Thus Jesus says-to a wealthy young man seeking his advice on gaining eternal life-to keep six commandments: do not kill, commit adultery, steal, or bear false witness honor one’s father and mother love your neighbor as yourself.
“If in John, Jesus is the word made flesh, it is safe to say that in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the Torah made human,” Johnson says. This interpretation places Jesus as the messianic interpreter, even a living embodiment, of the Torah. Matthew's literary style tells the reader why events happened, point by point, from the virgin birth to Jesus’ betrayal by Judas. Johnson argues that Matthew's characterization of Jesus must be understood within the symbols associated with Torah in the formative Judaism contemporaneous with the Gospel. The one who can accept this should accept it.” For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others-and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The disciples go on in Matthew to say to Jesus, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” And Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. In a world where men were allowed to divorce wives for causes as “trivial as burning dinner,” (House of Hillel, first century BCE), says Johnson, these comments condemning divorce might, in fact, be viewed as unexpected. While statements in the Bible concerning divorce do not entirely agree in every detail, it is “plain enough that Jesus does not approve of divorce,” Johnson adds. In the second, the Pharisees question Jesus, saying: “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause?” And Jesus answers by attributing that command to their “hardness of heart” (Mark 10:5) and appealing to the order of creation found in Genesis, concluding that man and woman are not two but one (10:8), and that what God has joined humans should not separate (10:9). In the first, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, except on the grounds of porneia (sexual immorality), makes her an adulteress and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31-32). Just “what is asked of us” can be found in two passages of Matthew’s gospel pertaining to Jesus’s dictates on marriage and divorce – passages that have received “obsessive attention,” says Johnson.
McDonald Lecture in Christianity and Law at Emory Law as part of CSLR’s “When Law and Religion Meet” lecture series. Johnson, a world-renowned scholar on Christianity and its origins, spent a decade as a Benedictine monk before marrying he now has thirteen grandchildren. “The question ought not to be ‘What is allowed,’ but rather, and always, ‘What is asked of us?’ ” Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins in the Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow of Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR). “Don’t read the text to support present proclivities,” says Johnson, Robert W. While many look to the Bible for guidance on matters of morality, including marriage and divorce, Professor Luke Timothy Johnson says mining the good book for what is “permissible” may be shortsighted.
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