Chapter 190 of 404

Divorce

Many of Jesus’ radical sayings better reflect the wisdom of a sage shocking hearers to attention than that of a community creating a behavior code. This observation is obviously true concerning Jesus’ teaching on divorce. The church would hardly have invented a saying that it had so much trouble implementing: although Mark and Luke simply include brief versions of the saying, Matthew and Paul both qualify it for practical situations such as a spouse’s infidelity or abandonment.³⁷

Moreover, multiple attestation makes Jesus’ divorce teaching (in various forms) one of his most assuredly attested teachings.³⁸ It appears in Mark (Mk 10:11-12; cf. Matt 19:9); “Q” (Matt 5:32; Lk 16:18); and already in Paul (1 Cor 7:10-12).

Although the language comes closer to the debate of first-century Pharisaic schools in Matt 19:3-9 than in Mark 10:2-12, both passages can be understood as evoking a debate among the two Pharisaic schools known to have been current precisely in Jesus’ day.³⁹ In a manner resembling other first-century Jewish teachers, Jesus counters his interlocutors’ standard text in Deut 24 by appealing to a countertext. Since other Jewish teachers of this period looked to the creation narrative for God’s ideal purposes on various issues,⁴⁰ including the Pharisaic schools we have just noted,⁴¹ Jesus’ argument would be difficult to ignore. ⁴² Based on the citation of Scripture in CD 4.20-5.2, Sanders regards the tradition that Jesus cited the creation narrative in defense of his divorce position as likely.⁴³ I have treated Jesus’ teaching on divorce more extensively in other works (especially regarding its hyperbolic function),⁴⁴ but the survey of evidence here should be sufficient to establish that the teaching is one of the most securely grounded, clearly authentic elements of traditions preserved about Jesus.

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