In 2015, a study using an amalgamation of 66 surveys covering 44 countries showed that norms related to male authority over female behavior are especially predictive of domestic partner violence. However, it could seem to the audiences who heard or read the gospels of Mark and Luke that Jesus does not allow for divorce under any circumstance (Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18). Yet in Matthew Jesus allows for divorce for “sexual unfaithfulness” (5:32, 19:9), and Paul seems to teach that neither husband nor wife should ever divorce except for abandonment (1 Cor 7:10-11, 15). Would the recipients of the four texts then have three different understandings of Jesus’ teachings? Which one was correct, or can they be reconciled? Additionally, none of the four seem to allow for remarriage, yet an 18 BC Roman law required it. Finally, the understanding of divorce in Jesus’ teaching is incomplete without a similar contextual examination of marriage. On the surface, the NT exceptions for divorce appear contradictory; however, extending the work of David Instone-Brewer reveals continuity between the New Testament’s teachings on marriage, divorce, and remarriage.
This paper thus begins by reviewing Instone-Brewer’s work on the NT cultural context including first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman marriage contracts, Jewish divorce certificates, Roman laws, early rabbinic debates over marriage duties and what constituted marital abuse and cruelty, and the possible foundation of Exod 21:10-11 in the Jewish understanding of marriage. Moving forward, though, this paper considers the ethic for husbands in Eph 5:25-31 as going beyond Exod 21:10-11: it levels the hierarchical order through having husbands serving their wives as if they themselves were wives, offering Gen 2:24 mutuality, and commanding the love of the wife as nearest neighbor (Walsh and Miller). Plus, Paul’s twelve intentional mutualities in 1 Corinthians 7 reveal equality in marriage, even as Matt 22:30 (Mark 12:25, Luke 20:34-36) places husbands and wives as equals in the eschaton—with its glorification, fulfillment, inheritance, task, and objective of the created person [John Paul II; Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 57; Jerome, Ep. 108; Gregory of Nyssa, Vit. Macrina; Jerome, Hom. on Cant. 3, 4, 11, 15; Ephrem the Syrian, Hymn on Faith 10:9; Apophthegmata Patrum, in PG 65 (John the Dwarf 2); Hesychios, On Watchfulness 200–1]. The paper ends with reflection on what might have been attractive about the first Christ-followers’ marriages if they followed the writings of Paul or Matthew as compared, in general, to those in the Jewish culture of Judea and Galilee and the Greco-Roman world.
Bibliography. Walsh, Julie, and Jeffrey D. Miller. “Translating Ephesians 5.33.” The Bible Translator 74, no.1 (April 2023): 93-109. https://doi.org/10.1177/20516770231151420.