Someone emailed:
Jesus never mentions remarriage. You say that Mark left out part of Jesus' teaching. Did Luke, who was known for his completeness also cut short the teaching of Jesus. And did Paul also leave out Jesus' teachings in Romans and in I Cor. ?
Reply: True, but Jesus never condemns polytheism or sex outside marriage. Every living Jew believed there was only one God, that sex was limited to marriage, and that remarriage was allowed after a valid divorce. Jesus taught that the 'Any Matter' divorces of the Hillelilites (which had become so popular it was virtually the only kind of divorce) was invalid, so if anyone remarried after an invalid divorce they were, in effect, committing adultery.
Luke left out lots of things which are in Mark. Paul left out almost everything in the Gospels. In the area of divorce, Paul doesn't mention anything about porneia. And everyone abbreviated what Jesus said. As John says, there wasn't enough papyrus in the world to record his words verbatim.See also "Is Remarriage Adultery?" in Divorce & Remarriage in the Church
3 comments:
I may have misread your response but it appears as if you are agreeing with the writer that Jesus never mentioned remarriage. If so, I must respectfully but firmly disagree.
Jesus is recorded as very clearly addressing remarriage in at least four different passages. Matthew 5:32, 19:9, Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18.
As you say, Jesus does mention remarriage, but only so far as to say that marriage after an invalid divorce is the same as adultery (because you are still married).
Jesus doesn't get round to talking about remarriage after valid Biblical grounds for divorce, about which there was no debate within Judaism, and which Jesus doesn't appear to disagree with. My point was that we don't find Jesus talking about issues where he agreed with everyone (eg prohibition of rape or sex before marriage); or, if he did, the Gospel writers didn't spend precious space recording them.
Very weak arguement the word of God does mention rape and polythiesm, God does not have to repeat himself. The fact is you have to infer and argue from silence that a person can remarry when Jesus does not say so.
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