Selections from Chapter 12: (Click here for full text)

 The Teaching which Time forgot

Why did the church misunderstand Jesus so soon?

Almost all of the earliest church leaders, from the 2nd century onwards, believed that Jesus did not allow divorce and only allowed separation in the case of adultery. But as we have seen, anyone in the 1st century would have pointed out that this was a severe misunderstanding of what Jesus and Paul taught, so how could such a huge and drastic mistake have happened after such a short period of time?

Survival of Judaism after AD 70

The first reason is the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem which changed the whole world of Judaism and cut off Christianity from its Jewish roots. When the Romans defeated Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in ad 70, much of the Jewish world of the New Testament was lost. Most of the Jewish leaders died during the siege and Judaism was never the same again. The fact that rabbinic Judaism survived at all was remarkable and, according to a traditional story, it was largely due to one man.

Johanan ben Zakkai was a Hillelite Pharisee who was an expert in both Biblical interpretation and rabbinic law. He escaped from Jerusalem while it was besieged by pretending to be dead so that his disciples could carry him out in a coffin. The Roman guards were stopping everyone who tried to leave the city but they let this small funeral party through, probably helped by a bribe. When they were safely out of sight, Johanan climbed out of the coffin and, instead of escaping, he went to the tent of the Roman commander, Vespasian. He told the commander that Scripture said that the one who conquers Jerusalem will be king, and therefore he prophesied that Vespasian would one day be Emperor. Vespasian was very pleased with this and asked Johanan if he wanted anything. Johanan took his chance and requested the city of Jamnia to be given as a safe place for Jewish scholars, and Vespasian granted the request.

After the war, the surviving Jewish scholars gathered at Jamnia to establish a new centre for rabbinic law. They called it a ‘Sanhedrin’ after the religious parliament which had ruled in Jerusalem, though the Judaism which they presided over was very different from the Judaism of the New Testament era. A large number of Jewish groups virtually disappeared after ad 70, including Sadducees, Herodians, Qumran Jews and Shammaite Pharisees. The only type of Jews who had any significant authority in this new age were Hillelite Pharisees, like Johanan. Consequently the Jewish law from then on was interpreted in virtually every respect according to the traditions of the Hillelite school.

It is not surprising therefore that all divorces after this time were based on the Hillelite ground of ‘Any Cause" because even though its validity was disputed by Jesus and the Shammaites, as we saw in Chapter 5, the Hillelites were the only significant Jewish group to survive after ad 70. It very quickly became the only type of divorce to exist and from then on it was not called an ‘Any Cause" divorce but simply a ‘divorce’. The whole debate surrounding the legal phrase ‘Any Cause’ and the Shammaite slogan ‘nothing except ‘Sexual Immorality’" – which was as well-known in early 1st century Judaism as the term ‘maintenance payment’ is today – quickly disappeared from public consciousness. Within another couple of centuries these details had become obscure even to scholars.

More in this chapter...

Generations divided by language

Missing punctuation

God's word can cross the generations

Modern readers have to work harder

Scripture alone is not always enough

An explosion of information

To conclude: Crossing the gulf

We have seen that there was a huge gulf between the language and culture of New Testament times and the 2nd century Church Fathers, especially because of the destruction of Jerusalem and the complete change in Judaism at ad 70. Even without this type of cataclysm, we have seen that today we are separated from our own forefathers by changes in language and culture over as little as 25 years ago.

But it still seems strange that the early church itself did not notice that their teaching had changed, and it is equally strange that modern scholars have not pointed out this change before. These questions, which are potentially embarrassing to church theologians and scholars alike, are addressed in the next chapter.


Next chapter...

Chapter 12: Conspiracy?