Listening to a Conversation: Divorce,the Torah,and Earliest Christianity

Abstract

The authors examine the interpretive processes underlying the positions on divorce advocated by Jesus, Ezra, Matthew and Paul. Their analysis reveals that, in each instance, the interpretations rely, not solely or even primarily on the explicit statement made by the only text on divorce in the Torah, Deut 24:1–4, but on connections with other Torah texts and traditions. Jesus, for example, used “order of creation” arguments, tantamount to interpretations of Deuteronomy through Genesis (i.e. divorce is unreal; the marital bond cannot be broken), and exegetical linkages that equate divorce and remarriage (neither of which has validity) with adultery (since the woman is actually still married to her husband). With converse results from a similar process, in Ezra's time, Shecaniah endorsed Ezra's decree enforcing divorce also presumably based on Deut 24:1–4. He seems to have assumed all foreign women to be “objectionable,” thus fulfilling the divorce requirement in Deut 24:1. In both cases, the process of interpreting assumes its results are part of the text and claims to have the authority of Moses. Matthew and Paul, both of whom allowed an exception to Jesus' apparently absolute opposition to divorce, seem, pursuing a similar interpretive strategy, to have equated Deuteronomy's allowance for divorce on grounds of something “objectionable” in a wife's behavior and the Torah's prohibition against adultery. The boundaries between text, tradition and interpretation were and are porous.