Context

Luke locates this cluster of three sayings about legal matters toward the end of Jesus' long retort to Pharisees who criticize him for associating with sinners (Luke 15-16). None of these sayings relates well to that context or to each other, which suggests Luke may have simply copied it from Q.

Editing

Since the first saying mentions John the Baptist, Matthew locates it in Q's earlier cluster of Jesus' remarks about John (see Matt 11:12-13//Luke 16:16 above). He bundles the second and third Q sayings with more sayings about Torah interpretation from other sources, which he inserts near the opening of Jesus' sermon (Matt 5). Matthew's version of all these sayings is constructed to illustrate his contention that Jesus was concerned to keep the Law of Moses. None of the other gospels --- including Q --- shares this emphasis. So Matthew probably revised the wording as well as the location of these sayings.

Links

The setting of these sayings in Q is as puzzling as their context in Luke. They may simply belong to a pile of unrelated sayings that were added to Q near the end, as often happened in books of the sayings of sages and prophets. But the fact that this cluster links John, violence and divorce suggests that it belongs to the level of Q that was concerned with the message of the Baptist. Other sources claim Herod Antipas arrested John for claiming that his marriage to his brother's former wife was illegal (see Mark 6:14-29). But Q does not mention this, and the only link between these sayings is editorial.

[For analysis and notes on Luke 16:16//Matt 11:12-13 see the cluster of sayings on John the Baptist above.]

Luke 16:17	Matt 5:18-19
17 "But it's easier	18 "Let me tell you,
for earth and sky to pass away	before earth and sky pass away
	not one iota,
than for one serif	not one serif,
of the Law to drop out."	will disappear from the Law
	until it all happens.
	19 Whoever ignores
	one of the least
	of these commandments
	and teaches others to do so,
	will be called least
	in the empire of Heaven." *

* See cameo essay on the empire of God

Terminology

"The Law" in question in this saying is the Mosaic Torah, which Greek speaking Jews, like Paul, generally referred to with the generic legal term (e.g., Gal 2:15-21). Iota is simply "i" -- the smallest Greek letter, the equivalent of yod in Hebrew. A serif --- the flourish on a letter in classical scripts --- is smaller still.

Attribution

Not one iota	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 16:17 Matt 5:18 Matt 5:19		6 0 0	18 3 0	24 21 0	53 76 99	25 09 00	grey black black

The historical Jesus was not a Jewish legal scholar. In a vote on a separate occasion, the Fellows rejected the thesis that he debated legal details like the Pharisees.

In Matthew this saying is presented as evidence that Jesus demanded observance of even the least important Jewish regulation. But this is contradicted by the Q saying --- which Matthew himself quotes --- that censors the Pharisees for nit-picking instead of focusing on the "weightier matters" of the Law (see Matt 23:23//Luke 11:42 above). Thus, the Fellows were unanimous in identifying Matt 5:19 as the personal opinion of the author of Matthew and not a Q saying, much less a genuine Jesus saying.

Matt 5:18 would also have been black by consensus were it not for the near parallel in Luke 16:17. Here the mention of changing heaven and earth is a graphic way to describe a difficult task, not a reference to the end time. Thus, Luke's version says that the Law is hard to change, not that it is impossible. Exaggerated comparisons are typical of genuine Jesus sayings. So this saying might have come from this radical sage who had a different attitude toward the Law than John the Baptist (see notes on Matt 11:12-13//Luke16:16 above).

Most Fellows, however, did not think that even the Lukan version of this saying could reliably be traced to Jesus. It is not well-attested and Luke's setting is clearly contrived. Moreover, it is hard to identify a situation in which Jesus would have been concerned about dropping serifs from the Law. Thus, the tally of the Seminar's votes on Luke 16:17 barely escaped being cast black.

Luke 16:18	Matt 5:31-32	Matt 19:9	Mark 10:11-12
	31 "We once
	were told,
	'Whoever
	divorces his wife
	must give her
	a certificate
	of divorce'
	32 But	9 "Now	11 And
	I tell you,	I say to you,	he says to them,
18 "Everyone who	anyone who	whoever	"Whoever
divorces	divorces	divorces	divorces
his wife	his wife	his wife,	his wife
	(except	except
	in the case	for
	of immorality)	immorality,
	forces her
and marries		and marries	and marries
another		another	another
commits	into	commits	commits
adultery;	adultery;	adultery."	adultery
			against her;
and one who	and whoever		12 and if she
			divorces
			her husband
marries	marries		and marries
a woman divorced	a divorced woman		another,
from her husband
commits	commits		she commits
adultery."	adultery."		adultery."

Permutations

There are four versions of this saying in the gospels; but these are traceable to just two distinct sources: Mark and Q. The context of Matt 19:9 is identical with Mark 10:11 --- a confrontation in which Pharisees test Jesus' view on the legality of divorce. Therefore, the former is probably a truncated paraphrase of the latter. While Matt 5:32 and Luke 16:18 differ in context and wording, both versions of this saying equate marrying a divorcee with adultery. Thus, the latter pair is probably based upon Q.

Yet even these pairs are far from identical. Most versions focus exclusively on the husband's initiative. Mark alone mentions divorce initiated by the wife. And while most accuse the male of committing adultery, Matt 5:32 instead accuses the divorcing husband of making his wife an adulteress. Moreover, only Matthew identifies a situation in which divorce would be permissible: when the wife herself is guilty of marital infidelity.

To further complicate matters, Paul --- whose letters are older than the gospels --- credited Jesus with opposing divorce, yet in quite different terms:

"To the married I give this command --- not I but the Lord (i.e. Jesus) ---
that the wife should not separate from her husband
(but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried
or else be reconciled to her husband),
and that the husband should not divorce his wife."
     --- 1 Cor 7:10-11

Here there is no accusation of adultery leveled at either husband or wife. Nor is the wife's separation from her husband equated with divorce. The only constant in all these variants is that Jesus is credited with advising husbands not to divorce their wives. So, the differences between these sources indicates considerable disagreement among early Christians about what he actually said or meant.

Issues

Divorce was permitted in Jewish law (Deut 24:1-4): a man could not remarry a woman he had divorced if she had subsequently married someone else, even if her second husband had died. And when a man divorced a woman, he had to give her a bill of divorce.

Judean tradition did not allow women to divorce their husbands, but Roman law did. Divorce was not an option for most Jewish women during Jesus' lifetime. But, as agents of the occupying Roman forces, the ruling Herodian family was a notable exception. According to Josephus, Herodias --- the granddaughter of Herod the Great --- divorced her first husband (Herod Jr.) to marry his half-brother Antipas --- who had himself divorced his first wife --- while her first husband was still alive (Antiquities 18.110, 136). This must have scandalized strict conservative Jews, like John the Baptist, who --- at least according to synoptic accounts --- told Antipas, "It is not lawful for you to have her" (Matt 14:4//Mark 6:18).

Mark and Q raise the issue of adultery; Paul does not.  Under Mosaic law adultery was a violation of a woman's bond to one husband. Both the unfaithful wife and the other man were to be stoned (Lev 20:10). Matthew, like the rabbis, recommends divorce instead. But Matt 5 is the only version of this saying that shows concern for what happens to a divorced woman. In a society where a woman's daily existence depended totally on support from male guardians, a divorced woman, unable to remarry, would be forced into prostitution to survive. But then she risked being labeled an adulteress and be subject to stoning.

Otherwise, the sayings in the gospels make a startling charge: an act that Jewish law permitted (divorce) is equated with an act it forbid (adultery). Q does not cite a reason. Mark 10:5-9//Matt 19:4-8, base this ruling on Gen 1:27 and 2:24.

Attestation

Against divorce	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 16:18 Matt 5:31 Matt 5:32 Matt 19:9 Mark 10:11-12 1 Cor 7:10-11		28 0 10 0 28 28	17 0 15 30 17 17	28 0 20 25 28 28	28 99 55 45 28 28	48 00 28 28 48 48	grey black grey grey grey grey

The variations in these reports makes it exceptionally difficult to establish the earliest tradition. Paul wrote before the gospels. Is his simple prohibition the original core or a loose paraphrase of a more detailed Jesus saying? Is Matthew's allowance for divorce in the case of infidelity original or an accommodation to later Christians who found the absolute prohibition too hard? Has Mark revised the saying to prohibit divorce initiated by wives, a reality in Greco-Roman society beyond communities subject to Judaic law? Did Q try to make it tougher by explicitly condemning marriage to divorcees? Or all of the above?

The debate over whether any categorical injunction against divorce echoed the voice of Jesus left the Fellows divided, as the voting table shows. The testimony is early and widespread, including an unusual reference to a Jesus saying by Paul. Moreover, an injunction that the early Christian community found hard to put into practice --- like Jesus' counsel to love one's enemies --- is usually a sign that it is genuine. Some Fellows held that the legal fencing skill exhibited in Mark's account was worthy of Jesus. And the common core can be interpreted as protection for women, who as divorcees were socially disadvantaged and forced into prostitution to survive.

Other Fellows raised opposing points. The divergent wording of all the versions of this saying clouds not only its original intention but its authorship. If the Markan version is prior, this saying is better traced to John the Baptist than Jesus. But Mark's context is artificial and there is nothing in Mark 10:2-9 that the gospel author could not have derived from Jewish scripture rather than from things Jesus actually said. Jesus was not a legal authority and probably did not engage in fine points of the Mosaic Law (see notes on previous saying). An absolute prohibition of divorce and remarriage could make it tougher on women rather than protect them. In any event, this stringent injunction is hard to reconcile with Jesus' well-attested reputation for permissiveness with regard to other rules. Besides the sources do not provide a plausible context for Jesus to make a ruling on this particular issue.

Such indicators counter-balanced each other in the Seminar's voting, leaving the weighted average for the Markan, Lukan and Pauline version just shy of a 50% weighted average. Both of Matthew's versions were generally regarded as later. In fact, the Fellows were unanimous in tracing Matt 5:31 to the pen of the author of that one gospel rather than to an echo of the voice of Jesus.