Jesus and the Forces of Death: Ritual Purity in the Gospels - Episode 159

This week, Carey continues the Purity Series by digging into Matthew Thiessen’s Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism—and uses it as a springboard to talk about atonement, purification, and why “apocalypse” is not just end-times hype.

A core thread: modern readers (and plenty of scholars) often read Jesus as if he’s against Jewish purity, when the Gospels actually portray him as rescuing people from the forces of ritual impurity—with a “contagious holiness” that overwhelms impurity at its source.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why we misread the Gospels when we unconsciously import our modern conceptual world into a first-century purity framework (a frame-semantics problem)
  
  
• The common scholarly false dichotomy: “Jewish holiness vs Jesus’ mercy,” and why it fails
  
  
• A helpful map for thinking clearly: holy/profane (common) and pure/impure as distinct-but-related categories
  
  
• Why “ritual impurity vs moral impurity” can be a useful discussion tool—but isn’t quite a clean biblical taxonomy
  
  
• “Death-logic,” sacred space, and why childbirth (surprisingly) gets pulled into the conversation
  
  
• How this connects to Genesis (childbirth, Eden as sacred space, exile from the presence, Sabbath, and the start of death)
  
  
• Demonic impurity / unclean spirits: why Genesis 6/Nephilim and 1 Enoch matter, but don’t “solve” everything—and why you have to account for broader ancient exorcism
  
  
• Apocalyptic vs prophetic genre: prophecy as covenant lawsuit and warning to rebels; apocalypse as hope for the faithful and God “breaking in”
  
  
• A bridge into the atonement conversation: how “atonement” language can mean purification/purgation of sacred space, and how that differs from broader “at-one-ment” reconciliation talk

Referenced

• Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death  
  
  
• Andrew Rillera, Lamb of the Free (and the PSA conversation)
  
  
• Jacob Milgrom and “death-logic”

Join the study (On This Rock)

Carey is formally kicking off a deep-dive study of Lamb of the Free in January 2026, with recorded Zoom discussions and supporting visuals/charts; the study is for paid members (noted as $5/month in the episode)

On This Rock Biblical Theology Community:  https://on-this-rock.com/

Website: genesismarksthespot.com   

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GenesisMarkstheSpot   

Music credit: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan

Link to Wintergatan’s website: https://wintergatan.net/  

Link to the original Marble Machine video by Wintergatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q&ab_channel=Wintergatan