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Reviews
Divorce and Remarriage | ||
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New Testament Abstracts, Vol. 46, No. 3,2002 |
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This attempt at understanding the meaning of the NT leaching on divorce and remarriage argues that both Jesus and Paul condemned divorce without valid grounds and discouraged divorce even for valid grounds, that both Jesus and Paul affirmed the OT grounds for divorce, that the OT allowed divorce for adultery and for neglect or abuse, and that both Jesus and Paul condemned remarriage after an invalid divorce but not after a valid divorce. After a three-page introduction, the volume traces the history of divorce and remarriage in eleven chapters: the ancient Near East—marriage is a contract; the Pentateuch—the divorce certificate allows remarriage; the later prophets—breaking marriage vows is condemned; intertestamental period—increasing rights for women; rabbinic teaching—increasing grounds for divorce; Jesus' teaching—divorce on biblical grounds only; Paul's teaching— biblical grounds include neglect; marriage vows—vows inherited from the Bible and Judaism; history of divorce—interpretations in church history; modem reinterpretations— different ways to understand the biblical text; and pastoral conclusions—reversing institutionalized misunderstandings. Instone-Brewer is a research fellow at Tyndale House in Cambridge, UK.
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