Selections from Chapter 9: (Click here for full text)

 Can I Get Married Again?

We have seen that Jesus and Paul condemned the easy groundless divorces, but what did they say about remarriage? This is a very difficult issue for Christians mainly because the New Testament says so little. Jesus appears to condemn remarriage though, as we saw in chapter 5, he was only condemning it after an invalid divorce. Paul is virtually silent on the issue, but there are two good reasons for believing that he allowed remarriage. First, we will see that everyone in the 1^st century believed that divorcees could remarry – in fact, most people thought that they should remarry – and Paul says nothing to counter this belief. Second, we will see that while Paul does not say ‘divorcees can remarry’, some of his teaching is based on the assumption that they can.

Did you know that we have found a divorce certificate of Mary and Joseph? It is dated ad 72 so it was not the Mary and Joseph, who would have been about 100 years old by that date. ‘Mary’ was the most popular female name of the time and ‘Joseph’ was the second most popular male name, so it was likely that there were an awful lot of couples called Mary and Joseph. This particular couple were among a handful of Jews who were living on Masada during the final war against the Romans.

Masada was an impregnable fortress built by Herod the Great on top of a high rocky outcrop which was surrounded by steep sides. The only access was by a single very steep and easily defended path, so Herod made a safe and very comfortable haven for himself and a few privileged individuals. He had huge food stores and underground water cisterns the size of large basements. There were buildings for his servants and a beautifully decorated palace for himself. He even had a luxurious bath-house with an under-floor heating system. When he died, the Romans left a small garrison there but did not develop it in any way.

In ad 66 the Romans invaded Palestine to put down a Jewish revolt. They besieged Jerusalem and eventually destroyed it in ad 70, but some Jews had the foresight to capture Masada and fortify it against the Roman invasion. They managed to defend Masada till ad 73 when the Romans finished the huge task of building an artificial slope against one of the sheer cliff sides of the fortress and then roll their tall war engines up to the walls.

The Romans found not just soldiers, but whole families in the fortress, who all killed themselves to avoid being captured – men, women and children. The Jews had converted the fortress into a small village and had filled the food stores, adapted one of the buildings into a synagogue with a school, and used a wall tower for a bakery. They settled down and lived there in as normal a way as possible – within the constraints of being under siege by the Romans. People got married there, had children there, and even got divorced there. We know this because some of them hid their most valuable documents and among these was the divorce certificate of Joseph and Mary dated ad 72.

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