Jesus, the Defense of Marriage -- and Other Unspeakable Acts
Were Christian values always family values?
R. Joseph Hoffman
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, Number 3.
In a book written in 1994, New Testament scholar Marcus Borg suggests that the Jesus of the Gospels, a shadowy figure if ever there was one, can be seen as a social reformer who stretched the interpretation of the Jewish purity code to its limits. "Purity code" is shorthand for a section of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus (18-27-all translations in this article are the author's based on the Greek text) that lists various prohibitions against certain kinds of social and sexual behavior. The code forbids fathers to sleep with daughters, women to sleep with donkeys, men to sleep with menstruating women, and men to "sleep with a man as with a woman" under pain of death (Leviticus 20:13). The code is too early to envisage "a man sleeping with a man as with a man," and says nothing, given the androcentric nature of the advice, to prohibit the unthinkable crime of a "woman sleeping with a woman as with a woman." Whether or not Jesus himself said anything about specific sexual taboos listed in the code is unknown-he certainly is reported as saying a few things about marriage-but whatever the case, it's beside the point. As a Jew living in the Mediterranean world, he was a social outcast and a religious zero for failing to find a nice girl, settle down, and raise a family. It is only when this historical reality is laid aside-for example, in the belief that as the son of God it is unthinkable for him to have had children (after the manner of Zeus? Really!)-that the question of his specialized and unusual sexual existence becomes insignificant. And so it was until the last century-insignificant. In Jesus' day, he was pricking at the goads of a system that equated homosexuality with the sacrifice of children to Molech (an "abomination, against nature," Leviticus 18:21), and in his longest disquisition on an aspect of the purity code (adultery: Matthew 5:27-30; cf. Leviticus 20:9), he doesn't have a word to say on the subject of active sexual relationships. This is more amazing when one considers that, in the same discourse, Jesus is given to define anger, murder, lust, and adultery (equating lust with adultery [5:28] in a notoriously priggish fashion that probably reflects the thinking of a married but sexually austere second-century bishop)-but hasn't a word to say about porneia, a word that can mean simply "fornication" but more often means homosexuality.2 A majority of biblical scholars would meet this silence with a shrug, as if to say, "Why should he talk about something that didn't come up?" I have a different question: Why doesn't he? The answer should embarrass the knowledgeable as much as it stuns the unaware: Jesus doesn't think of marriage as Christian. Nor does he think of it as "normative," as his own preference for all-male companions proves. "Marriage" is an immeasurably old social institution by his time, mythically ordained in the Garden of Eden as part of a fertility agreement, and he does nothing to challenge it. Because Jesus, as far as we know, never married, one can wonder why his expert advice is sought on a subject on which he cannot have been an expert. But the common view of New Testament scholarship is that the subject of "defining" marriage does not arise in Jesus' own lifetime and that the various contradictory pronouncements on marriage3 we find in the Gospels come from a later period, a time when divorce was the burning issue for Christians looking for a way out of "mixed" marriages, Christian-to-Jew and pagan-to-Christian.4 The early Christians could ill afford divorces: their numbers were too few and increasing at rates that varied widely from region to region and, with persecution always a threat, from decade to decade. Procreation within the sect was a surer way to expand than conversion-though both options were tried. Ultimately, the Jewish strategy of cultic endogamy as a mode of increase guaranteed the survival of the struggling sect. This perception-the idea of the "utility" of marriage-took a while to take hold. The earliest Christians didn't like marriage at all and tried to avoid it, probably in memory or imitation of Jesus and his ostensibly celibate community. The earliest literature is a tale of wandering charismatics and neglected widows, with the only prominent married couple-Ananias and Sapphira-being murdered by God for their selfishness (Acts 5:1-12), in contrast to the generosity of the all-male apostles. That community was, we assume, celibate, or at least single-sex, for a reason: the world was ending, if not immediately, then pretty soon; and, if soon, why bother to cooperate in the thankless task of propagating sinners? The Essene Jews of Qumran (the "Dead Sea community") held equivalent sentiments, and despite the drabble being disseminated by the proponents of the Third Quest (for the historical Jesus), the best way to see Jesus is still, in my opinion, as an apocalyptic preacher with resemblances if not connections to other world-denying apocalyptic sects. In such a community, marriage-Jewish or pagan-style-becomes an issue, an encumbrance, and a distraction. Why buy land (or hold back part of the sale-price of it, as Ananias did) when the land will burn? "Console each other with these words," Paul advises the Christians at Thessalonike in our earliest bit of Christian literature: "The Day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night" (Thessalonians 5:2). And simply to amplify Paul's encouraging words, the unknown author of 2 Peter, early in the second century, writes, "On that day the heavens will disappear in flames and the earth will be laid bare . . . and the heavens will blaze until they fall apart, and will melt the elements in flames" (2 Peter 3:10-13). Since Jewish marriage custom comes under the guidelines of property law, and since acquisition of property is to be discouraged in all apocalyptic systems, taking ("acquiring") a wife was contrary to the faith of the Christian community. Even normal human companionship becomes "lust" in this context, "carousal [with the opposite sex] in broad daylight, seeking pleasure, sitting at table, chatting away, reveling in their own ignorance and wantonness" (2 Peter 2:12-13). The Talmud specifies that a woman is "acquired" (i.e., to be a wife) in one of three ways: through money, through contract, or through sexual intercourse (Mishnah Kiddushin 1:1). Ordinarily, all three of these conditions are satisfied in rapid and predictable succession, although only one is necessary to enter into a binding marriage. In all cases, the Talmud specifies that a woman can be acquired only with her consent and not without it (Kiddushin 2a-b). For the early Christians, the terms of the contract were problematical: though divorce was possible, contracts were not made to be broken. Though bride price could be small or great according to circumstances, Christians were poor. And while sexual intercourse was considered (eventually) the "binder" rather than the modus of the contract, in the Hellenistic world, as much later in the history of sexual relationships, having sex often led to marriage as a consequence. Christians were hemmed in by apocalyptic logic, poverty, and the strong urge to chastity that emerges from the models of Jesus and his male and female followers-whether Jesus was the source of this discipline or not. A "Christian" as opposed to a Jewish conception of marriage develops against an essentially world-negating background-Jewish marriage being understood as an arrangement designed to fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:22, "Be fruitful, multiply," a creation-friendly rather than destruction-friendly view of conjugal life. As John Crossan has said, we can separate the "ethical eschatology" of Jesus, replete with its sexual corollaries, from the apocalyptic eschatology of his followers and interpreters, with its images of violent destruction. Yet in the social life of the community, and especially in the case of marriage and divorce, these two strains are combined. Bluntly put, there is no such thing as "normative" marriage-or indeed "normal" sexual behavior-in times thought to be extraordinary and final. The strange, disapproving tones of 2 Peter suggest that even adolescent conversation has become "lewdness." The early Christian conception can only look weird by modern standards: Paul advises that marriage is permissible because the end time has not yet arrived, and temptations to sexual lust must be controlled in the meantime: So, in a time of stress like the present, this is the best way for a man to live: it is best for a man to be as he is. I mean, are you in a marriage? Don't seek to be divorced. Have you been divorced? Don't seek another wife. If you do marry, you have done no wrong . . . except those who marry will have pain and grief in this bodily life and I would spare you that. . . . But the time we live in will not last long; and while it lasts, married men should act as though they had no wives. [1 Corinthians 7:26-30] It seems fairly clear that this text does not form the background for the sacramental understanding of Christian marriage that develops in the Middle Ages: the view is pessimistic, eschatological, and expedient-marriage is good because it gives people a place to release their passions (1 Corinthians 7:2-6). If it did not exist "in these times of stress," heaven knows what people might do. Although Jesus, as far as I can read the Gospels-critically and skeptically-never said a word about marriage, the early community did, or rather gave him the words to say. By the time the early Gospels were written, about a generation after Paul, circumstances had changed. Paul was dead; so too, we think, was Peter. Christianity was no longer primarily a Jewish religious sect, and its marriage laws, though based on Jewish rather than Greek precedent, had already gone through the period of eschatological refashioning. The Temple had been destroyed, rabbinical Judaism was a welter of nitpicking debates over every aspect of the Torah (codified in the Talmud), and, to make matters worse, neither Jews nor pagans saw the Christians as a legitimate religious sect. More important, a generation of Christians had grown up and old waiting for the second coming-a long time of abstinence for a sect that did not find its model of sexual purity among the cave-dwelling Jews of the Dead Sea. What could be done? The mythical encounter between some Pharisees and Jesus in Mark 10:1-12 is transparently an attempt to fix a problem. It casts Jesus in the role of Moses, the ancient lawgiver whose authority exceeds the opinion of the rabbis, in a controversy centered on the permissibility of divorce-not the sanctity of marriage. Given the parlous state of the community in the year 70 c.e., the Jesuine toughening of Paul's advice ("If you are married, stay that way: it won't be for long") is predictable. To the Pharisees' question, Jesus says "If a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery against her; if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:10). The statement is (politely stated) curious, because in Jewish law (the context where the controversy is supposed to occur) a woman cannot divorce her husband. Moreover, the Christian cult's view of divorce as adultery is unsupported in Jewish tradition. The rabbinical opinion of first-century Jerusalem was fully centered on Deuteronomy 24:1-a man who has married "a woman who fails to please him" can break the contract unilaterally, that is to say, "free her" to marry another man. If the second husband also rejects her, she is not free to return to her first husband "as she has become to him unclean." The penalty for adultery was clearly spelled out in the purity code and elsewhere. If a man "commits adultery," both the man and the woman shall be put to death (Leviticus 20:10). By simple inference then, Jesus' words concerning the indissolubility of marriage should entail that all divorced Christians, as adulterers, should be subjected to the penalty provided by the code: stoning.5 It is no accident that the medieval way around this inference was to insist on the sanctity of marriage as an indissoluble contract of a man and a woman-a prescription that arises from the propagative and missionary needs of the early Church. Furthermore, in arriving at the idea of the "sanctity" (later the sacrament) of marriage, there is the added element that adultery is no longer defined as an act against marriage (sleeping with the neighbor's wife); it is now defined as the act of divorcing a partner for any reason except adultery! The Lord (as Moses) had spoken. The bishops spoke later, but loudly. Jesus' editors' defense of the marriage act, however, doesn't make marriage Christian: it specifically leaves it Jewish in a contractual sense but now an all-but-unbreakable contract between "a man and a woman." The possibility of any divorce, as the Catholic Church would stubbornly insist, is excluded if the saying of Jesus is applied as a rule. But the existence of marriage as a Christian sacrament, as Luther and the Protestants rightly recognized, is also excluded-marriage is pre-Christian and Jesus does not reinvent it. And as the English church (but the Spanish Catholics first) recognized, there is that bit about "except for adultery." That may not apply to peasants, but surely kings must have both rules and exceptions. Jesus does not reinvent marriage. He describes divorce within a strange socio-religious environment. He does not suggest that marriage is a "sacrament," whatever that might have meant, only that the "union" of a man and a woman-which can only mean sexual union in his day-represents a procreative contract-an agreement to reproduce-that (according to his own rather unrabbinical gloss of Genesis 2:24) should not be broken. In one sense, it does not get less Jewish or more incoherent than that, since an "adulterating wife" brings shame on a husband and under the purity code must be punished to save the household from disgrace. Knowing this-that indissolubility could not be absolute-the Jewish writer known as Matthew inserts "except for unchastity" after the prohibition in 5:32 and 19:9, probably finding Mark's simple equation of divorce and adultery intriguing but incomprehensible. How can we make sense of this tangle of witnesses? What was Jesus doing with the purity code, marriage, divorce-or what was the early church doing with Jesus? Answering that one is difficult: Once you start fiddling with purity codes and marriage law, as Jesus seems to have been doing, according to Borg,6 can you end it? In little more than thirty years, marriage went from being the lesser of lifestyle evils (celibacy and virginity remaining the higher lifestyle choice in the Gnostic, Augustinian, and monastic traditions, surviving anomalously in the discipline of priestly celibacy) to being an indissoluble union of opposites dictated by the celibate Lord. On the one hand, this tells us something about the progress of "thinking about" marriage and the competing motives involved in giving it first grudging and then canonical approval. At the same time, it tells us something about how divorce and nonmarriage were initially endorsed: the former made taboo and the latter only rarely available except to a religious elite. There is no inkling in any of this that Jesus was pro-marriage (as opposed to anti-divorce) or interested in "family" values. In its long history, the church has had repeatedly to invent stratagems around the assertion-a very early part of the Jesus tradition (Mishnah Kiddushin 1:1)-that his message is designed intentionally to create divisions in families (Matthew 10:37) and that he rejected his biological family for its rejection of him (Mark 3:31 ff.), with later pious amendments made in the interest of covering over his contempt for the value of marriage and family life.7 But the question must be begged: What would Jesus do? What did he do? The answer is obscure, but a hint of it may be found in one of the most puzzling passages of the New Testament, coming in Matthew's Gospel just after the question of the Pharisees to Jesus about divorce (Matthew 19:10-12). Mark does not record this little drama; it does not (seem to) belong to Q-the hypothetical sayings source-and Luke is mysteriously silent on the issue. Here is my literal rendering of the passage:
His disciples then say to him, "If this [marriage] is the way it is for a man and woman, then [surely] it is best not to marry [at all]."And Jesus said to them, "But not all men can understand this teaching: only those who have been prepared [to receive it]. For there are "eunuchs" who are that way from their mother's womb; and there are "eunuchs" who are made this way because of men, and men who become "eunuchs" by their own hand, for the[sake of the] kingdom of God. Please try to understand. It does not matter whether Jesus is equating "sexless" (eunochos) with celibacy, castration, or (as I think) homosexuality in this passage.8 The meaning is clear in any event: following a discourse on marriage, the celibate teacher is asked directly about the "case" of the all-male community. The apostles reckon that, given the complexity of heterosexual contracts, not marrying at all would be the best solution. Jesus agrees. His advice is for hoi poloi, the "average." The dialogue is presented in a style more familiar from Mark's salon-style conversations between Jesus and his closest followers, always in a venue beyond earshot of the uncomprehending and slightly dimwitted multitudes (cf. Mark 4:10-12; Matthew 13:10-15). This gospel-within-the-gospel tradition includes other mysteries with decided same-sex overtones, notably the famous encounter with the "rich young man" (Mark 10:17-22), the youth's later and puzzling re-emergence as a naked runaway in Mark 14:51, and, most suggestive of all, the youth's presence in the tomb of Jesus (having regained his white robe) on Easter morning (Mark 16:16). The tradition fits broadly into the pattern of the "secret gospel of Mark,"9 the controversial fragment of a "hidden" Mark, which seems to include a more elaborate tradition concerning Jesus' encounters with the young man, possibly a homosexual baptismal or marriage rite undergone by early ministers of the tradition. It seems entirely possible that Matthew's continuation of the marriage discourse with the Pharisees belonged to Mark, his source, but was eliminated from Mark along with other elements of the "private" tradition because of its same-sex motif. In any case, the tradition is there; Jesus agrees-in language reminiscent of Paul's dissuasion: "Yes, it would be better to be the way we are-but not everyone is, or can be. Some know from birth the way we are, some know from experience, some choose to live the way we do. Try to understand that everyone is not like us."10 Jesus did not define marriage as the "union" of "a man and a woman" but defines the man-woman union as the (optional) form of contract that has child rearing as its purpose. The cult would not be spread by the priestly elite with their secret oaths to eunuchy or celibacy or same-sex partnering. It would be spread by the lesser union: the union of opposites, symbolically expressed by slurring reference to "the sons of this age [who] marry and are given in marriage" (Luke 20:34) that results not in spiritual perfection but in the seed of the Church. This recognition will dominate the canonical thinking about marriage from 1208 (when it is defined by Pope Innocent IV) onward. But the "sons of the resurrection," also called by Luke "the sons of God," do not marry. Jesus the Lord, the teacher of eunuchs, like Paul the apostle, seems to have seen marriage differently: with his band of spiritual brothers, he sees the homosexual union as less strenuous, more perfect, and more in keeping with the times. (c) 2005 R. Joseph Hoffmann
R. Joseph Hoffmann is Campbell Professor of Religion at Wells College and Chair of the Center for Inquiry Institute's Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. His most recent book is Julian: Against the Gailileans (Prometheus, 2004).
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