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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Mark 10:2-12 and related synoptic gospel scriptures
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
This is a spin off from a Purgatory thread.
Mark 10:2-12. I was looking at this in the context of a Purg thread discussion and noticed two things, in relationship to the references in Matthew 19 and Luke 16:18.
1. Unlike Matthew, Mark allows no exception to the "let no man divide". Matthew allows an exception for "porneia".
2. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark has Jesus saying "if she divorces her husband", which so far as I know runs contrary to the Jewish law on marriage at the time. Matthew and Luke refer only to a husband divorcing his wife.
I wondered what views and explanations Shipmates might have to explain these differences?
[Title edited at poster's request. Mamacita, Host]
[ 10. February 2014, 16:37: Message edited by: Mamacita ]
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
I have a vague memory of this being in response to a major text of a rabbinical school of the day. The rabbinical teaching is quite complicated as far as I can recall, so what at first appears to be a fairly straight-forward answer of Jesus is in fact a complex and rather nuanced one. I'm sorry I can't remember more - can't even remember where I read it ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
I'm sure someone here will know more than I. In the meantime I will take a look at a few likely candidates on the book shelves here.
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Staretz Silouan
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Two bits of detail overlooked in the OP, with apologies to Keryg Hosts.
The thread title should read "Mark 10:2-12 etc" not "Mark 10:10-12" Would a kind Host correct please?
Also, here are links to the parallel verses in Matthew 19:3-12 and Luke 16:17-18
[ 10. February 2014, 16:24: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
Title corrected. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
1. Unlike Matthew, Mark allows no exception to the "let no man divide". Matthew allows an exception for "porneia".
Which raises the question of what porneia means in this context. My Matthew teacher, John Meier, reckons it means 'illicit marriage.' So a putative marriage that should never have been (say, it is later found out that the 'spouses' were closely related) can be ended.
quote:
2. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark has Jesus saying "if she divorces her husband", which so far as I know runs contrary to the Jewish law on marriage at the time. Matthew and Luke refer only to a husband divorcing his wife.
I'd have to check the details, but I think wife-initiated divorce was possible under Roman law.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Certainly the meaning of porneia is one of the vexed issues.
Hart, I believe you are also right about Roman law but it is generally reckoned that the context of the questioning of Jesus was the Shammai-Hillel rabbinical disagreement about the grounds for issuing a certificate of divorce (Deuteronomy 24). So the context was Jewish Law, not Roman. Even if Roman law allowed a wife to initiate divorce, that option would not have been open to a Jewish woman unless she departed from Judaism, a move with even more serious consequences than being divorced.
Another factor to go into the puzzle pot is the almost universal view amongst Protestant scholars that
a) Mark was written first, and
b) that Matthew had Mark's gospel to hand when compiling his.
The evidence for this is based on textual analysis and is very convincing. The implication is that the earliest gospel record we have is Mark, which includes a sentence not likely to have come out of Jesus' mouth, and that Matthew "edited" Mark as well as sticking in some other stuff, the porneia exception and the disciples' wonder that anyone would marry if that was the standard.
James Dunn in "Jesus Remembered" observes that Mark's reference to a woman initiating divorce seems to be "an elaboration of the tradition" by which he means the Apostles' recall of the actual conversation. Again by tradition, Mark recorded what he heard from Simon Peter, who seems very unlikely to have thought that women had the divorce option!
All very interesting! Of course it is possible that Matthew had an independent and more accurate source than Mark; the recollection of another Apostle, say. That conversation with Jesus must have been a memorable one, yet apostolic memories seem to diverge over its contents.
[ 10. February 2014, 21:43: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
(I prepared this earlier but forgot to send it, so apologies for some overlap with things already posted)
I was tempted to make a few comments on the other thread, Barnabas62, but didn't want to divert it (who, me?). But here we are, so -
Let's take Mark first. Mark can be seen explaining Jewish customs and practices, which wouldn't be necessary if he were addressing a Jewish audience. So if his audience is (largely) non-Jewish, we wouldn't be talking about Jewish marital law, but Roman. And in Roman law, women were able to divorce their husbands.
In fact, Mark has this bit in a separate discussion with his disciples after the event. Nothing unusual there - he seems to have regularly explored some of his more challenging statements with the twelve after the event. According to Donald Hagner this was standard rabbinical practice anyway in contentious matters. Presumably they ranged widely, so whether Mark is reporting the point verbatim or just condensing a longer discussion, the point is simply that this affair is about divorce itself, not Jewish laws concerning women's entitlements and protection post divorce.
Before addressing Matthew, it may be worth looking at the Hillel-Shammai dispute. Here is a link to the relevant section of the Babylonian Talmud which covers the matter. It's worth reading on, if only to see how rabbinical disputes were reported and resolved. But note especially the reference back to God's original commandment, as a show-stopper. Which is exactly what Jesus is doing in this passage. The response of the Pharisees is quite understandable - "so what's all that stuff about divorce, then?"
This Matthew passage is cognate with the earlier one in Matthew i.e. part of the the sermon on the mount. These are kingdom values, and I think it is clear that Jesus is again calling his followers to the higher Kingdom values. Certainly the pericopes on either side of this one are all about Kingdom values. If we are to downplay that, then perforce we need to downplay the sermon on the mount as impractical too. Many have done of course.
That still doesn't explain the porneia exception, though. Hagner points out that rabbinical law of the period actually required a man to divorce an unfaithful spouse. References are Mishnah Sota 5:1 and Mishnah Yebamot 2:8 and the requirement is also recorded in the Qumran scrolls.
It's also worth pointing out that Matthew separates divorcing a wife for porneia and then remarrying - in Jewish law the issuing of a get leaves the divorced parties free to remarry. The Matthean exception, so far as it exists, covers the separation alone. It's easy to miss this point in the absence of the above bit of knowledge.
Matthew, of course, is generally reckoned to have been written for Jewish Christians, hence the different emphasis from Mark. I have no idea whether the Matthean exception - like Mark's women being able to initiate divorce - is verbatim or another condensation deemed to address the needs of the community. Or indeed a later addition. But I don't think there is the variance between these two passages which is sometimes claimed. They are tough. Tougher than I had envisaged when I started looking into them.
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Honest Ron
Thanks for joining in and I ticked a lot of points. But here's a query.
I think the exegetical problem is that the conversation Mark records is one between the Jewish Jesus and the Jewish disciples in the context of Jewish law at the time. Of course some of that might have been a problem for Gentile listeners, but are you suggesting that Mark resolved that by putting into Jesus' mouth words he is unlikely to have uttered? Seems a bit free and easy, given the tradition that his content is based on the recollections of Simon Peter?
This is a little eisegetical, but I can certainly see Jesus exhorting his first disciples (some of whom by tradition were married) not to even consider divorce given their responsibility to represent the values of the coming kingdom (just around the corner). The context is private exhortation to his disciples following his refusal to get involved in the Shammai-Hillel controversy, his decision to take the matter back to the beginning i.e. before the Fall. "Don't you even THINK about getting divorced, abandoning your responsibility to your wives. That is not the gospel of the kingdom I wish you to proclaim when I send you out". I can hear Jesus saying that. It seems entirely consistent with kingdom values and the special first representative role of the first disciples. That is why having a reciprocal admonition to women seems odd since in Mark the disciples at this point are all male. Perhaps there were women present, but they would be Jewish women who had no freedom to divorce their husbands. So I'm pretty convinced the exhortation was to the men only, and to the first male disciples only. That's the obvious meaning of the context. So my own view is that James Dunn is right. This is an elaboration by Mark, and not a particularly appropriate one.
On the more general point. How much that specific advice is meant to set a general standard for all marriages throughout the extended time for the kingdom to come, particularly ones in which neglect and cruelty take place, may well be another matter. I think the specific context is key to a proper understanding of these scriptures. A private conversation with a dozen men, possibly with some women in attendance, who I can imagine cheering Jesus on.
Kind of appealing, isn't it?
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
That's the obvious meaning of the context. So my own view is that James Dunn is right. This is an elaboration by Mark, and not a particularly appropriate one.
I don't have any of my reference materials with me, but this seems right to me, at least as it starts (and not just because Jimmy Dunn said it). Mark expands the Jesus tradition and Matthew and Luke (independently?) spot its infelicity and remove it.
For various reasons, I've always been a bit of a sucker for the Ur-Mark theory: that Matthew and Luke were working with an earlier version of Mark than any of our Mark manuscripts witness. If you accept this, then it could be that the section about wife-initiated divorce is an addition that comes in the Ur-Mark -> Mark stage.
I also think the evidence for their being something going back to Jesus here is pretty strong. The prohibition on divorce is inconvenient, multiply attested (see also antitheses) and a rupture with Judaism.
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Entirely agree, Hart. Jesus did not like men abandoning their wives, as the certificate of divorce allowed, saw the conflict with the pre-Fall ideal and proclaimed against it. Entirely consistent with the accounts throughout the gospels of Jesus' approach to vulnerable women, whether married or not, or of ill-repute or not.
(According to my understanding of the times, the wife could be divorced for being a bad cook.)
Jimmy Dunn also argues that in the 1st century Jewish context, a prohibition against men divorcing their wives was a protection for women.
Context, context, context ..what is it saying?
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Sorry for the double post, but I thought this referenced quote might be helpful here.
From James Dunn's "Jesus Remembered" (p578, Note 153). The book is available to read on line, but it is long and not easy to move from index references to texts. Here is the comment.
quote:
Mark 10:12 looks like an elaboration of the tradition (B62 note: by which he means the earliest recollections of the apostles of conversations with Jesus), envisaging as it does the possibility of a woman initiating divorce, something not permitted in the Judaism of Jesus' day (Josephus Ant 15.259 plus other references).
It should also be noted that in a society where only the husband could initiate divorce and where the erwa of Deuteronomy 24.1 could be interpreted liberally (even if she spoiled a dish for him) an absolute prohibition of divorce was a way of protecting the wife
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Thanks, Barnabas62 & Hart. I've just tuned in and will try to get back to you later today. I'm just dropping this note meanwhile as I'm somewhat busy elsewhere today!
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
(According to my understanding of the times, the wife could be divorced for being a bad cook.)
I'll be able to get the reference when I go into the office this afternoon, but I remember the grounds for divorce being hotly debated by the rabbis. Some held opinions that were pretty much "divorce on (the man's) demand," others held to very restrictive conditions. Quite how that played out on the ground would be interesting to know (and I don't know if we have any reliable way of finding out).
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
(According to my understanding of the times, the wife could be divorced for being a bad cook.)
I'll be able to get the reference when I go into the office this afternoon, but I remember the grounds for divorce being hotly debated by the rabbis. Some held opinions that were pretty much "divorce on (the man's) demand," others held to very restrictive conditions. Quite how that played out on the ground would be interesting to know (and I don't know if we have any reliable way of finding out).
Hart - if you follow the link I put in my earlier post, you'll find the details I suspect you are searching for.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Barnabas62 - let me see if I can respond to your question - having pondered it over supper(!)
quote:
I think the exegetical problem is that the conversation Mark records is one between the Jewish Jesus and the Jewish disciples in the context of Jewish law at the time. Of course some of that might have been a problem for Gentile listeners, but are you suggesting that Mark resolved that by putting into Jesus' mouth words he is unlikely to have uttered? Seems a bit free and easy, given the tradition that his content is based on the recollections of Simon Peter?
No - what I am trying to get across is that the discussion certainly starts from the question based in Jewish divorce custom. Jesus's answer isn't simply an answer to that way of looking at things (which it is too) - he completely reframes the issue. The new frame of reference is Eden. (He might have chosen the revelation to the prophets, but he didn't).
The discussion about women being able to divorce is pretty clearly flagged up as arising from the subsequent discussion - not the exchange with the Pharisees.
The thing about Eden, pre-expulsion, is that it takes us back to radical equality and interdependence. Divorce is given for the post-Edenic state "as a concession for hard-heartedness". Divorce has no part to play in the original plan, and the original plan is the revelation of Kingdom values in this matter.
I guess a summary of my own POV is that Mark is not introducing anything new, though he is perhaps expressing it in a way that makes it clearer to his intended audience. I can absolutely imagine Jesus saying something along these lines if asked about divorce in Roman law. I'm a bit less clear about whether the Matthean exception (in the understanding I outlined earlier) might not have been a later addition. But maybe not - it does after all lead on into the "eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom" quote.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Honest Ron
I got the reframing implication first time around. In a nutshell, I don't buy the hypothetical. If Jesus had been speaking to a mixed Jewish/Gentile group, I can see how he might have clarified the point in detailed discussions. But he wasn't. What you are arguing is that he would have brought up that hypothetical situation despite it being very unlikely to have been raised by one of his male, Jewish disciples. It wasn't their thought-world.
I suppose what I'm saying is it sticks out like a sore thumb! Jimmy Dunn's view strikes me as more likely. But there is always room for the unlikely!
On that thought-world point, the Talmud record gives a very clear picture of ethical decisions being worked through in the context of women as property. A good man was one who took good care of his property, kept her from prying eyes etc.
You can't help but feel that the disciples' requests for clarification would have come out of that thought world. That's not meant as a criticism, merely a cultural observation.
That's where Jimmy Dunn's second point comes in. A prohibition of divorce was protective of women in that context. Of course that is a limited protection. There is nothing said about cruelty of men towards women within the marriage in this discussion, of course. For Jesus' view of cruelty and indifference to the downtrodden and vulnerable, we have to look elsewhere. And there is plenty to look at.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Barnabas62 wrote: quote:
I got the reframing implication first time around. In a nutshell, I don't buy the hypothetical. If Jesus had been speaking to a mixed Jewish/Gentile group, I can see how he might have clarified the point in detailed discussions. But he wasn't. What you are arguing is that he would have brought up that hypothetical situation despite it being very unlikely to have been raised by one of his male, Jewish disciples. It wasn't their thought-world.
(emphasis mine)
We don't know what he discussed in extenso. But in fact Jesus did exactly point out that his view of marriage was nowhere near their thought-world! It is precisely the subversion of that thought-world that Jesus is about in the whole discussion. Why else would they have been so shocked?
Much as I like Dunn (I haven't read him on this one though), we are likely to get ourselves into deep water if we look for understandings based on the disciples' world-view, when the whole point of Jesus's teaching involves the upending of that worldview.
If the disciples eventually "got it", then the gospel writers will be writing from the new paradigm, not the old.
I realise I should be a lot more nuanced and preferably writing more extensively, but I'm trying to be concise here, so forgive me if it comes across a bit short-ish.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
(though having posted that, I do agree that not divorcing your wife does indeed offer her protection within the Jewish legal system. No quibble there. I'm simply saying the point is larger and has been moved out of that paradigm.)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Yes. I recognise your position is defensible that way.
But ISTM to have another effect you might on reflection not like. Let us say you are right. Then aren't Matthew and Luke wrong to omit the reflexive statement about women? They both had Mark's gospel to hand (or Ur-Mark, pax Hart), according to the impressive analysis for "Mark first".
Now you might argue that in Matthew's case, given the traditional view of "written for Jewish Christians" that Matthew left it out to avoid confusion. But on the basis of your argument, that nicety didn't seem to bother Jesus when talking to the Jews he knew. Why protect the predominantly Jewish audience from this really radical implication of the paradigm shift? Not sure I get that.
And the omission certainly doesn't work at all for Luke, whose traditional target audience was very different, and would have included many Gentiles subject to Roman law. But Luke also left out the reflexive statement about women.
So I'm not sure your argument solves the Synoptic mismatch as elegantly as Jimmy Dunn's does. It seems to raise more difficult questions.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
Well - Matthew has already maxed out on Kingdom values in Matt.5 notably the sermon on the mount. The point we are discussing is already covered there. The reason it returns again seems to be to discuss the context of the apparent allowance for divorce in the Pentateuch, its development in rabbinical thought, and how that represents a trajectory away from the original plan. Having told them that, I imagine an observant Jewish audience would be least in need of filling in the gaps about the garden of Eden and its implications. But my point is really that Matthew's audience has already been presented with the radicalness of the agenda in an even broader context.
Luke, by contrast, reduces the sermon on the mount to a few verses of maxims, and the prohibition against divorce seems to be in a short collection of "important stuff Jesus said", without any real context.
I suppose what I am driving towards is that the separate gospel writers are not involved in a cut-and-paste activity of other writers' work. They certainly do seem to make use of an ur-narrative (whether that is Mark or some putative ur-Mark). But that itself is subsumed within other purposes that drive their narratives towards presenting the extraordinary news about Jesus and his teachings, in a way they think appropriate to their audience. There is plenty of other evidence to support that sort of view, so I'm not sure why we should expect a departure from that approach with this passage(?)
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
That is a very fair point. I'm not in favour of enforced harmonisation. I am however left with some interesting conclusions over biblical meaning as a result of that acceptance of variation.
I'm about as certain as I can be that Jesus taught "Whom God has joined, let no man divide", based on Genesis 2. But the differences in the emphases drawn out of the subsequent conversations does make me question something which has been of profound importance in the development of marriage as a Christian institution. It is a simple point really.
Was Jesus' purpose to radically change the institution into one based on an unshakeable, reified, principle of indissolubility? Or was it to remind men of their promised lifelong responsibilities to love and care for their wives, regardless of the loopholes provided in various ways by the different rabbinical schools of thought. We can argue the reflexive point later. I'm saying there seems little doubt that he was speaking primarily to men because in 1st century Judea men held all the cards. So I can see clearly that he meant to do the second. The first? That is more problematic.
Jesus locked the door against one type of bad behaviour by men i.e abandonment. I can't believe he meant that door to continue to be locked to countenance continuing bad behaviour of another type by men i.e indifference, cruelty, lovelessness contradicting agape. Those are simply a different type of abandonment. What is intended as protection, becomes the very opposite. What then?
Speaking as a man happily married for 45 years and one who has lived out lifelong commitment because I promised that I would.
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Latchkey Kid
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# 12444
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
I think the exegetical problem is that the conversation Mark records is one between the Jewish Jesus and the Jewish disciples in the context of Jewish law at the time. Of course some of that might have been a problem for Gentile listeners, but are you suggesting that Mark resolved that by putting into Jesus' mouth words he is unlikely to have uttered? Seems a bit free and easy, given the tradition that his content is based on the recollections of Simon Peter?
No - what I am trying to get across is that the discussion certainly starts from the question based in Jewish divorce custom. Jesus's answer isn't simply an answer to that way of looking at things (which it is too) - he completely reframes the issue. The new frame of reference is Eden. (He might have chosen the revelation to the prophets, but he didn't).
I don't see a problem in Jesus having spoken in a Jewish context, Mark re-expressing the message for his context (in the tradition of writers expressing how they thought it would be expressed for their context) and Matthew re-expressing his Markan source back to the context of a Jewish church.
I see that the example of the Gospel writers gives us the freedom, or perhaps the imperative, to bring the word translated not only in language but also in context.
I still have to think about the Eden framing, in contrast to the Levitical framing. Luke's genealogy goes back to Eden; Mark's Jesus is a prophet who breaks into history from nowhere.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
I think the biblical evidence and the Talmud discussions support this overview by Martin PC not, in a different place. In the Jewish culture of Jesus' day, divorce was "an institutionalised arbitrary abuse of patriarchy". And that was what Jesus was responding to, in the dialogues with the Pharisees and, later, his own disciples. That really does seem very clear. To pick up on Honest Ron's point, mutual help and support, interdependence, in the pre-Fall institution, had been replaced by male dominance in marriage. As God said it would in Genesis 3:16 "He will rule over you".
It is not just divorce laws Jesus is seeking to repeal in kingdom value terms. It is the desire to dominate. Of which male dominance in the understanding of marriage is just one illustration.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think the biblical evidence and the Talmud discussions support this overview by Martin PC not, in a different place. In the Jewish culture of Jesus' day, divorce was "an institutionalised arbitrary abuse of patriarchy". And that was what Jesus was responding to, in the dialogues with the Pharisees and, later, his own disciples. That really does seem very clear. To pick up on Honest Ron's point, mutual help and support, interdependence, in the pre-Fall institution, had been replaced by male dominance in marriage. As God said it would in Genesis 3:16 "He will rule over you".
It is not just divorce laws Jesus is seeking to repeal in kingdom value terms. It is the desire to dominate. Of which male dominance in the understanding of marriage is just one illustration.
I think that's right. Whilst I disagree with some of Martin's other comments on the other thread, this is spot on.
But let me have a think before responding to your earlier question.
Latchkey Kid wrote: quote:
I don't see a problem in Jesus having spoken in a Jewish context, Mark re-expressing the message for his context (in the tradition of writers expressing how they thought it would be expressed for their context) and Matthew re-expressing his Markan source back to the context of a Jewish church.
I see that the example of the Gospel writers gives us the freedom, or perhaps the imperative, to bring the word translated not only in language but also in context
Jesus did often speak in a Jewish context of course. And indeed here he is responding to a specifically Jewish issue - Jewish divorce law is of no direct relevance elsewhere. So technically he is still speaking in a Jewish context. However, in reframing it, he universalizes it. Jewish law is post the call of Abraham. God's intention for the union of man & woman is outside of that, so is for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. So - in my view, that is - the gospel writers are indeed following their freedom or the imperative to explain it into certain contexts, as you say. But they are retaining fidelity to the way Jesus reframed the whole issue.
My reservation is that I'm not sure Matthew was 100% successful in the matter! Though perhaps that's more a literary judgement. Some things may have been unremarkable and clear to our forebears, but have become murky since then.
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BroJames
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# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
That's the obvious meaning of the context. So my own view is that James Dunn is right. This is an elaboration by Mark, and not a particularly appropriate one.
I don't have any of my reference materials with me, but this seems right to me, at least as it starts (and not just because Jimmy Dunn said it). Mark expands the Jesus tradition and Matthew and Luke (independently?) spot its infelicity and remove it.
Or that Matthew, Mark and Luke all make different uses of a tradition common to all of them.
Further, since the Greek conventions about direct and indirect speech and parentheses differed from ours, it would be possible to read10.12 as a parenthetical addition by Mark, rather than intended to be read as the words of Jesus
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Barnabas62
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Bro James
I have no problems with that either, but it is also consistent with Dunn's view of an elaboration of the original discussion. The comment re divorcing women really does stick out.
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BroJames
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quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Bro James
I have no problems with that either, but it is also consistent with Dunn's view of an elaboration of the original discussion. The comment re divorcing women really does stick out.
Yes I agree, entirely consistent with Dunn. But I feel there is a shade of difference between Mark interpolating his elaboration of Jesus' teaching parenthetically, and him putting words in Jesus' mouth (although, again, my last phrase assumes modern English conventions about reporting speech)
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Barnabas62
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Your precision is accepted! It is a good general point to bear in mind about the original written language. Mark may be off the direct quote hook, but I still have him with a possible misunderstanding of the dialogue. Its implications are another matter.
[ 12. February 2014, 21:31: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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I'm intrigued why you think Mark may have misunderstood, Barnabas62 - any chance of expanding your thinking on that?
(I'm still pondering the most succinct way to respond on the other thing BTW)
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Barnabas62
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I think because Jesus' focus was so clearly on the behaviour of men divorcing their wives for any reason, it seems much more likely that he was talking about male responsibilities only at that stage.
My reading of the gospels is that Jesus didn't like promise-breaking, didn't like dominance, didn't like demeaning, didn't like the application of the law with indifference to the burdens it produced, hated cruelty to others, exhorted care for the vulnerable. In the kingdom, these things were not to be so.
So he envisages marriage and divorce in these terms. His primary purpose in proclaiming that kingdom values point back to Eden is because he sees the need to return to the garden principles of mutual self-help, interdependence and support, relationships based on "agape". When it comes to behaviour towards others, "agape" is our principle in returning us to the garden.
By emphasising indissolubility, by reifying it, the focus has been shifted away from loving behaviour back to law. I feel in my bones this was not Jesus' primary intention. Jesus was focusing on the unloving behaviour of men in their position of dominance. Elsewhere, he focuses on the evils of unloving behaviour and of dominance themselves. His antithesis is always the same; these things are not the "agape" you are to live by.
Now of course that refocusing applies to women as men. But that is the wider context in which the statements on divorce and remarriage should be seen.
So far as application of these scriptures are concerned, I do believe it is the Orthodox and not the Catholics who have it right re divorce and remaariage. "Economia" is the principle to be applied. The letter must be weighed with the spirit and applied with charity.
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Barnabas62
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I realise I didn't really answer the "why", HRB. I'm not sure I can, but am sure I don't need to find a reason.
Bro James may already have clarified things. His point is a very good one. If it was a comment in parenthesis, rather than a direct quotation from Jesus, then it may very well have seemed logical to Mark to quote the reflexive position for a Gentile audience. I'm not really arguing about why Mark wrote it, rather about the distinct possibility that Jesus' attentions were elsewhere i.e. on the men, so it is not very likely that he did say it. That essentially is Jimmy Dunn's understanding.
And the decisions by Matthew and Luke to exclude it do tend to confirm that Mark's record created some kind of a problem for them. This is on the common understanding by Protestant scholars that Mark's gospel was written down first and that Matthew and Luke had it to hand (or a Ur-Mark version) when composing their gospels. At any rate, neither has it.
Interestingly, the position is very different for Catholics, since they argue that Mark's gospel is dependent on Matthew's. See here. So they would not agree the premise that Matthew and Luke dropped a line that Mark had in.
Is it essential for my argument that Jesus did not say it? I don't think it is, since my argument is predicated on Jesus' views of right relationships between husband and wife. If a husband or a wife behave in accordance with kingdom values, i.e. back to Eden, unselfish love at the heart, interdependence at the heart, dominance replaced by mutual submission again, then any divorce seeking becomes perverse, given the promises made. A newer model, a better cook? Forget it!
But I just don't think he did say it, because it was the men whose behaviour he saw as perverse, so he was out to challenge that first.
What I think my argument does is point to behavioural priorities in marriage, not legal ones.
Does that help?
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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OK Barnabas62, I see where you are coming from - thanks.
quote:
I think because Jesus' focus was so clearly on the behaviour of men divorcing their wives for any reason, it seems much more likely that he was talking about male responsibilities only at that stage.
Mark, of all the gospellers, is punctilious about telling us that the statement in question arose not from the exchange with the Pharisees but from the subsequent discussion. We don't have direct access to that of course, but we do know from Matthew's gospel that this very subject was part of his Kingdom teaching. As per earlier observations, in this case the values are framed in the Eden narrative. The discussion must have been based on that. (In passing, Paul does this regularly too - so often he doesn't even flag it up at times. Did he get this from his early learning from the disciples, or was it a regular rabbinical thing? The Talmud rather suggests the former).
Why do I think this stress is important? I think it is important because it shows Jesus's teaching starts with the Kingdom as the goal.
I have to broaden my perspective at this point, as he is talking to Jews who were expecting rapid deliverance by a Messiah, followed by the start of the age to come. Jesus points out that in fact the Kingdom of God is very near, or within you. Somehow they and we were citizens of both Kingdoms, the temporal and the eternal. It's always been a stretch, and sometimes living in both causes us to come close to doing the splits. This subject is probably - currently - one of those things.
We cannot and should not kid ourselves that we are not to be in the temporal world. That way lies gnosticism. But what we are not to do is to lose that footing in the Kingdom. The warning about that pretty well every time - (at least if the repeated words of Jesus in Matthew:5-7 are concerned), is that to do so risks judgement. Removing yourself from the Kingdom puts you in the same boat as everyone else to whom God's promises mean nothing. Not that that should lead anyone to an angsty attack necessarily as if we believe God is good and merciful then we can rely on that. But I have to say that Jesus is exceptionally concerned about Kingdom things - they are the locus of his most insistent warnings. And there in the middle of them sits marriage.
So to step back from that excursion now, I have no issue with comments such as your: quote:
My reading of the gospels is that Jesus didn't like promise-breaking, didn't like dominance, didn't like demeaning, didn't like the application of the law with indifference to the burdens it produced, hated cruelty to others, exhorted care for the vulnerable. In the kingdom, these things were not to be so.
So he envisages marriage and divorce in these terms. His primary purpose in proclaiming that kingdom values point back to Eden is because he sees the need to return to the garden principles of mutual self-help, interdependence and support, relationships based on "agape". When it comes to behaviour towards others, "agape" is our principle in returning us to the garden.
That's true I'm sure. Where I differ is in the re-framing of these things back to legal (Jewish) or feminist arguments. I have nothing against either thing I hasten to add - I simply chose those two because I have already agreed with analyses on that basis. But like any critical methodology, such analytical frameworks must only be partial. They must perforce omit things and have limited boundaries, which are frequently far from clear.
The church then has no option - as Jesus's body here, now - to continue his teaching. And the Kingdom teachings come with pretty colourful warnings about getting them wrong. It may seem a bit academic for me to be insisting on what may look like a technicality, but I genuinely believe it isn't that. It's important because if we don't start with the Kingdom norms, we get into trouble with the next stage, which is how we deal with people who actually have suffered a divorce and wish to remarry. I have deliberately not addressed that, though addressed it must be, with love and compassion. But the dominical instructions must be understood first.
And so we come back to square one - this being Keryg! I think, in their own ways, both Matthew and Mark have tried to be faithful to Jesus' programme of announcing the Kingdom and its values in this matter. The evidence is those little giveaway clauses about women divorcing their husbands and separating for the sake of porneia. Even though I agree with much of what James Dunn says (maybe all of it - I'd need to think on that), my disagreement is that unlike Matthew and Mark, he has reframed his argument back into the Pharisee's camp where it's about Jewish law, reversing the whole of Jesus's project on this subject.
(ETA - oops! I missed seeing your most recent post. This response is to your earlier one(s).
[ 13. February 2014, 22:16: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Barnabas62
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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
I think it is important because it shows Jesus's teaching starts with the Kingdom as the goal.
We agree.
quote:
I have to broaden my perspective at this point, as he is talking to Jews who were expecting rapid deliverance by a Messiah, followed by the start of the age to come. Jesus points out that in fact the Kingdom of God is very near, or within you. Somehow they and we were citizens of both Kingdoms, the temporal and the eternal. It's always been a stretch, and sometimes living in both causes us to come close to doing the splits. This subject is probably - currently - one of those things.
We cannot and should not kid ourselves that we are not to be in the temporal world. That way lies gnosticism. But what we are not to do is to lose that footing in the Kingdom. The warning about that pretty well every time - (at least if the repeated words of Jesus in Matthew:5-7 are concerned), is that to do so risks judgement. Removing yourself from the Kingdom puts you in the same boat as everyone else to whom God's promises mean nothing. Not that that should lead anyone to an angsty attack necessarily as if we believe God is good and merciful then we can rely on that. But I have to say that Jesus is exceptionally concerned about Kingdom things - they are the locus of his most insistent warnings. And there in the middle of them sits marriage.
We agree again!
quote:
So to step back from that excursion now, I have no issue with comments such as your: quote:
My reading of the gospels is that Jesus didn't like promise-breaking, didn't like dominance, didn't like demeaning, didn't like the application of the law with indifference to the burdens it produced, hated cruelty to others, exhorted care for the vulnerable. In the kingdom, these things were not to be so.
So he envisages marriage and divorce in these terms. His primary purpose in proclaiming that kingdom values point back to Eden is because he sees the need to return to the garden principles of mutual self-help, interdependence and support, relationships based on "agape". When it comes to behaviour towards others, "agape" is our principle in returning us to the garden.
That's true I'm sure. Where I differ is in the re-framing of these things back to legal (Jewish) or feminist arguments.
I didn't think I was doing that. I thought I was framing them in terms of kingdom values. If they cohere with feminist arguments, good for feminism. If they do not cohere with 1st Century Jewish Legal arguments based on the Talmud - bad for 1st century Judaism!
quote:
The church then has no option - as Jesus's body here, now - to continue his teaching. And the Kingdom teachings come with pretty colourful warnings about getting them wrong. It may seem a bit academic for me to be insisting on what may look like a technicality, but I genuinely believe it isn't that. It's important because if we don't start with the Kingdom norms, we get into trouble with the next stage, which is how we deal with people who actually have suffered a divorce and wish to remarry. I have deliberately not addressed that, though addressed it must be, with love and compassion. But the dominical instructions must be understood first.
We agree again!
quote:
And so we come back to square one - this being Keryg! I think, in their own ways, both Matthew and Mark have tried to be faithful to Jesus' programme of announcing the Kingdom and its values in this matter. The evidence is those little giveaway clauses about women divorcing their husbands and separating for the sake of porneia. Even though I agree with much of what James Dunn says (maybe all of it - I'd need to think on that), my disagreement is that unlike Matthew and Mark, he has reframed his argument back into the Pharisee's camp where it's about Jewish law, reversing the whole of Jesus's project on this subject.
And here you lose me! I'll reflect overnight on what you are saying and come back to this point, which is at the heart of the key scriptures. I promise to address it in Kerygmania terms!
quote:
(ETA - oops! I missed seeing your most recent post. This response is to your earlier one(s).
I think my further explanation closed some, but not all, of the differences between us, but maybe you can reflect on that?
Thank you for your replies. I do realise how far out my neck is in this discussion, but it's been there before. And I am absolutely sure that this fresh focus on bad behaviour by men, given the cards they held in relationship control, provides a real insight into Jesus teaching on marriage. Not saying that is a new understanding. But it is at the heart of "From the beginning it was not so". More later.
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Adam.
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quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Interestingly, the position is very different for Catholics, since they argue that Mark's gospel is dependent on Matthew's. See here. So they would not agree the premise that Matthew and Luke dropped a line that Mark had in.
Haven't had time to properly reflect on everything going on here, but I did want to head this one off at the pass. New Advent is not a particularly good source for the start of current Catholic thought! Divino Afflante Spiritu declared liberty in subjecting such questions to renewed scholarly inquiry. Nowadays, you'll find the same diversity of views as to the solution of the synoptic problem among Catholics as Protestants. Certainly, every one of my scripture profs in seminary adhered to some variant of the now standard two source theory. An interesting historical question would be to try to find the first publication to propound it which received an imprimatur. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary would be an example, though I doubt the first.
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Barnabas62
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I'm quite pleased to hear that. I knew it was not the Traditional view. The linked article does appear to want it both ways though, given this summary.
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In deciding the priority of St. Matthew's Gospel in its original language and substance, to the other evangelical narratives, the Biblical Commission has solemnly disapproved of any form of those theories which maintains that St. Matthew's original work was not a complete Gospel or the first Gospel in the order of time. In fact those Catholic scholars who admit either of these theories regard our Greek Gospel according to St. Matthew as a work which goes back in its primitive Aramaic form to the Apostle of that name, and restrict its dependence on St. Mark to its extant Greek translation.
That didn't exactly read like an acceptance of the two source theory! It seems a way of maintaining the priority of Matthew while allowing a bit of scope for the two-source theory. How much is not clear.
But I'll be very glad if that summary lacks precision.
[ 14. February 2014, 05:44: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Barnabas62
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Honest Ron.
I think it best if I pick up my reply from your comment here.
quote:
But the dominical instructions must be understood first.
Back to scriptures. Here is the central "dominical instruction".
quote:
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.(Matt 19:5-6)(Mark 10:7-9)
(I have included the preamble to give the dominical command - which I have emboldened - its setting.)
If I take that first, since I think everything else, the porneia exception, the adulterous consequences, all hang from it, are subordinate to it.
I accept it is an eternal command from the Lord. It must be since it refers to the pre-Fall institution. It is subject to obedience by the application of the human will with the Gracious help of the Spirit of God.
So any divorce of a marriage made by promises to uphold that command is a breaking of that command. Whatever the circumstances. I think it is impossible to have a Christian view of marriage without believing that.
The only real issue for me is whether the porneia exception and the adulterous consequences are;
a) integral to that dominical command or
b0 explanations of its application in the first century setting (Law and culture, primarily the inequities of Jewish Law). And this is how I approach the answer to that question.
The inescapable problem for all our interpretations is that Jesus' teaching about kingdom values occurred in a particular time and place and it therefore illustrates the conflict between kingdom values and the legal and cultural setting in which they are expressed. I do not think we can escape the complexity of that. Eternal verities? Sitz im leben ("sit in life" sociological setting) verities? A combination of both? This is stuff we wrestle with every time we look at the scriptures. What I am convinced about is that Jesus' teaching exposes the inequities of first century Jewish divorce laws in a way that rings true today, in our very different cultural setting.
On the central dominical command, it is clear that Jesus articulated an "ought" and an "ought not". The above command ought to be obeyed. It is not clear to me that he articulated a "cannot" i.e. that the bond remains indissoluble regardless of human sin and weakness, because of what he teaches his disciples about adulterous consequences. I do not see how that can be disentangled from its response to the mess of 1st century Jewish divorce laws without making assumptions about what he intended.
Perhaps a bit wider than the normal Kerygmania approach but I do not think my reply would be complete without this quote. It gives an Orthodox viewpoint on divorce and remarriage.
quote:
According to the spirit of Orthodoxy the unity of the married couple cannot be maintained through the virtue of juridical obligation alone; the formal unity must be consistent with an internal symphony. The problem arises when it is no longer possible to salvage anything of this symphony, for “then the bond that was originally considered indissoluble is already dissolved and the law can offer nothing to replace grace and can neither heal nor resurrect, nor say: ‘Stand up and go’”.
The Church recognizes that there are cases in which marriage life has no content or may even lead to loss of the soul. The Holy John Chrysostom says in this regard that: “better to break the covenant than to lose one’s soul”.Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church sees divorce as a tragedy due to human weakness and sin.
............
It is important here to explain a fundamental element of the Orthodox Church’s doctrine, namely that the dissolving of a marriage relationship does not ipso facto grant the right to enter into another marriage.
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By the way, divorce and remarriage are only permitted in the context of “economia”, that is, out of pastoral care, out of understanding for weakness. A second or third marriage will always be a deviation from the “ideal and unique marriage”, but often a fresh opportunity to correct a mistake.
I think the Orthodox are right to practice "economia" in their approach to divorce and remarriage and in my very different nonconformist setting I assent to that summary.
Does their approach and my agreement to it contradict the dominical instructions? I do not believe it does. It undoubtedly risks doing so, but then it is my belief that a legalistic application does the same, just for different reasons.
These are very challenging scriptures, both to understand and apply, in the continuing context of human sin and weakness. I do not criticise those who in all conscience have a different understanding and application.
I hope Kerygmania Hosts will be OK with this diversion into application of meaning.
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Barnabas62
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PS Here is the link to those quotations.
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Nigel M
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There's one approach to this that could merge the Matthew and Mark versions (not merge textually – but rather contextually). This approach starts from the interesting hermeneutical approach Jesus takes in debates over interpretation with the Jewish authorities at the time. Here initially he could have stopped the discussion early once he had got them to answer their own question with reference to Moses, but instead he carried on, using the principle: What comes first in time carries more weight over subsequent events. The creation account trumps anything that follows and is the primary aim. It's of additional interest that Jesus did not see the event of the garden rebellion (often called The Fall) as a blocker to interpretation or application in life.
The creation principle trumped what followed; creation is the arche (= ἀρχὴ), often translated “beginning” though with overtones in Hebrew at least of the header, the starting and overarching point. I don't think it's a coincidence that Mark records Jesus as using the same Greek word for “beginning” as the LXX uses in Gen. 1:1 (arche). His whole gospel can be seen as “The beginning” of God's message (Mark 1:1 = Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου...) and, like John, picks up the significance of creation for the community of God's faithful and loyal followers.
Consequently I suspect that Jesus' audience would have been thinking about the wider issue of faithfulness to God as the primary driver for faithfulness to others; unfaithfulness is closely associated with the verb moichao (= μοιχάω, usually translated “to commit adultery”) in Mark 10:11-12 and Matthew's additional porneia (= πορνεία, sometimes translated “fornication”) in 19:9. A move into unfaithfulness in marriage is equivalent to disloyalty to God and the example of Eden provides the outcome associated with such disloyalty.
So it seems to me that Jesus' audience – and those of the gospellers – would not necessarily have divided their attention between a reading of Mark as “no divorce at all” and that of Matthew “...except for...” In fact it's possible here that the audience would have understood that divorce – using Jesus schema – is a breaking of covenant ('hard hearts' has that resonance), equivalent to the Eden breaking of covenant, and that Matthew's additional phrase would have been read as: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery. It goes without saying, I know, but just in case anyone was wondering, unfaithfulness in marriage is of course a breaking of the covenant already.”
So, in other words, what Matthew added parenthetically, Mark (and Jesus?) didn't need to add because it was assumed to be understood.
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Barnabas62
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NigelM, if I read you right, that explanation places the "dominical statements" and "the dialogue about marriage" (you may prefer other terms) firmly in the area of interpretation, or reinterpretation, of the Oldest Covenant. The primordial Adamic Covenant and its relationship in Jesus's day to the Covenant with the Chosen people. That would be Jesus the Rabbi at work, pointing out that faithfulness in marriage flows, from the beginning, into the overall requirement to be faithful to the Covenant with the Chosen People. In short, the Shammai Hillel interpretations do not seem to fully recognise this "from the beginning" connection.
Is this where you are coming from, or do I assume too much? [It sounds a bit like Eichrodt covenant-connected thinking but it's a long time since I read that]
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Nigel M
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It certainly feels like Jesus as a trained rabbi, B62, who hit the ground with his feet running when it came to his earthly mission after the baptism event. He was already identified as a teacher who could hold his own with the religious interpreters of his day and who already had a definite understanding of how to interpret the Jewish scriptures. While I suppose it's possible that the Son of God could have stepped from labouring obscurity into a master of hermeneutics overnight, courtesy of some spiritual brain surgery via the dove at baptism, I think the disciples already knew him as a rabbi before his overt public ministry began and therefore it is more likely that Jesus honed his skills during his upbringing and had already gained a reputation as a debater.
So – when it comes to his skills in interpretation – his choice of creation as the determining factor in this divorce debate is indeed a critique, as you note, of the then current views of some of the other rabbis, and wasn't an idea picked at random. It was a governing principle: in hierarchical relationships what matters for stability is loyalty. This loyalty flows in both directions – the junior partner serves the senior, the senior protects the junior. Break one of those directions and the relationship is off, with consequent damage to the stability.
On the subject of Eichrodt, I'm building the idea on “covenant” as worldview – the deep and often unconscious driver behind peoples' beliefs, mindsets, behaviours, emotions, and motivations. This takes it deeper than Eichrodt's approach, but then his studies pre-dated the welter of research into worldview that took off in the 1970s and 1980s. He argued for 'covenant' as a theme (the unifying theme, he hoped) that tied the biblical literature together, but because his focus was on specific instances in time of overt covenant activities (a bit here, a bit there) he found it tricky to rope in all of the bible. His approach to the wisdom literature for instance – or indeed the whole NT – was criticised for being too weak under the scheme.
When however 'covenant' is seen at the worldview level as the driver that informed the whole perspective of the ancient near eastern peoples, then it comes into its own. It explains a lot (everything as far as I can see) in the bible!
Nigel
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Barnabas62
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A kind of mega "Sitz-Im-Leben", Nigel!
All the best with your project. The way I remember it, Eichrodt's attempts to use Covenant as an integrator were regarded as only partially successful, and his approach to the OT was quite dissimilar to Von Rad's "Bits and Pieces" approach to the OT (which was a kind of anti-meta-narrative view).
NigelM, my rust is showing, as is my age! Thanks you for that very different and, as always, very illuminating insight into what Jesus was doing. Some other contributors to this thread may also want to probe. Hart may "leap as an hart" at the opportunity!
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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Let me see if I can get back into this.
Just a couple of points first.
Barnabas62 wrote: quote:
That didn't exactly read like an acceptance of the two source theory! It seems a way of maintaining the priority of Matthew while allowing a bit of scope for the two-source theory. How much is not clear.
But I'll be very glad if that summary lacks precision.
I think it's possibly referring to the more complex theories that came forward after the two-source theory was shown to be fine as a meta-narrative, but improbable at the level of individual texts. The more complex theory involves several potential layers of Matthew as well as Mark (not unlikely as direct apostolic teaching is committed to firmer forms over time, especially in a group that was in regular contact with other apostolic communities). I think the residual priority of Matthew exists in the earlier stages (a sort of proto-Matthew if you like), which is proposed as being involved in the earliest iterations of what came to be called the synoptic tradition. There are after all a few passages where Matthew and Luke seem to agree with each other without any input from Mark.
At least, that's if I've understood the explanation in the study version of the NJB - it takes several pages of small print! And it's always worth remembering it's still only a theory. It's all too easy to build castles in the air.
The second point is about that Dominical command "let no-one put asunder" or however your translation renders it. It's a bit unusual as the Greek has it as a 3rd-person imperative. English doesn't have third person imperatives, so translation is inevitably going to involve finding a construction to convey this imperative. I think the usual way would be to use the verbs to allow or to permit (in the negative here) to convey the meaning, though that in turn introduces a sense of (not) allowing or permitting an action which is absent from the original. It is imperative, not permissive.
Not that anyone here has interpreted it the permissive way, but I thought it worth putting the marker down.
Right. I'll see if I can engage in the other matters after lunch(!)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
We're in agreement over command, HRB. Don't see how it can be otherwise. The whole argument is about the consequences of command breaking, given that there are three parties to this specific aspect of the Covenant between God and human beings. The Senior and two Juniors! (I leave aside pro tem any issue of whether one of the two Juniors may be more Senior than the other, or how that issue was seen in Jesus time).
(As you can see, I appreciated NigelM's particular contribution.)
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Double post, while Honest Ron is considering. It is perhaps easy to miss this really important point by NigelM when considering the one Senior and two Junior parties to marriage entered into before God.
quote:
It was a governing principle: in hierarchical relationships what matters for stability is loyalty. This loyalty flows in both directions – the junior partner serves the senior, the senior protects the junior. Break one of those directions and the relationship is off, with consequent damage to the stability.
In Jewish eyes at the time there were two hierarchies in play here. The husband and the wife were both subordinate to God under the Covenant with the Chosen People. In the marriage, the wife was definitely subordinate to her husband. She was his chattel, his possession. Jesus was reminding the male disciples of of the consequences of disloyalty to their wives. By contemplating divorce they were being doubly disloyal. As the Junior partner in the Covenant with God they were being disloyal to him; as the Senior to the wife in the marriage covenant they were being disloyal to her.
And, as a secondary point, any wife who might subsequently have the power to divorce her husband, would have been disloyal to both her husband and God. Although I still think it unlikely, I can now see how that might have come into the conversation that Mark recalls; either the original one which Peter heard, or Peter's reflection on it.
This issue of covenant loyalty is what places the marriage covenant ultimately in God's hands. It is subordinate to the wider covenant between God and man.
This places the dialogues, including the porneia exception and the consequences of remarriage firmly in the context of the Jewish Law, and in particular, the understanding of the nature of the wider Covenant with God.
I think Nigel's insight is profoundly important for a proper consideration of the application of these scriptures today. The issue is loyalty.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
Yes, I think covenant considerations are most important, and NigelM's contribution was timely.
Firstly - the "2 hierarchies" POV - I agree. There's another point perhaps, insofar as this is a 2 flesh become one union, so ultimately, once married, it actually becomes a single covenant with God as the counterparty to the two getting married. I think there may be more to explore here too.
The question of unfaithfulness to God thereby being entwined with unfaithfulness to your spouse is a recurrent OT theme. I'm currently wrestling with the text of Malachi 2 on the matter, but the underlying text is distinctly elliptic. I think the NET translation has it most convincingly, but it's worth bringing in at this point. It has cultic unfaithfulness seguing seamlessly into marital unfaithfulness. I'm inclined to see it as lending support to my previous paragraph, but I'd be interested to hear other views. here it is anyway:-
quote:
10 Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us? Why do we betray one another, in this way making light of the covenant of our ancestors? 11 Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god! 12 May the Lord cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord who rules over all!
13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. 15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. 16 “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord who rules over all. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”
The point about "our ancestor" ("the one" in the underlying text) is difficult to translate with certainty, but makes much sense as a "back to basics" argument, similar to the way Jesus referred the Pharisees back to Eden. It's effectively saying "see what happened to Abraham when he took Hagar as a second wife to provide a Godly lineage instead of waiting. That went well didn't it?"
A couple of minor reservations. I'll leave of two of them as they don't affect the development of the argument. Though the third one is that I'm not sure how far we can go with covenant issues. I'm certain they need to be addressed. But ISTM that what Jesus is doing with Kingdom sections of his discourse is taking is beyond Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant. In a way it is the confirmation of eternal verities which map onto our finite world in an authoritative way. We need to make that change of gears at some point.
But in terms of Mark - quote:
And, as a secondary point, any wife who might subsequently have the power to divorce her husband, would have been disloyal to both her husband and God. Although I still think it unlikely, I can now see how that might have come into the conversation that Mark recalls; either the original one which Peter heard, or Peter's reflection on it. (B62)
As NigelM has it, I agree. I think we are at the same place on this one from slightly different directions.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
I found that to be a very constructive post. In OT terms, I'm also thinking about the possible significance of Hosea's strange "prophetic" marriage.
You sum up my own dilemma over biblical interpretation here. The faithfulness of God and the faithlessness of Israel is a recurrent theme in the OT, which I think was one of the reasons which underlay Eichrodt's attempt to see the OT in terms of Covenant.
And I think Jesus is seeking to transcend the prevailing Old Covenant understanding in its application to faithfulness in marriage (I mean more than just sexual fidelity here) I do see this as an argument about the Old Covenant which moves seamlessly into the New Covenant, and I'm not trying to create some kind of hermetic seal between the two.
Given this essential New Covenant summary (massively developed in the Epistle to the Romans)
quote:
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.(John 1:17)
what are we to make of indissolubility? One can argue that it is truth-filled. Is it really grace-filled? Was Jesus in his dominical command seeking to do that? How does a moral imperative become a legalistic straitjacket for dealing with the infinite variations of human weakness as expressed in imperfect marriages?
I think our interpretative dialogue (for which I thank you and others) still leaves that vital central question unresolved. At least for me.
Personally, I cannot conceive of divorce in the context of the very long and happy marriage which I am privileged to be a part of. Even remarriage after death is inconceivable to me now.
I've just seen too much of the other side to accept that a straitjacket against divorce and remarriage is the inevitable application of these scriptures. That feels consistent with the New Covenant to me.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
Barnabas62 wrote: quote:
And I think Jesus is seeking to transcend the prevailing Old Covenant understanding in its application to faithfulness in marriage (I mean more than just sexual fidelity here) I do see this as an argument about the Old Covenant which moves seamlessly into the New Covenant, and I'm not trying to create some kind of hermetic seal between the two.
That's fair enough, B62. To be honest, I only meant it as a note to myself (albeit of general relevance!). One of the hardest arguments involves trying to persuade somebody to see an argument within a different framing. But that's easier than getting myself to stick with it. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
I get the feeling that we have probably done enough on the examination of Mark exegetically. So then, as you say, "What are we to make of indissolubility?" To be honest, this really is why I have been following the Purg. thread rather than contributing. It concerns me. Just speaking of my own church (CofE), I can't honestly say we've got it right either. It doesn't seem entirely coherent to me.
I wonder if this is the thread to pursue that on or whether we need to go back to the other one - ?
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
I agree. The Keryg Hosts have been kind!
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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