Hello, all.
I'm very sorry for my relatively extended absence. There's been some illness in the family. My father has fallen sick again, and has been in the hospital for a couple of weeks. It has been touch-and-go at times. Your thoughts and prayers would be appreciated.
Anecdotally, I want to tell you that I don't know how I would have personally made it through the last month without a mantric, near constant recitation of either the Lord's Prayer or the Jesus Prayer. I don't understand the precise nature of prayer, and I suspect that it may ultimately be so many words against the wind, but it sure helps to ease my spinning mind.
Also anecdotally, I have noticed one thing in the interim since I last wrote about the gospel a few weeks ago: I do not feel as good about life when I don't have my head in the New American Bible on Saturday or Sunday morning. Differing kinds of negativity, malaise, and apathy sneak in much easier on those days when my mind drifts from the words of Christ. So, for whatever it's worth, understand that I write all of this not only for the grandiose benefit of the whole of humanity, but also for my own sake.
This is therapy, for me. This is medicine.
Today we arrive at Jesus' "Teaching About Divorce." Please note that the teaching we have before us today is multiply attested, so it is more likely to have actually been spoken by the historical Jesus than some of his other phrasings.
Without further ado, let's set it off.
(Actually, sorry, here's a little more ado: if this is your first time here, you can follow this link to the beginning of all of this. Reading this from the beginning will help you understand what this study is really about, and give you a lot of the context you'll need for the proceeding years of study on which we now embark.)
Matthew 5:31 through 5:32
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.’
32 But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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These verses require little interpretation. Once again, Jesus is altering the Law of Moses because he sees it as inadequate or obsolete. He tells his followers (again) that Moses' law was not strict enough. Whereas Moses allowed divorce for a myriad of reasons, or perhaps no reason at all, Jesus says that divorce is almost never moral, and, as we will learn, can only be performed under the extreme circumstance of infidelity.
As per usual, we're going to get into some of the ancient Greek here first. As you've seen occasionally, knowing the ancient Greek phrases from which the gospel is derived lends a powerful new dimensionality to our reading here in modern times. On the occasions that the ancient Greek doesn't inform some altered interpretation, it still behooves us to learn some of the Greek as a matter of academic exercise. In my humble opinion, a true gospel scholar can only describe herself or himself as such if they have developed at least a tertiary familiarity with Koine Greek.
After we learn some Greek, we're going to familiarize ourselves with the ancient Jewish divorce custom by checking out Moses' teaching on divorce as it appears in the Old Testament.
Finally, we'll look at divorce statistics in the modern United States of America, the most populous and powerful self-proclaimed "Christian" nation the world has ever seen. This will give us reason to conclude by riffing on modern Christian hypocrisy, which is, after all, the focus of this entire study.
Here are your Greek words.
In Greek
The first word we'll look at today is "divorce." Our modern Bibles come to this word "divorce" by way of the ancient Greek "apoluó" which could mean many different things. Potential alternative translations for this word include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Dismiss (as a teacher might dismiss a class at the end of the day.)
- Fire (as a totally incompetent executive might fire a highly competent Chief of Staff.)
- Unloose (as one might unloose a horse tied to a hitching post.)
- Uncage (as one might uncage an innocent child held captive by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.)
- Unhand (as one might unhand a person they had wrongly restrained.)
- Unbind (as one might unbind a person tied up in restraints.)
- Release (as one might be released from their wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the American prison-industrial-complex.)
- Send away (as the average American "Christian" might try to send me away if they heard me utter the truth about Jesus Christ.)
This terminology is a perfect example of why we like to look at the Greek. Just look how much more is packed into this one Greek word than we could ever extrapolate from its English counterpart as it appears in our gospel today. Many of these alternative translations would seem to indicate that a wife was, in ancient times, little more than a captive or a slave. This fact would not be obvious to one who merely read this passage in English.
The second word we'll check out today is one we've already studied just a few weeks ago. The word "wife," as it appears here, comes from the Greek "guné." To review, this is what we discovered about this word before, when it was coincidentally also our "second word of interest":
"The second word of interest today is "guné" which means "woman." This word is indeed very old, predating ancient Greek significantly, coming from a Proto-Indo-European word with a similar sound. This word relates to the English prefix "gyne" as in "gynecologist." This word is also directly related to the English word "queen." Another cognate of this word is the Sanskrit "jani."Please note that "guné" appears in the gospels many many times, slightly more often denoting a "woman" or "women" in general than a "wife" specifically.
What can one ascertain about Greek and Jewish culture by the fact that a "wife" would have been referred to by the same noun as any generic "woman?" To me, it speaks to the chattel-like condition of women generally in ancient times. Greek women were particularly repressed, although the lot of an ancient Palestinian woman would not, by any means, be enviable by modern standards either.
My fiancée certainly would not prefer that I call her my "woman," and I could anticipate severe repercussions if I did.
The next phrasing we want to look at is "unless the marriage is unlawful." This appears to be one of the only spots I've encountered so far where the New American Bible has strayed away from the original Greek by a considerable margin. Other Bible translations are closer to the mark when they translate this clause as "except for sexual immorality."*
The phrase "sexual immorality" here comes from the Greek "porneia." "Porneia" can mean several different things, including "whoring," "whoredom," "fornication," "prostitution," or "harlotry." The word "pornography" shares a common root with this word. Here, then, Jesus appears to make an exception to his strict rule on divorce: you may still get a divorce if your wife has been unfaithful in a sexual manner.
It is difficult to say for certain at this point whether or not Jesus felt that this was a two-way street - whether or not a woman could ask for divorce in the case of her husband sleeping with another woman. Since Jesus was a first-century Hellenized Palestinian Jew, we have to assume the worst here, but we can hope that he meant this rule as a two-way rule.
And that's enough Greek for today. Let's move on.
Old Testament Teaching on Divorce
The primary teaching of Moses on divorce is found in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy Chapter 24, we read the following:
1 When a man, after marrying a woman, is later displeased with her because he finds in her something indecent, and he writes out a bill of divorce and hands it to her, thus dismissing her from his house,
2 if on leaving his house she goes and becomes the wife of another man,
3 and the second husband, too, comes to dislike her and he writes out a bill of divorce and hands it to her, thus dismissing her from his house, or if this second man who has married her dies,
4 then her former husband, who dismissed her, may not again take her as his wife after she has become defiled. That would be an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring such guilt upon the land the LORD, your God, is giving you as a heritage.As you can see here, the ancient Jewish man may divorce his wife simply because he is "displeased" with her. Divorce among the ancient Jews was not considered reprehensible. This stands in stark contrast with Jesus' teaching, as we've just seen.
It is interesting to note that the common term in both ancient and modern Judaism for a "bill of divorce" is "get."** If a man wants a divorce from his wife, he must give her a "get," which may say little more than something like "you are hereby permitted to all men." The origin of the term "get" is not known for certain, but it is postulated that it comes from the ancient Sumerian word for "document."
In order for the divorce process to be complete, according to Jewish tradition, the get must be delivered to the wife, and she must physically accept it. The get must be hand-written, and must be written in a way that the text cannot be cleanly erased. A get may not be predated.
As we've discussed before, Jewish tradition says that only a man may initiate a divorce. A woman cannot offer her husband a get. An aggrieved Jewish wife living after the time of the Second Temple, however, can appeal to a Rabbinical Court, which has jurisdiction over marriages. The Rabbinical Court has the power to force a husband to offer his wife a get. If the husband refuses, the court may use monetary or corporal coercion of various kinds to convince the man to offer the get. In this way, women are allowed to initiate divorce proceedings as well, although it is much more difficult for her than it would be for a man.
To Jesus, the concept of divorcing your wife simply because she was "displeasing" in some way was immoral. Jesus expected that, if his followers married one another, they would stay the course of life together, through thick and through thin. This is perhaps one of his more significant departures from Jewish tradition.
Divorce Traditions of Modern American "Christians"
In 2014, the Pew Research Center conducted their second "U.S. Religious Landscape Study." This study was constituted by data gleaned from telephone interviews with 35,000 Americans from all 50 states. In the 2014 study, it was found that 74% of divorced Americans considered themselves to be "Christian." In that same study, it was found that 70.6% of Americans considered themselves "Christian." The significant fact for us here is that the concentration of "Christians" is greater in the pool of "divorced Americans" than it is in the pool of "any Americans."
Even when we consider Jesus' exception to the "no divorce" rule, American divorce statistics point to religious laxity or ignorance on the part of American "Christians." In an article published in 2013 by Shelby B. Scott of the University of Denver Department of Psychology, regarding a study of divorced Americans, we read the following:
Overall, the results indicate that the most often cited reasons for divorce at the individual level were lack of commitment (75.0%), infidelity (59.6%), and too much conflict and arguing (57.7%), followed by marrying too young (45.1%), financial problems (36.7%), substance abuse (34.6%), and domestic violence (23.5%).These percentages roughly match other American "reason for divorce" statistics widely available today. So, if 74% of divorced Americans are Christians, and roughly 41% of divorced Americans divorced for some reason other than infidelity, than that means there are a whole lot of "Christian" Americans out there divorcing against the rules prescribed by their supposed Lord and Savior.
All of this speaks, I think, to the general laxity of American "Christianity." It further informs my opinion that the word "Christian" is, more often than not, a fashionable emblem for the American to wear, rather than an actual belief system, morality structure, or mode of living. It further informs my opinion that American "Christians" are, more often than not, total hypocrites.***
I'll leave you with a related quote from my second favorite text of all time (after the Synoptic Gospels, of course.) Here's Leo:
"We talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But the hypocrisy of our society far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They had at least an external religious law, the fulfillment of which hindered them from seeing their obligations to their neighbors. Moreover, these obligations were not nearly so clearly defined in their day. Nowadays we have no such religious law to exonerate us from our duties..." - From Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You."The hypocrisy of our society far surpasses that of the Pharisees. Join me next time. Please share this writing.
Love.
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* The New American Bible is, despite its relative fidelity to ancient manuscripts, a Catholic text. The fact that the Catholic Church has particular and unique rules and regulations concerning marriage probably informs why this phrasing is slightly off here.
** I first became familiar with the term "get" from the outstanding HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Curb Your Enthusiasm is a great way to learn about some aspects of modern Jewish culture. And it is hilarious.
*** A hypocrite is one who claims to adhere to certain moral precepts, or preaches certain moral precepts, but in reality does not himself live by said moral precepts.
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