The religious elite insist that their way is right, even though it is based only on tradition. Once again they object to a practice of Jesus' disciples, implying a deficiency in the training Jesus has supplied to them (see comment on 12:3-8). People commonly recognized that the Pharisees passed on ancestral laws not written in the law of Moses (Jos. Ant. 13.297). Hand washing was one such extrabiblical tradition, perhaps originally adopted from foreign Jews (Sib. Or. 3.591-94; E. Sanders 1990:39-40, 228, 260-71), concerning which the Pharisees were especially meticulous (compare m. Yadayim 1:1-2:4).