TO MAKE COMMON — built on koinos, 'common, shared, ordinary' (the same root behind koinōnia, 'fellowship,' and the 'common' purse of the early church in Acts). To defile, in this vocabulary, is to render something COMMON that ought to be set apart. Matthew 15 turns entirely on the verb: 'not what goes into the mouth defiles (koinoi) a person, but what comes out' (15:11, 18, 20) — food cannot make common what God set apart; words and deeds can. Peter hears the same verb again at Joppa, refusing to eat anything 'common or unclean' (Acts 10:14, not yet on these pages) — a vision built to answer this exact chapter's question about a wider circle than food. → first discussed at Matt 15:11