'I'm divorced. Can I get married in your church?'. As a Baptist minister, I was regularly asked this question, especially by Catholics and Anglicans. The traditional answer is: 'Sorry, but Jesus taught that remarriage is equivalent to adultery.'
The church started to misunderstand divorce when it separated from the synagogue and lost touch with its Jewish roots. After doing a doctorate in first century Judaism, I found myself reading the New Testament with a completely new understanding - through their eyes, so to speak. I remember the surprise I experienced when I read the texts on divorce and found that they now made sense! I could see that Jesus and Paul were affirming the Old Testament teaching and refuting Jewish misinterpretations. They affirmed the ground for divorce in Deuteronomy 24.1 (adultery) and the other grounds for divorce in Exodus 21.10f (physical and emotional neglect). What surprised me more was that almost no Christian has written about the grounds for divorce in Ex. 21.10f, though any knowledgeable Jew is very familiar with them. Unfortunately there is room here only to discuss Deuteronomy 24.1.
Memorised summaries
Jesus was invited to take part in a debate which was well known in the Jewish world. We find a record of that debate in the Mishnah, which is a collection of early Pharisaic writings. The name 'Mishnah' means 'to repeat' or 'to memorise', because it was originally the memorised summaries of the important debates on the meaning of the Law. These summaries are often highly stylised and abbreviated to aid memorisation. Any details or phrases which were obvious to a first century Jew are omitted. We find the same kind of abbreviation in many Gospel passages, especially in Mark, though Matthew and Luke are often less abbreviated, and John is sometimes quite verbose!
