack the article with πᾶς, specifically those that refer to people. There are 23 instances of this in the NT, and 21 of them unambiguously refer to people (though different nouns are used). The most common noun is ἄνθρωπος which occurs 16 times; this is illustrated in (223):

(223) Animate pl anarthrous noun with πᾶς 6

• καὶ οὕτως εἰς παντας ἀνθρωπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν (Rom 5:12)
• And thus death came to all people σκαλοι (1 Cor 12:29), δυνάμεις (1 Cor 12:29) and ἄγγελοι (Heb 1:6). The only noun that would not fall into this category is καταλαλιά ‘slander’ in 1 Pet 2:1. Interestingly, Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest complete copy of the NT, has the singular πασαν καταλαλιαν rather than the plural. Alternatively, if καταλαλιάν ‘slander’ should rather be read as κατάλαλαν ‘slanderer’ (without the ι), it would again conform to our rule, since the noun would refer to a person. If either of these textual options are correct, then all examples would conform to the pattern we have suggested: plural nouns referring to people do not need the article with πᾶς.

To give a fully satisfying explanation for both singular articular nouns with πᾶς as well as plural anarthrous nouns with πᾶς, we would want to connect the semantics of the specific types of nouns with the meaning of the article. In other words, we would want to answer the following question: what is it about the meaning of the article that allows it to be used in one way with singular πᾶς and [+count] nouns and another way with [-count] nouns? The same question would apply to plural πᾶς and [+/-animate] nouns. I leave these questions for further research (or as a dissertation topic for someone else).

As a segue into Mark 7:19, let us look more closely at how quantifiers in general make reference to a particular set of entities. In some contexts, the quantifier and the noun refer to every individual, and in other contexts, they cannot:

(224) Reference to every individual

πάντας ἀνθρώπους

And in this way death spread to every human

• (225) Reference to every kind
• καὶ θεῷ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐναντίων (1 Thess 2:15)
• And they are not pleasing to God and are opposed to all people

In Rom 5:12, the set of individuals being referred to includes every individual who dies. In the context, Paul is claiming that death is something that comes to every single individual. This does not mean that the phrase πάντες ἄνθρωποι need always refer to every individual. For example, it cannot mean every individual in 1 Thess 2:15 where the Jews are said to be opposed to πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις. When read in context, we naturally exclude the Jews themselves from πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις meaning we interpret it as ‘all other people.’ In this kind of context, it is the kind of person that matters more than the specific individual. Paul’s point is not that Jews are opposed to every single individual, but that they as a people are opposed to different kinds of people outside of their own. This demonstrates that we can have the same word ἄνθρωπος, but one instance of it may refer to individuals while another instance may refer to kinds. If you recall from Semantics A, this is a typical distinction for nouns where the noun may be used to refer to a kind (e.g. Emmett fears lions) or an individual (e.g. Emmett fears a lion). Kind references are particularly common with the bare plural (i.e. the plural without the article), but as you might have guessed by now, there are a myriad of issues that need to be taken into consideration when trying to determine the set of individuals or kinds a quantifier is referring to in a given passage.

Analyzing πᾶς in Mark 7:19

The preceding discussion has set the stage for how we will go about analyzing Mark 7:19. We cannot delve into all the exegetical issues, but we want to at least answer the simple question – what is being referred to in the phrase πάντα τὰ βρώματα?

(226) ὅτι οὐκ εἰσπορεύεται αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν καρδίαν ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν καὶ εἰς τὸν ἀφεδρῶνα ἐκπορεύεται καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα 7

There are three issues with the participial clause καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα that we find in Mark 7:19. In most modern English translations, the agent of the verb καθαρίζω is supplied with ‘Jesus’ or ‘he’ (referring to Jesus), and the verb is taken to mean ‘declare something clean’ rather than ‘physically/cultically clean something.’ Thus, the phrase is a parenthetical addition from Mark where he explains the conclusion of Jesus’ statement. Jesus’ statement, then, would end at ἐκπορεύεται. The KJV and a minority of modern translations (e.g. ISV, WEB, NHEB) assume that Jesus’ statement continues to the end of the verse, and the agent of the verbal participle καθαρίζων is the one who ingests the food. What makes this phrase difficult is that no agent is given, so it must be supplied from an available agent in the context. As the translations suggest, the two available agents are either Jesus or the person Jesus is referring to (the one ingesting things). In both cases, the reader must infer who the agent is. In terms of which is more likely grammatically, I follow Williams’ (2024) suggestion that it is the person who Jesus was speaking about, that is, the ἄνθρωπος in 7:18, since he was just referred to as a pronoun and is the topic of discussion (or his bowel movements are the topic of discussion). For Mark to switch the topic to what Jesus is doing with his statement with no overt indication of such a shift would be opaque at best.

The second related issue is the meaning of the verb καθαρίζω. If Jesus is the implied agent, the ‘cleansing’ involved cannot be physical. Jesus would have to be understood as declaring something to be clean. In contrast, if the person ingesting things is the implied agent, the cleansing is physical. By ingesting and expelling something, it is cleansed. Again, this is the topic of what Jesus is talking about. There is no discussion of what foods can or cannot be eaten, but there is a discussion of what happens to food when it is eaten. On a par, it would seem best to take καθαρίζων as taking the person Jesus is talking about as the implied agent with the meaning of ‘to make physically/cultically clean.’

This brings us to the third issue, which is the focus in this section and which, I suggest, is the key to interpreting the passage correctly: to what does πάντα τὰ βρώματα refer? Translating this phrase as ‘all foods’ strongly prefers a kind reading in English where all different kinds of foods are referred to. Taken out of context (which is, in many ways, the effect of the parentheses added in English translations), the kinds of food referred to would include every kind imaginable. Thus, not only would kosher foods be clean, but shellfish and pork would now be declared clean by Jesus. If πάντα τὰ βρώματα refers to every single different kind of food, this is almost the inevitable conclusion, even if the agent of καθαρίζων is the person ingesting the food and not Jesus. The greatest difficulty with reading πάντα τὰ βρώματα in this way is the context, which should give us the set of ‘foods’ being referred to. Nowhere does Mark or Jesus talk about different kinds of

10 An alternative to this would be to say that unclean foods would indeed become clean after ingestion, but they still should not be eaten because they would violate a different law, namely kosher laws. As Williams (2024) discusses at length, there is indeed a distinction between dietary laws and purity laws. However, reading the text like this where πάντα τὰ βρώματα refers to any kind of food without distinction would have to be discussing a hypothetical scenario. The logic would be that if unkosher foods could be eaten (though they cannot be for other reasons), they would not cause impurity. This is a possibility, but as we will suggest below, it is best to read πάντα τὰ βρώματα as referring to a limited set of foods to begin with.

food in this sense. All that is discussed is food that would be eaten with washed hands and food that would be eaten with unwashed hands (7:2–5, cf. Matt 15:20).

To what, then, does πάντα τὰ βρώματα refer? To answer this question, we first need to analyze βρῶμα, specifically answering the question of how the singular and plural of βρῶμα are used. In English, ‘food’ is a mass noun that is normally not found in the plural. When it is used in the plural, it will often receive a kind interpretation, so a sentence like These foods are good for you could not be said of three different Granny Smith apples, but it could be said of an apple, orange, and banana. Does Greek βρῶμα, usually glossed as ‘food’, behave the same way?

A preliminary look at the data suggests that βρῶμα is not a mass noun like food is a mass noun. Of the 89 occurrences of βρῶμα in the LXX and NT, 68 are found in the plural. To compare to English food, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) has 230,238 occurrences of food and only 32,585 occurrences of foods in a corpus of over 1 billion words. In other words, while βρῶμα is found 76.4% of the time in the plural, food is only found 12.4% of the time in the plural in the corpora under discussion. When we look at English translations of the LXX/NT like the Lexham English Septuagint (LES) and NIV, we find similar results. A search in Logos 10 finds 61 occurrences of singular food translating βρῶμα and only 5 occurrences of foods .¹¹ Turning to the Hebrew data, we find similar results. The most common word βρῶμα translates in the Hebrew Bible is ‘ ֹאֶֹכֶל food.’ It is found 43 times in the Hebrew Bible, and there is not a single occurrence in the plural, despite the many instances of plural βρῶμα to translate the singular .ֹאֶֹכֶל

There are several different ways this data could be interpreted. At a fundamental level, there seems to be more kinds of contexts where the Greek plural morpheme can combine with βρῶμα than the English plural morpheme can combine with food. In principle, there could be two different explanations for this (or a combination of the two): the Greek plural might have a broader range of interpretation than the English or Hebrew plural, or the noun βρῶμα is not really mass at all, at least under some senses of the word. There is, in fact, reason to believe that the Greek plural does combine differently with mass nouns than the English plural. The Modern Greek plural can be used with mass nouns to indicate a large quantity of something (Alexiadou 2011), and some examples of βρώματα seem to conform to this pattern:

• (227) Possible example of βρώματα referring to a large quantity of something
• καὶ ἰδοὺ τοῖς ἐργαζομένοις τοῖς κόπτουσιν ξύλα εἰς βρώματα δέδωκα σῖτον εἰς δόματα τοῖς παισίν σου κόρων εἴκοσι χιλιάδας καὶ κριθῶν κόρων εἴκοσι χιλιάδας (2 Chr 2:9)
• And behold to the workers who cut wood I have given for food 20,000 koros of wheat (as gifts to your servants) and 20,000 koros of barley
• (228) εἰ μήτι πορευθέντες ἡμεῖς ἀγοράσωμεν εἰς πάντα τὸν λαὸν τοῦτον βρώματα. (Luke 9:13) Unless we were to go buy food for all this people

In both examples, the context demands a large quantity of food, and the issue of multiple kinds of foods is irrelevant. In 2 Chr 2:9, both wheat and barley are given in huge quantities to the workers. While βρώματα could be used to refer to the two different kinds of grains, it seems more likely in this context (which explicitly mentions a large quantity) that βρώματα refers to the large amount of food given. In Luke 9:3, the disciples are complaining to Jesus that there is no way for them to buy food for the large number of people, namely the crowd of 5,000 men plus women and children. It is not as if the disciples are saying they could not buy all the different kinds of foods necessary for feeding the crowd; they are saying they could not buy the amount of food necessary.

This discussion suggests that the Greek plural is indeed different from the English plural, which lacks these kinds of readings with mass nouns. As we mentioned above, foods is most naturally interpreted as a reference to multiple kinds. Although not limited to this interpretation, the kind reading is also available with βρώματα in Greek.

• (229) ἐν πολλοῖς γὰρ βρώμασιν ἔσται νόσος (Sir 37:30)
• For in many foods there will be illness
• (230) κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων, ἃ ὁ θεὸς ἔκτισεν εἰς μετάλημψιν μετὰ εὐχαριστίας τοῖς πιστοῖς (1 Tim 4:3)
• Those who forbid people to marry and to abstain from foods, which God created for the faithful to be received with thanksgiving

In Sir 37:30, βρώμασιν is parallel to ἐδεσμάτων ‘delicacies’ in the previous verse. Thus, it is different kinds of foods, particularly different kinds of delicacies, that are being spoken of. In 1 Tim 4:3, it is not as if some people forbid food altogether, but there are certain kinds of foods that are forbidden. Paul views this as wrong because even those forbidden foods were created by God to be received with thanksgiving.

The three points we have established are that 1) βρώματα is not the same as foods, but 2) the two can both be used in reference to kinds, and 3) βρώματα has other readings that foods lacks. This brings up the all-important question of whether we have a kind reading in Mark 7:19 or not. First, the syntactic data reveals a near-even split between the kind reading and the quantity reading with πᾶς. In the 8 occurrences of πᾶς combining with βρῶμα outside of Mark 7:19, the kind reading is found in 5 instances (Gen 6:21; Lev 11:34; Ps 106:18; Sir 36:18; Hag 2:12), and the large quantity reading is found in 3 (Gen 14:11; 41:35, 48).13 (This discussion is not meant to imply that these are the only two available readings, but they are the only ones found in our corpus with πᾶς + βρῶμα.) In 4 occurrences the singular is used, and in 4 the plural is used, so we must now establish the difference between πᾶν βρῶμα and πάντα τὰ βρώματα. The rule we gave above for singular and plural nouns combining with πᾶς applies to βρῶμα—all examples with πᾶς and plural nouns contain the article, and all singular nouns with πᾶς lack the article (further suggesting that βρῶμα behaves more like a count noun than a mass noun). Leviticus 11:34–35 and Gen 6:21 provide a close minimal pair for the difference between πᾶν βρῶμα and πάντα τὰ βρώματα:

• (231) καὶ πᾶν βρῶμα παντὶ ἀγγείῳ, ἀκάθαρτον ἔσται. 35 καὶ πᾶν, ὃ ἐὰν πέσῃ ἀπὸ τῶν θνησιμαίων αὐτῶν ἐπ’ αὐτό, ἀκάθαρτον ἔσται (Lev 11:34–35)
• And any food, which is eaten, onto which (this unclean) water might fall will be unclean, and any drink which is drunk in any container will be unclean. And anything which their carcasses might fall upon will be unclean
• (232) σὺ δὲ λήμψῃ σεαυτῷ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν βρωμάτων, ἃ ἔδεσθε, καὶ συνάξεις πρὸς σεαυτόν, καὶ ἔσται σοὶ καὶ ἐκείνοις φαγεῖν (Gen 6:21)
• But you must take for yourself from all the foods which you will eat, and you must gather them to yourself, and they will be for you and them to eat

The difference between πᾶν βρῶμα in Lev 11:34 and πάντα τὰ βρώματα in Gen 6:21 is subtle but crucial for our discussion. In the former passage, πᾶν βρῶμα refers to any kind of food without distinction. The context does not specify that there is a specific set of food that this rule applies to (which is about how the carcass of an unclean animal can make other things unclean). Hence my translation (and the LES) has ‘any food’, which must refer to any kind of food without distinction. In contrast, Gen 6:21 is a command of God to Noah to take food into the ark. While this is still best understood as a kind reading the set of kinds is limited – specifically, they are limited to those foods which will be eaten during Noah and his family’s stay in the ark. This is not a command for Noah to gather all the different kinds of food on the planet. It is a command for him to gather all the different kinds of foods that he and his family will eat.

If both πᾶν βρῶμα and πάντα τὰ βρώματα are options to refer to different kinds of foods, we would expect them to differ in some other way besides reference to kinds. The obvious syntactic difference is the article. I suggest that the article in this construction has its usual meaning of referring to a specific set of something in the context, i.e. a specific set of foods. It follows that the presence of the article in the phrase καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα should also refer to a specific, limited set of foods that are found in the context. The problem with most English translations is that setting off the clause

13 This excludes 4 Macc 1:34 where plural βρῶμα combines with παντοῖος without the article and has the kind reading.

in parentheses separates it from the context and the bare plural ‘all foods’ requires a meaning in English that refers to all kinds of foods without distinction. This meaning would have been communicated with πᾶν βρῶμα ‘every food’ (not to mention we would expect the parenthetical statement to give the agent as well; see fn. 9 above). What would this limited set of foods be in this context? The only real option is ‘all foods (which are eaten with unwashed hands).’ Only this makes sense of what Jesus is talking about. Thus, the participial clause καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα is not about kosher laws at all, or what kinds of foods can be eaten – it is about the foods eaten with unwashed hands that the Pharisees thought would cause uncleanness. Williams (2024:389) paraphrases the meaning of Mark 7:18–19 in the following way to which I add the italicized text in brackets to explain the referent of πάντα τὰ βρώματα: ‘Everything from outside going into a person (even if it has contracted ritual impurity) is unable to defile a person, because it enters not into the heart but into the stomach (which acts as a purifying agent), and goes out (as excrement, which is incapable of being ritually impure) into the sewer, thus (the person, specifically their stomach) purifying all foods [that had contracted ritual impurity through unwashed hands].’

Suggested exegetical exercise

Choose the phrase πᾶς Ἰσραήλ (Rom 11:26) or πάντας ἀνθρώπους (1 Tim 2:4) and provide an analysis of who is being referred to based on how πᾶς is used with these nouns. Students should try not to engage in the theological debates surrounding the phrases but should let the data drive their interpretation.