Jesus Against Divorce

Literary criticism tries to see the literary relationship between certain texts (like the Gospels, for example). Literary critics seek to find the way ancient authors used ancient sources and/or one another. They have placed a lot of attention on the three Synoptic^[1] Gospels. Because of their vast similarities, critics can detect a literary relationship. When reading the synoptic Gospels it is not hard to ask whether or not the authors used a common source or one another. After all, they were telling the same story. The question, for the literary critic, is: how do I 'know' whether an author used someone else. Specifically, how can I tell if Matthew, Mark, and Luke used one another? Literary critics began to look at the parallel texts and have discovered that, indeed, the Gospels are literarily related! I will look briefly at a few of their discoveries.

When citing the Old Testament, Mark 1:3 reads:

[A] voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'[2]

Interestingly enough, this is not an exact quotation of Isaiah 40:3. The original Hebrew reads a bit differently:

A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God."[3]

Now, Matthew and Luke,[4] interestingly enough, quote Isaiah 40:3 and it is in the same way that Mark quotes it. If Matthew and Luke truly were not using Mark (or a common source), why did they not quote the 'original' Hebrew or Greek Septuagint text (which was different)? Why are their quotations all similar? And the Septuagint, on the other hand, reads, "make straight the paths of our God." They must have been using (a) one another or (b) a common source.

The similarities do not stop there. The Synoptics also agree even in trivial matters like transitional phrases.[5] Sometimes they use even the same rare words.[6] Because of such similarities it is strikingly obvious that the Gospels were written not from 'memory' or simply from 'oral tradition.' It appears that each author of each gospel probably had a written document with 'sayings' or deeds of Jesus before him.

For reasons that will not be mentioned here, most scholars believe, contrary to the received Christian church tradition, that Mark was the first gospel to be written. Its style is very simple and crude; while Luke and Matthew's style is a lot more polished.[7] It appears that Luke and Matthew each had a copy of Mark's Gospel before them. Mark, being the earlier Gospel, usually portrays the 'real' Jesus; never hiding his humanness, never omitting 'unfulfilled' prophecies, and repeating even the 'shameful' sayings of Jesus. Mark portrays Jesus as angry[8] and even recalls how his friends thought He was crazy.[9] Regardless of the shameful sayings, the early Christians still kept what Jesus had said and continued to reproduce them.[10]

Mark 10:19 lists "Do not defraud" as a part of the Ten Commandments. The later writers, Luke and Matthew, both omit this phrase for it is not one of the Ten Commandments. It appears that later writers/authors realized this 'mistake' and went and 'corrected' it. It would seem foolish for a (theoretically speaking) later author like Mark to include a 'mistake' in his Gospel when, according to literary criticism, he certainly would have been using Matthew and Luke. Since we know that Mark wrote his Gospel earlier, it makes sense that they [Luke and Matthew] corrected an early mistake.

Another example of how literary criticism works has to do with something that is rather important ethically: divorce. According to the (later) Gospel of Matthew, Jesus allows divorce on the grounds of unchastity (5:32; 19:9). On the other hand, according to what we know from the apostle Paul and (earlier) Mark and Luke, Jesus said no such thing; He did not allow divorce on any grounds! Let us take a look at the passages we are discussing.

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell… It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matt. 5:27-32 NRSV, italics mine)

Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it." (Matthew 19:1-12 ESV, italics mine)

The words in italics have been added either by Matthew or by an early (liberal) editor. The phrase "except for unchastity" (NRSV) is "except for sexual immorality" in the ESV. We figure this out by seeing how the other gospels have preserved this same conversation. Fortunately, our earliest gospel, Mark, bears more weight in this argument; and Mark has no such addition:

And he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." (10:11-12 ESV)

Here, Jesus is clearly saying that divorce is not an option; the way it has always been. What God has put together "let not man separate." Luke, also, preserves this authentic conversation of Jesus authentically:

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. (Luke 16:18 ESV)

There a few things that one needs to know historically before one can understand the significance of this statement; namely, the idea that divorce is not even an option (just as God had not allowed Adam to divorce Eve). First, there were two leading schools of thought in Jesus' day: the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel. Rabbi Shammai was the more conservative of the two and he allowed divorce on the grounds of unchastity. Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, along with Rabbi Akiba, allowed divorce on grounds as flimsy as a husband's complaint that his wife burnt his dinner! All the followers of Jesus, along with the crowds, would have known that Shammai allowed divorce only on the grounds of unchastity. But, what about the disciples' astonished remarks? If Jesus was only restating what Shammai had been saying all along, why the need for surprise? Apparently, Jesus was not restating Rabbi Shammai's statement on divorce; He was creating something astonishingly new. He said that there was to be no divorce on any ground! As Luke and Mark have both faithfully transcribed, Jesus was a believer in the one-flesh theory: husband and wife are one flesh after marriage; onefleshedness allows no division.

Second, if the Matthean form is the correct form, did Mark and Luke (and Paul!) make up the idea that divorce is 'illegal'? And did Mark and Luke delete Jesus' additional statement "except for unchastity"?? It seems highly unlikely that both Mark and Luke went through and made Jesus' statements more hard to bear!! No, Matthew went in (or a later editor) and added that phrase, due to the hardness of his heart [sic!]. That sounds more reasonable. Men changing the biblical text to suit their purposes.

Third, if Jesus was siding with Shammai's views, would He not be simply siding with the "hardness" of the hearts of men? Would He not, then, be nullifying His own words (i.e. "What God has joined together let not man separate").

We must now consider Paul's statements to the Corinthians:

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. (1 Corinthians 7:10-11 ESV)

Paul is telling the Corinthians that if someone does divorce, they cannot remarry. In fact, it is preferable that they be reconciled. Paul did not know of the Matthean form; he knew only of Mark's and Luke's version of Jesus' 'command' on divorce. It should be obvious now that Matthew's addition is exactly that: an addition. It is an intrusion into the biblical text that causes more problems than it solves (and more divorces!). One of North America's greatest biblical scholars (who was also an NT textual critic) was Bruce Manning Metzger, he argued that Matthew's form was a later Christian modification.[11] We can now eliminate the Matthean form as uninspired and spurious.

What has literary criticism done for us? How has it deepened our knowledge of the Bible? For the most part it has only shown us bare 'facts' about the biblical texts; it has not really provided us with any spiritual 'food.' Nevertheless, we can get glimpses into the past and 'see' how our biblical books were written (and edited). We can 'see' how ancient scribes have muddled the text. We can even eliminate some of these rather harmful changes (such as the one endorsing divorce). Literary criticism basically tries to criticize the 'literature' ("criticism" not being a derogative term here).

[1] The Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These Gospels are called 'synoptic' because they are so alike. They appear to have been influenced by one another; and thus can even be placed parallel one to the other and seen together. The Greek word synopsis means 'a seeing together.'

[2] NIV

[3] NIV

[4] Matt. 3:3, Luke 3:4

[5] Matt. 19:13, Mark 10:13, Luke 18:15

[6] Matt. 9:1-17, Mark 2:1-22, Luke 5:17-39

[7] If Mark used Luke and/or Matthew, why would he make a polished book cruder?

[8] Mark 3:5

[9] Mark 3:21

[10] As can be seen in Matt. 10:23 and Mark 9:1. Both seem to state that Christ will return imminently.

[11] Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2^nd Ed. 1983), 163.