Laudator Temporis Acti

Mark 7:18-19 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

[18] He said to them: Are even you so unable to understand? Do you not see that anything that goes into a man from the outside cannot defile him,
[19] because it passes not into the heart but into the belly, and thence goes into the privy? Thus he made all food clean.

[18] καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς ἀσύνετοί ἐστε; οὐ νοεῖτε ὅτι πᾶν τὸ ἔξωθεν εἰσπορευόμενον εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐ δύναται αὐτὸν κοινῶσαι,
[19] ὅτι οὐκ εἰσπορεύεται αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν καρδίαν ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν, καὶ εἰς τὸν ἀφεδρῶνα ἐκπορεύεται, καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα;

Text and apparatus from Barbara and Kurt Aland, edd., Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), p. 112: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1975), p. 95 (on Mark 7:19, footnote omitted):

The overwhelming weight of manuscript evidence supports the reading καθαρίζων . The difficulty of construing this word in the sentence prompted copyists to attempt various corrections and ameliorations.

C.E.B. Cranfield on verse 19:

ἀφεδρῶνα. Ἀφεδρών classical ἄφοδος or ἀπόπατος — 'a privy'. Instead of this word D reads ὀχετόν, which Wellhausen and Torrey accept and take to mean 'bowel', and, in spite of the breach of grammatical concord, take with καθαρίζων translating 'the bowel which purifies all foods'. But such violence is unnecessary; for ὀχετόν in D probably means 'sewer' (as in Herodian v. 8. 9, etc.), and anyway ἀφεδρῶνα should surely be read. Here the natural process is spoken of with unselfconscious naturalness (cf. Schlatter, Evang. Matt. p. 486).

After ἐκπορεύεται it is best to put a question-mark and a dash (εἰς τὸν ἀφεδρῶνα ἐκπορεύεται being the end of what Jesus says). The words καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα are best explained as the evangelist's own comment, drawing out the implications of Jesus' words with an eye on the contemporary problem of what was to be the Church's attitude to Jewish ideas about clean and unclean foods. Cf. our explanation of ii. 10, 28. This interpretation goes back to the Greek Fathers. The words are then grammatically dependent on καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς at the beginning of v. 18, καθαρίζων agreeing with the subject of λέγει.