[hajile]

He was rejecting ritual purification saying that your actions are more important. He agreed with all the requirements in the Torah, but not all the additional rituals gradually stacked on top (where the excessive ritual purification of his day fit).

Leprosy was viewed as a symbol of sin. This story was about Him touching a sinner and purifying them from that sin.

[betterunix2]

If that is true, why would Jesus have taught his disciples the spiritual value of ritual bathing and ritual foot washing?

[hajile]

Let's talk about Christian theology from that perspective

Jesus spoke sternly several times about the hypocrisy and burden of those artificial rules. He pointed out how they would "strain a gnat and swallow a camel" (straining their drinking water to avoid unclean animals while enjoying camel steaks which were unclean) or meticulously paying tithe of their little herbs while taking bribes and corrupting their legal judgements or promising their possessions to God so they could avoid honoring and taking care of their parents.

He talked about how they made the Sabbath a burden and the day of rest was made for the good of mankind rather than mankind being made slave to their onerous Sabbath rituals (eg, you couldn't go more than a certain distance, but if you went out before Sabbath and laid out parcels of food, you could go the distance, then stop at your "house" for a meal and then continue on).

If Jesus was indeed the Creator and Son of God, then His establishing a ritual would be very different from an ordinary man creating a ritual.

Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial laws when He died (becoming the literal death the symbol that the lamb pointed toward). This applied to the rest of the ceremonial laws (though not the Ten Commandments else sin could not exist as it is defined as the breaking of those laws).

In effect, the many daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly ceremonial rituals were swept away. Their replacements were a single baptism when one decided to follow Him and an occasional ("as often as you do this") ritual of humility (foot washing) followed by a ritual to remind of His death (communion).

[alexvoda]

Because the teachings of the Bible are not required to be coherent with eachother. It is detrimental if they are because it reduces the flexibility of interpretation. A good dogma, can always be interpreted favorably regardless of the situation.

A good dogma is like xkcd.com, you can always find a relevant quote for any given thing.

A rigid dogma can not, therefore it is a bad dogma, therefore it does not stand the test of time.

[alehander42]

this is a problem: your interpretations contradict.

Yes, if it was only about hygiene, this would seem strange. But the actual passages are more complex: and naturally, ignoring symbolism, ignoring the whole context, the huge difference between Law and human rules, the giant focus on sin in thousands of years of Scripture, Christ's ministry and the Law, Israel society, one can leap to any interpretation he wants.

We can also add James epistle , James 4:8-9: "Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world."

[alexvoda]

> one can leap to any interpretation he wants.

That is the very point of dogma beeing incoherent. Any interpretation can be derived. Therefore you need a profitable hierarchical beurocracy to tell the people the right interpretation. Every cult new and old has worked the same way.

[alehander42]

Not really. The Scripture is very good at showing what's in our heart: we have freedom to interpret some non-obvious things wrongly, to not put effort at actually understanding it and into deluding ourselves. However especially the Gospels have a lot of very obvious spiritual teachings.

But very often the truth reason that we don't like them is not because of our intelligence(you can find genius people believing in almost every kind of faith or ideology), but because of trauma, misunderstanding or the fact that often deep down we want to be our own gods, but we just end up being slaves to our own fragility and animal-like passions.

Hebrews 4:12

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. "

(edit: also, my point is: if you ignore all the things you shouldn't ignore, it's easy to leap to wrong interpretations. you shouldn't ignore them! end of edit)