Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.4 The Character of Discipleship
loyalty. 147 The emphasis on matters of purity, so characteristic of the factional rivalries
of the time (§§9.3-4), was for Jesus an overemphasis. Such concern to keep
oneself separate from the impure, as a way of professing Israel's set-apartness
(Lev. 20.24-26), found no echo in Jesus' conduct and association with fellow
Jews, with 'sinners', or with the Gentiles he occasionally encountered.
e. Divorce
The other episode in Mark of direct relevance to us at this point is Jesus' teaching
on divorce — Mark 10.2-12/Matt. 19.3-9:
Matt. 19.3-9
3 Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him
thev said. 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his
wife for any cause?' 4 He
answered.
'Have you
not read that the one who made them at the
beginning "made them male and female", 5 and
said. "For this reason a man shall leave his father
and mother and be ioined to his wife, and the
two shall become one flesh"? 6 So thev are no
longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God
has ioined together, let no one separate'. 7 Thev
said to him,
'Why then did Moses command us to
give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?'
8 He said to them, 'It was because of your hardheartedness
that Moses allowed you to divorce
your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I sav to vou. whoever divorces his wife,
except for unchastitv. and marries another
commits adultery'.
Mark 10.2-12
2 Some Pharisees came, and
asked him, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his
wife?'. thus testing him. 3 He
answered them, 'What did Moses command you?'
4 They said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of dismissal and to divorce her'. 5 But
Jesus said to them, 'Because of your hardheartedness
he wrote this commandment for you.
6 But from the beginning of creation,
"God made them male and female".
7 "For this reason a man shall leave his father
and mother [and be ioined to his wifel, 8 and the
two shall become one flesh". So thev are no
longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God
has ioined together, let no one separate'. 10 Then
in the house the disciples asked him again about
this matter.
11 He said to them. 'Whoever divorces his wife
and marries another
commits adulterv against her; 12 and if she
divorces her husband and marries another, she
commits adultery'.
In terms of how the Jesus tradition was heard and passed down, the subject of
this pericope is one of the most interesting. For the memory that Jesus taught on
the subject of divorce is well attested, not only here but also in Q (Matt. 5.32/
Luke 16.18) and by Paul (1 Cor. 7.10-11). Here as elsewhere, the diversity of the
tradition should not be counted against its origin in Jesus' own teaching, 148 but
147. Holmen, Jesus 236-37: 'he clearly questioned the significance of the purity paradigm
in the view of the Jews as the people of God' (251).
148. As in Funk, Five Gospels 88-89, 142-43.
577