The Matthean Divorce Texts and Some New Palestinian Evidence

Abstract

THE RECENT publication of a passage from one of Qumran scrolls that may shed some light on Matthean divorce texts is occasion for a fresh consideration of those controverted verses. The Matthean passages are but two among several in NT which record sayings attributed to Jesus about prohibition of divorce. Four writers, in fact, have recorded prohibition that is traced to him. The earliest form of it is found in 1 Cor 7:10-11, but each of Synoptic Evangelists has also preserved some form of prohibition: Mk 10:2-12; Lk 16:18; Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-9. In fact, there are, in all, five passages with seven sayings about dissolution of marriage. Despite tone of a controversy-setting that surrounds pronouncement preserved in Mk 10 and Mt 19, which is sometimes thought to reflect more a later church-synagogue debate than a discussion of historical Jesus with Pharisees, two features have often been invoked in favor of authenticity of prohibition: independent attribution of saying to Jesus in First Corinthians and in Synoptics, and radical opposition of prohibition to well-known Jewish permission of divorce, usually associated with Mosaic legislation reflected in Dt 24:l-4. Likewise introduced at times into discussion of NT teaching on divorce are texts that do not deal with it explicitly, but that are instructions sometimes interpreted as implying prohibition. These are regulations set down in Deutero-Pauline letters that Christian episkopoi, presbyteroi, and diakonoi are to be mias gynaikos andres, husbands of one (1 Tim 3:2, 12; Tit 1:6), and that widow who was to be enrolled should have been henos andros gyne, the wife of one husband (1 Tim 5:9). The latter Deutero-Pauline instruction about