There are a few overt references to ritual purity in the New Testament, but most of the ritual purity aspects which scholars have read into the text are non-existent. For example, there is no basis for the idea that Jesus' association with sinners and tax gatherers was opposed by the Pharisees on ritual purity grounds. The text does not say so, and it would not make sense to say so. The vast majority of Jews were not expected to be in a state of ritual purity except at festival times, when they entered the Temple area. Only a tiny minority of Jews, known as haberim, or Associates (see Appendix A), made a special undertaking to keep themselves in a state of ritual purity, as an exercise in piety and in order to perform the service to the community of separating the priestly dues (terumah) from the crop without causing them defilement. It was not a sin to be in a state of ritual impurity: in fact, it was often a duty. Some of the most respected members of the Jewish community were members of burial societies, which, without pay, looked after the corpses of the dead and prepared them for burial. Such people dedicated themselves to impurity, just as the haberim dedicated themselves to purity, and with equal sense of service and general approval.

The sinners and tax gatherers with whom Jesus associated, with the aim of inducing them to repent, were real criminals, not just unwashed. The tax gatherers, for example, formed the Jewish part of the infamous Roman tax farming system.