Hi everyone. Welcome back again to the podcast from Logical Bible Study. In this podcast, we're all about having a look at the gospel reading for today's Mass and doing a proper academic exegesis of the text, which we often don't get to hear just by going to mass.

So our goal in this podcast is to help you really understand the text itself.

Let this text speak on its own terms.

In other words, we're looking at the literal sense of the text.

So as always, we'll start with the reading and then we'll try and do an exegesis of that text,

break it down verse by verse, and we'll see what things we can learn from it.

So today's reading is from Matthew chapter 15, verses 1 to 2, and then verses 10 to 14.

Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem came to Jesus and said,

Why do your disciples break away from the tradition of the elders?

They do not wash their hands when they eat food.

He called the people to him and said,

Listen and understand.

What goes into the mouth does not make a man unclean. It is what comes out of the mouth that makes him unclean.

Then the disciples came to him and said, do you know that the Pharisees were shocked when they heard what you said?

He replied, any plant my Heavenly Father has not planted

will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them alone. They are blind men leading blind men,

and if one blind man leads another, both will fall into a pit. So an interesting passage here today.

Let's start at the start here.

Verse 1 in Matthew chapter 15.

And by the way, if you've been following this gospel through from the beginning,

we're about halfway now.

Matthew has 28 chapters and we've just finished chapter 14.

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