Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities

To many people, the Bible appears to have nothing sensible or relevant to say about divorce and remarriage. Its teaching often seems harsh and in saying that the only ground for divorce is adultery, it appears to condemn the victims of marital abuse to a lifetime sentence with their partner.

New research into the background literature of the Bible, the ancient Near East and ancient Judaism shows that the original hearers of these teachings would have understood them very differently. It has revealed that:

• Jesus and Paul rejected no-fault divorces and emphasised that divorce should be avoided if at all possible.

• 1^st century Jewish men and women could get divorced for neglect or abuse as well as for adultery. Jesus did not reject these grounds and Paul specifically affirmed them.

• In the 1^st century, remarriage was the right of every divorcee and neither Jesus nor Paul taught otherwise.

Introduction: What’s new?

"So, what do you do for a living?" the young man asked me with a barely stifled yawn. He was trying to sell me a time-share apartment and I was trying to get a free holiday without buying anything. I had to pretend to be interested in his product and he had to pretend to be interested in me.

"I study the Bible at a research institute in Cambridge."

He looked up suspiciously, as though he had caught me lying: "I thought they’d have finished studying the Bible by now. What else is left for you to find out?"

I’d like to say that I took the opportunity to present the Gospel to him, but I think I merely assured him that this was indeed what I did for a living and that there was lots of Biblical research left to be done.

It’s an unfortunate fact that there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of the language, culture and archaeology of the Bible. The 1^st century especially has been less well understood because fewer non-Biblical documents have survived than from surrounding centuries. At present, however, our knowledge of the 1^st century is expanding rapidly because we are beginning to properly understand the Dead Sea Scrolls and early rabbinic traditions as well as new scraps of ancient texts which are still being published.

The findings in this book are based on a multitude of new discoveries and academic publications by myself and others. The most important of these are as follows:

• Dead Sea scroll fragments dealing with divorce, which help us to understand the other scrolls.

• Newly discovered Jewish divorce certificates such as one written by a Jewish man on Masada in ad 72 and one written by a Jewish woman in about ad 125.

• Over 200 Aramaic, Greek and Latin marriage and divorce papyri which have been collected together for the first time.

• Rabbinic evidence which can now be dated to the 1^st century

• Publication of hundreds of new Samaritan documents, including ancient marriage contracts

• Publication and analysis of all the Rabbinic and Karaite marriage and divorce documents from the Geniza of the Cairo Synagogue

This wealth of new information gives us a much greater understanding of how people spoke and lived in the 1^st century and, as a result, we can read the New Testament with fresh insight. We are closer than ever before to understanding what it meant to its very first hearers and readers – and to understanding what God says to us today.