I had heard many good things about this book before picking it up to read it for myself, but even with very high expectations, I can say that it exceeded them. Matthew Thiessen convincingly argues, contrary to much New Testament scholarship and contemporary Christian thinking, that the Gospels (primarily the Synoptic Gospels) do not portray Jesus "abolish[ing] the ritual purity system; rather, [Jesus] abolishes the force that creates the ritual impurity in the person he meets" (6). Thiessen's reading of the Gospels helpfully takes into account not only the Jewishness of the Gospel writers (Thiessen even recognizes "the possibility that Luke was himself a Jew" [41]), but also of Jesus the Messiah.

Thiessen looks at a number of stories in the Gospels (usually taking the story as it is found in Mark's Gospel as his starting point) that deal with those considered ritually impure—that is, those with "lepra" (Thiessen argues "lepra" [λέπρα] should not be confused with "leprosy" [ἐλεφαντίασις]: see pages 43-52), those with genital discharges, and corpses. For Thiessen, these stories do not show Jesus's antipathy or disregard for Jewish ritual purity concerns, but instead, they depict Jesus's desire to remove ritual impurity from individuals. Much like Elijah and Elisha—one of whom cured a "lepros," and both of whom raised the dead—Jesus dealt with ritual impurity in a way that the ritual purity system did not (and could not), by not simply removing the "effects of sources of impurity," but the "sources of impurity themselves" (180). In the person of Jesus, the God of Israel inserted "a new, mobile, and powerfully contagious force of holiness into the world," and the purifying ministry of Jesus "signaled the very coming of the kingdom—a kingdom of holiness and life that ... overwhelms the forces and sources of impurity and death" (179).

Even though the ministry of Jesus (like the ministry of Elijah and Elisha) did what the temple/tabernacle apparatus could not, this should not lead one to assume that Jesus did not believe in ritual impurity or did not view it as significant. The Gospel writers even seem to make the opposite point at times. For instance, in the story of the healing of the "lepros" in Mark 1, Jesus tells the (former) "lepros" to "show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them" (Mark 1:44). As Thiessen rightly notes, "The Gospel writers depict Jesus acting in a way that fits perfectly with the laws of Leviticus 13-14. After cleansing people of their lepra (cf. Lev. 14:2), Jesus commands them to go to the temple to undergo the rituals necessary to remove the ritual impurity that continues to exist after the lepra leaves (Lev. 14:8, 9, 20)" (68). This one example, among many others that Thiessen points to, indicates that our assumptions about Jesus being unconcerned with the Torah or with the ritual purity system may be wrongheaded and incorrect. Each chapter is a treasure trove of new and fresh insights about the ministry of Jesus and the world of the Gospel writers. I would recommend this book to anyone, as I think it counters some faulty thinking within contemporary Christian circles about Judaism, Jesus, and the Old Testament (specifically, the legal literature found in the Torah).