What Comes into a Woman and What Comes Out of a Woman: Feminist Textual Intervention and Mark 7:14–23

This article introduces textual intervention as a reading strategy to examine whether interpretations of supposedly gender-inclusive biblical passages are actually inclusive. A detailed reading of Mark 7:14–23 with a female subject and object exposes how scholarly readings are based on male anatomy, excluding the female from the generic anthrōpos (person). Interpreters have previously believed the passage to center on the ability of food and unclean hands to defile a person. However, this article’s reading, which focuses on a female body, uncovers a radically different interpretation of the passage, revealing multivalent fields of reference within the text not previously seen and reexamining the classifications of inner and outer purity used in Mark 7 in light of female anatomy.