Did Jesus declare all foods clean?
Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2017 10:04 am
It's the "in saying this Jesus declared" (and similar iterations like "thus he declared," or "By saying this" and so forth) that's not in the Greek..
The Greek says, most literally, "Because it does not go into his heart, but into his belly, and goes out into crapper [aphedron, "privy," "toilet"] purifying all meats."
The meaning in the Greek (and in the KJV too, though it's easy to overlook), is that Jesus is saying the digestive process spiritually purifies food, not that the food is clean before you eat it. The parentheticals in some translations are choices by the translators to convey an interpretation that Jesus was de facto declaring all food clean (because what's the difference when it technically becomes clean, Jesus still, in their minds saying it's ok to eat bacon). "Thus Jesus said" type parentheticals are editorial insertions. Pedantically speaking, though, the Greek doesn't say Jesus said all foods were clean, he said food won't make you unclean and that digestion will purify unclean meats, which is subtly different.