442: Talmudic Matthew — Marriage

Summary

The BEMA Podcast: Talmudic Matthew — Marriage (Episode 442)

Host/Author: BEMA Discipleship
Release Date: March 20, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 442 of The BEMA Podcast, titled "Talmudic Matthew — Marriage," hosts Marty Solomon and Brent Billings are joined by guest Elle Grover Fricks to delve into Jesus's teachings on divorce within their Jewish and Roman contexts. This episode investigates the historical underpinnings of biblical passages, explores Talmudic divorce laws, examines Roman marriage customs, and reflects on the implications for contemporary Christian practices.

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Setting the Stage: Biblical Context of Divorce (00:00 – 19:50)

The discussion opens with a reading of Matthew 5:31-32, where Jesus addresses divorce:

Brent Billings [00:43]: “And it was said, whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife is, except for a matter of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Elle Grover Fricks emphasizes the complexity behind what seems like straightforward biblical directives:

Elle Grover Fricks [01:59]: “If we remember our six columns that we made a couple weeks ago, one of those columns was thinking about the possibility for harm, which seems to be something that Jesus cares about when he talks about teaching and hermeneutic.”

The conversation highlights the broad term "porneia" (translated as sexual immorality) used by Jesus, prompting questions about its exact meaning and application. Elle critically examines Deuteronomy 24, where divorce is permitted under vaguely defined circumstances such as "indecent" or "objectionable" behavior, revealing the ambiguity and potential for misuse:

Elle Grover Fricks [04:59]: “Here's a list. Unseemly, indecent, offensive, unclean, inappropriate, objectionable, and vile. That's a really confusing list to me.”

Marty Solomon references the manuscript discrepancies regarding interpretations by Hillel and Shammai, underscoring the complexities in translating and understanding these texts accurately.

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Intertextual Insights: Malachi and First Corinthians (05:17 – 19:50)

Brent reads Malachi 2:16:

Brent Billings [05:24]: “The man who hates and divorces his wife, says the Lord, the God of Israel does violence to the one he should protect, says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard and do not be unfaithful.”

Elle points out the inconsistency between traditional translations and more accurate ones, stressing the need for humility and openness in interpreting these passages:

Elle Grover Fricks [08:23]: “So before we had, if you're going to divorce, you need a get. As Marty's talked about previously, you need a certificate here. It feels like God's saying, don't do that right, violence is bad.”

Marty shares a personal reflection on the misinterpretation of Malachi 2:16:

Marty Solomon [08:52]: “That's literally not what the verse says. But translators have done this, this, this, this, this, and now like how many times have I heard that verse? God hates divorce.”

They discuss 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul provides further nuanced rules about marriage and divorce, especially concerning marriages between believers and unbelievers. This adds another layer of complexity to the discussion, making the biblical stance on divorce far from black and white.

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Talmudic Divorce Laws: Detailed Examination (14:06 – 19:50)

Elle Grover Fricks humorously outlines the intricate Talmudic laws surrounding divorce, highlighting their stringent and sometimes archaic nature:

Elle Grover Fricks [14:06]: “Mitzvah number two, it is often said that women cannot write a divorce letter... women are still hugely under empowered to leave abusive situations in conservative Jewish communities.”

Key points include:

1. Materials for Divorce Letters: Allowed materials are ink, dye, red chalk, resin, or copper; prohibited is fruit juice due to its transient nature.

2. Witness Requirements: Two male witnesses are needed, excluding Samaritans and women, reinforcing gender power imbalances.

3. Personalization: Divorce certificates must be specific to the individual, preventing reuse or misapplication.

4. Formal Delivery: The letter must be personally handed to the wife, ensuring acknowledgment and formal closure.

Elle enumerates a list of 13 reasons permissible for divorce under Talmudic law, ranging from personal grievances like making unattractive clothes to more severe accusations like fornication and infertility. This extensive list paints a grim picture of the societal and legal constraints on marriage:

Elle Grover Fricks [17:24]: “Here's a list of reasons you can divorce a woman without even giving her her 200 silver pieces back for her dowry... if she struggles with infertility for 10 years.”

Marty comments on the rigidity and often petty nature of these laws:

Marty Solomon [19:11]: “Goodness, what a list. So it would appear that Jesus is offering some color commentary on that.”

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Roman Marriage Customs: A Comparative Analysis (25:44 – 31:39)

Transitioning to the Roman context, Elle explores three types of Roman marriages and their implications:

1. Confarreatio: A marriage reserved for the ruling class, characterized by elaborate rituals including sacrifices and public ceremonies. Divorce is rare and primarily political.

2. Coemptio: Commoners engage in marriage through a symbolic purchase, where the wife's identity is subsumed under the husband's, allowing for easy dissolution without formal procedures.

3. Usus: A form of "common-law" marriage where living together for a year equates to legal marriage, and separation occurs simply by one partner leaving for three days.

Elle humorously critiques the lack of meaningful divorce processes in Roman marriages, contrasting them with the structured, albeit oppressive, Jewish laws.

Elle Grover Fricks [26:39]: “Minus the pig sacrifice. Our quote unquote Christian weddings are 100% modeled off of these banana Roman traditions.”

The hosts discuss how these differing Roman marriage practices influenced societal attitudes towards marriage and divorce, noting the laissez-faire approach's challenges in ensuring marital stability and justice.

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Jesus’s Interpretation and Modern Implications (32:24 – 36:47)

Marty reflects on his academic exploration of 1 Corinthians 7, drawing parallels to Jesus's approach:

Marty Solomon [32:24]: “I kept wondering if not really Paul's doing both. But I mean, is Paul doing both? Like he's dealing with a culture where he's trying to give... options within a biblical ethic.”

Elle and Marty suggest that Jesus aimed to balance the rigid and overly permissive approaches to marriage, advocating for a covenantal relationship that honors both partners and safeguards against abuse.

Elle extends the discussion to contemporary applications, urging listeners to evaluate how modern marriages honor and protect individuals:

Elle Grover Fricks [34:16]: “How are we honoring one another? How are we putting up safe fences against harm and abuse and abuse on both sides?”

They advocate for reforms at multiple levels—personal, communal, and societal—to ensure marriages are entered and maintained with respect, safety, and genuine commitment.

Marty Solomon [36:11]: “As a spiritual leader in those spaces, the two that just immediately fly off as those same principles... we love to hold biblical morality as a high like this adherence to whatever code as more important than the safety and flourishing of the human beings.”

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Conclusion: Reflecting on Cultural Sensitivity and Application (37:11 – 38:18)

The episode wraps up with a lighter tone as Elle and Marty acknowledge the humorous aspects of their discussion but reaffirm the serious underlying issues:

Elle Grover Fricks [37:11]: “Ghosting other buzzwords that'll come to mind soon.”

They tease the upcoming episode on oaths, promising further exploration of historical contexts and their relevance today. The hosts emphasize the importance of understanding and applying biblical teachings with cultural sensitivity and a focus on human flourishing.

Elle Grover Fricks [37:54]: “Next episode we're talking oaths. There's plenty of craziness that feels at first a lot less applicable to us.”

Brent concludes by inviting listeners to engage further with the podcast:

Brent Billings [37:50]: “But you can find all the details about our [e-mail]... Wrestle on. And we'll talk to you again soon.”

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Key Takeaways

• Historical Context Matters: Understanding the Jewish and Roman cultural landscapes is crucial for interpreting Jesus’s teachings on divorce.

• Complexity of Divorce Laws: Both Talmudic and Roman laws reveal systemic gender biases and societal constraints that influenced biblical scriptures.

• Jesus’s Balanced Approach: Jesus sought to mitigate the extremes of rigid and permissive marriage practices, emphasizing covenantal integrity and protection against harm.

• Modern Relevance: Lessons from historical contexts inform contemporary discussions on marriage, urging a focus on mutual respect, safety, and genuine commitment within Christian communities.

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Notable Quotes

• Elle Grover Fricks [04:59]: “Here's a list. Unseemly, indecent, offensive, unclean, inappropriate, objectionable, and vile. That's a really confusing list to me.”

• Marty Solomon [08:52]: “That's literally not what the verse says. But translators have done this, this, this, this, this, and now like how many times have I heard that verse? God hates divorce.”

• Elle Grover Fricks [17:24]: “Here's a list of reasons you can divorce a woman without even giving her her 200 silver pieces back for her dowry... if she struggles with infertility for 10 years.”

• Marty Solomon [19:11]: “Goodness, what a list. So it would appear that Jesus is offering some color commentary on that.”

• Elle Grover Fricks [34:16]: “How are we honoring one another? How are we putting up safe fences against harm and abuse on both sides?”

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This episode of The BEMA Podcast offers a profound examination of marriage and divorce through historical, cultural, and theological lenses, encouraging listeners to engage thoughtfully with scripture and apply its principles with empathy and justice in today’s world.

Transcript

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Foreign.

[Brent Billings]

This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today we are joining Elle Grover Fricks to contextualize Jesus teaching on divorce in its Jewish and Roman landscape.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

I'm looking forward to it.

[Marty Solomon]

What do we need to contextualize about this, Elle? We know everything there is to know.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

It's so clear cut, it's so black and white. Easy peasy.

[Marty Solomon]

We've never hurt anybody with this passage or anything. There's no reason to spend time here.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

No, absolutely not. And nevertheless, whoopsie daisies. Here we are another re going over the same straightforward things.

[Brent Billings]

Oops. All context.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Yeah, yeah. So Jesus has been laying it out for us. We are supposed to be Torah in the world. We are part of God's household and so we are supposed to be walking these things out. Jesus has divine authority and this is how he's instructing us to follow Torah, to interpret Torah. And so we've had anger, we had lust, we had. That's it. Now we're in divorce, now we're in marriage. Let's be more positive. We're talking about marriage today. So we're going to do the actual text and we're going to talk about that pesky little possibility for harm. And then we're going to do the Talmudic conversation and the Roman conversation. So there's your outline, there's your path. That's what we're doing today. Brent, would you mind reading verses 31 and 32 of Matthew 5 for us?

[Brent Billings]

And it was said, whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife is, except for a matter of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Amazing.

[Brent Billings]

Clear cut, as you said.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Yeah, right. If we remember our six columns that we made a couple weeks ago, one of those columns was thinking about the possibility for harm, which seems to be something that Jesus cares about when he talks about teaching and hermeneutic. And we want to enter this episode with the awareness that divorce has affected just about everyone in American society. Either you know someone or it was your parents or it was you. And we wanna, jokes aside, really honor that complexity and nuance that folks have faced in their lives and really be careful, even more than usual, that we're not posturing ourselves as having the obvious, easy answers to really complicated situations that involve real suffering.

[Brent Billings]

I could have used this podcast episode when I was about 12 to 14.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

If we get a time machine, that's the first place you're going. Forget Germany in the 30s, straight to Kansas.

[Brent Billings]

Thank you.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

You're welcome.

[Brent Billings]

Very generous.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Okay, so right off the bat, we've got complicating factors, right? Jesus says, whoever divorces his wife, except for a matter of porneia. So porneia doesn't say fornication, doesn't say adultery. It just has the word, which is broad and undefined sexual immorality. So immediately we should have questions. And then when we look across the whole of Scripture for intertextual enlightenment, things get even more complicated, not less. So the first place that Jesus is probably referencing Here is Deuteronomy 24. And it's a whole section says that a man, if a man wants a divorce, he must make sure he writes her a certificate of divorce. And Moses also says that the reason men are allowed to do that is if he has found. If the man has found something, quote, unquote, uncovered about her. So that's the most literal translation of the Hebrew there. It's Erpha, but it's been translated. Here's a list. Unseemly, indecent, offensive, unclean, inappropriate, objectionable, and vile. That's a really confusing list to me. Like, indecent could be like her clothing, huge range. I don't know. Offensive could be that she just had an opinion. Objectionable could be like how she wants to spend her time or what her values are or something. And inappropriate could be the way she comports herself at a social gathering. Waters are already very muddied off the bed from where we start here.

[Marty Solomon]

Is this the same passage where there's the manuscript discrepancy that Hillel and Shammai argued over that we've discussed before on the podcast? It's the same passage.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

I believe so. I believe so.

[Marty Solomon]

So it's not just the original rabbinic debate. But then the way we translate it, manuscript aside, we translate it in such a muddy way.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

Even when we translate it right in.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

The English as well as in the rabbinic conversation. Totally right.

[Marty Solomon]

Right.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Brent, could you read for us Malachi 216 in the NIV Malachi 2 strikes again.

[Brent Billings]

Second episode in a row. The man who hates and divorces his wife, says the Lord, the God of Israel does violence to the one he should protect, says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard and do not be unfaithful.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

So before we had, if you're going to divorce, you need a get. As Marty's talked about previously, you need a certificate here. It feels like God's saying, don't do that right, violence is bad. God is not on the side of violence. And so if he's comparing divorce to violence, it feels like he's pushing back against divorce. So that's more complexity, more muddied waters, more confusion. And that's Hebrew Bible. Things in the New Testament don't magically clear up. We have this decree from Jesus, the statement. But then in first Corinthians 7 our boy Paulos pops in and he talks about things from the wife's perspective for the first time, which I think is significant. But he also dives into extra different rules about what if you're married to unbeliever. Then it says, but what if he changes? There's a whole circumstance going on in First Corinthians 7, which makes it even less black and white than it already was. Do we have any depictions of divorce in the text perhaps? Actually we do. Aside from these prescriptions about divorce, we have a couple stories which are intriguing at least to me, and thought they were worth mentioning. David King David is married to Michal and then it says in the story that she goes off and marries someone else named Palti. And then David chooses later on to remarry her, which feels like not in concordance with stuff that we've read in these mitzvot. And then in the story of Moshe, he quote, sends Tzipporah, sends his wife away. We tend to think of that as like, oh that's so nice, he's protecting her from danger before he goes into Egypt. But that sent her away and specifically back to the house of her father is part of the divorce process. And that's part of the legal vocabulary of divorce. You send her back to her father so that she can be remarried. And then later in numbers 12 it says that he marries a cushite woman and Sippura is a midianite, not from Kush. So is this another wife? Is this polygamy? Is this post divorce? Some people try to say that it's still tzipporah and that cush doesn't really mean cush, it just means like pretty person. Hard to say. So I hope that as we approach this topic in this verse, we can bear all of that in mind with an open handedness, maybe even beyond what we regularly try to walk into a text or a commandment or set of values with.

[Marty Solomon]

Well, and not only that, but I mean, unfortunately I grew up in such a fundamentalist, reformed, whatever you want to call that upbringing, that this stuff has just been drilled into me and you just like. And I Love this about what you just did. You just happened to quote a verse that is translated so wildly different than I was raised with, which was Malachi 2 16, which is what you're quoting here, right?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Yep.

[Marty Solomon]

Earlier, that's what Brent read. Yeah, I mean we, we have translated that for years in earlier translations and has been just totally thrown out. God hates divorce. And that's literally not what the. Like I was just actually Studying this like 2 weeks ago I ran across something unpacking. Like that's literally not what the verse says.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

But translators have done this, this, this, this, this, and now like how many times have I heard that verse? And that's the verse. But that's Niv. Like, that's not even like El's crazy gymnastics translation.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

It's not nlt.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, that. That is, that's how we're trying to now correct the translation, the syntax, the way we've tied those verses together. Because how many times have I been beaten over the head? God hates divorce. It says so in Malachi. And yet that verse reads wildly different. So just knowing how familiar. Familiar I use air quotes. Familiar we are with some of these passages and how we've used them. That should add to that open handedness that I think you're speaking to. We need to be like real careful and like have a lot more humility about what we know and what we don't know and how we've slung this stuff around at people's expense.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Absolutely. I think that also when we get into like the nitty gritty of establishing Christian halakha, which is sometimes what that feels like of like, no, we do not divorce. Even if there's abuse or horrible outworkings of that. That tend to happen is that there is a cultural component in Jesus's time that he could be poking at in his own way, telling it slant in his own way. Has anything popped to mind for you guys? Was the big divorce in their cultural context at this time in the first century?

[Marty Solomon]

Are you referring to Herod?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

I am referring to Herod.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah. Yeah. So Herod, the brother divorces, wants to divorce his wife or married the wife of his brother, right? Yep.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Herod Antipas goes on vacay. He stays with his brother, falls in love with his brother's wife, whose name is Herodias. The brother's name is also Herod, by the way. So yeah, yeah, Roman naming conventions really get in the way of good storytelling. But so he divorced his wife, she divorced Herod the second and they got married. So such a big deal. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, there would be a full out war with the Nabataeans over this divorce. Herod Antipas loses that, by the way. And then John the Baptist, of course, is imprisoned and executed over yelling at Herod Antipas about this specifically. So I'm curious about Jesus murkiness, especially with the use of the word porneia there, which is so, so generalized. Like, is he making a political statement? Is he saying, you tell me, was there porneia involved? Maybe if there was, then it was okay. I don't know, I'm just asking questions. Maybe he wasn't doing that at all. But I think it was definitely in the original hearer's mind. Like, is Jesus saying this in a way that doesn't get him beheaded but still criticizes earthly power? Or maybe he's just providing interpretation of the law for his followers, I don't know. But I think if we forget that that's in the milieu, then we miss a piece of what Jesus might be doing.

[Marty Solomon]

Or of course that Matthew wasn't written in Greek. And so the Greek word porneo is a bad choice. But I digress.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Could be that too. I mean, don't get me started. We're on the same team with that one, so we can just pontificate together self righteously.

[Marty Solomon]

When our self righteousness works together, El, we are unstoppable. So that's great.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Good thing we disagree plenty of times.

[Brent Billings]

Just pull the pin on that documentary hypothesis bomb and then we'll go to town.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Okay, all of that is in our mind. We're thinking about what Jesus might have been up to. We're thinking about how do we follow Jesus and interpret Torah while maintaining care around harm. The way that these verses have been used to bludgeon people. But we are going to still dial into this conversation that we've been having for two seasons about how is Jesus innovating, how is he adjusting, dialing up or dialing back from his context in the first century? And we're going to use Talmud to talk about that. And we're going to use Roman culture to talk about what Jesus might be doing. I'm excited. This is the part where we have to buckle up and hold onto our socks because there are some pretty great laws we're gonna look at together.

[Marty Solomon]

I am right now just working through the image of my mind of me buckling up in my car and reaching down and holding onto my socks. And I am more ready than I ever have been to discuss the Talmud.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Perfect. Last week, Josh took it Pretty hard. It was challenging for him. So I'm not exaggerating here. Number one law in the Talmud regarding divorce. You may write your get your divorce letter in ink, dye, red chalk, resin or copper, but not with fruit juice. You may not write it on an olive leaf, a horn of a cow or a slave. No, it may be. I'm sorry, you can write it on an olive leaf, a horn of a cow, or a slave's hand. So if you've ever been broken up with over text, just be glad a co wander aggressive yield to you with something sketched on its horns. And chalk.

[Marty Solomon]

Nice. Wow.

[Brent Billings]

Only thing prohibited is the fruit juice.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

No, fruit juice peels off too easily.

[Brent Billings]

Okay.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Chalk though, apparently. Fine.

[Brent Billings]

Is that like. Because fruit juice, presumably wine, but maybe just the juice. But either way, like that is more of a celebratory thing. And this is not a celebratory thing to do.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

That's possible. That would be nice and symbolic. But I do think it's just what flavor flakes off really easily. You don't want to send over your divorce cow and then have your spouse not know, and then it's going to be awkward at dinner later. They didn't read the horns.

[Brent Billings]

Okay.

[Marty Solomon]

Didn't you read the horns?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Yes. Mitzvah number two, it is often said that women cannot write a divorce letter, and this is almost true. So women technically can get someone to write the divorce letter for them, but then the husband has to write a receipt for it to be valid. So it's like basically women can't write their own divorce letters, but because it needs that receipt, however they can, they can practically do it functionally. True. And that's true. Even today, women are still hugely under empowered to leave abusive situations in conservative Jewish communities. And there's plenty of documentaries that you can watch about that that are harrowing and terrible. Mitzvah number three, it has to be written for you. Your divorce certificate has to be written specifically on your behalf. So the Mishnah says, if you're walking along the street and you hear the scribes read out loud, so and so divorces so and so from such a. Such a place. And you think to yourself, ah, that's my name in the name of my wife. You can't go borrow that certificate of divorce from the scribes for yourself. You have to get your own number four. You have to have two witnesses to sign the paper. Those witnesses cannot be Samaritans or women, which at first just seems rude, but then if you think about it, it's a Power imbalance again, right? If the woman somehow has her a seed, but she still can't have her community. Number five. You have to say, here is your divorce letter and either hand it at or chuck it at your wife while she's at her home. So you can't pin it to the back of someone's jacket and like the market and then have them walk by with it. You have to check it at her.

[Marty Solomon]

So you have to bring the cow into the house and shout, here's your divorce letter. And then slap it on the rump so that it runs into the home.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Precisely. Precisely.

[Marty Solomon]

Got it. Got it.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Most important here. Here are the lists of reasons. Here is the list of reasons you may divorce someone talmudically. Number one. If your wife embarrasses you. Two, if she burns your food. Hillel talks about this. You can go listen to Marty if you want a charitable interpretation of that, which is totally valid. Number three. If you find someone you think is more attractive than your wife. Number four. If your wife is not graceful. Number five. If she, quote, brings herself into ugliness by not putting on her makeup. Number six. Fornication. Number seven. If her hair is undone. Number eight. If her heart is, quote, too frolicsome with the slaves and neighbors. Number 9. If she spins in the street. Number 10. If she attends the bath house. Number 11. If she eats in the street or drinks too greedily. Number 7. If she nurses a baby outside, not 7. 12. Number 13. If more than three women gossip about her at night. Rough last thing here. Here's a list of reasons you can divorce a woman without even giving her her 200 silver pieces back for her dowry. If she talks to a man. If she embarrasses a man in front of her parents, his parents rather. If she yells if when talking to her husband, a neighbor can hear her. If she's not contributing enough to the work of the household. Be that sieve Miller oven. If she doesn't, quote, make beautiful enough clothes for his children. If she doesn't honor him enough. Just period. And then finally, if she has struggled with infertility for 10 years.

[Brent Billings]

Just such a range of different kinds of things we're talking about here. I particularly like the makeup, fornication, hair styling, sandwich in the middle there.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

No particular order.

[Marty Solomon]

Goodness, what a list. So it would appear that Jesus is offering some color commentary on that.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

It's a dark, not great picture. If those are the reasons. Oh, I don't like your makeup, or oh, you forgot to put on your makeup, or oh, your hair is undone. To me, that gives a lot of insight and cultural context about why Jesus might just say, stop it.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, these are the waters that he's swimming in. And I'm kind of hearing you correctly. He's basically saying, listen, there's this reality that we have, this divorce reality, but it's not all this other. It's this. It's this thing that we've always had. It's this principle that undergirds and guides this process. It's not the myriad of other things that we're coming up with as reasons.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right. It reminds me of if you're somebody who has like an over reliance on their phone perhaps, or is just super ready for a drink after dinner, but doesn't technically have a problem, but and might behoove that person to full out, stop for a while to be like, no, no more. No more phone, no more apps, no more. Yeah, no more drink. And maybe like a decade later it will be okay for them to have a glass of wine here or there or hop back on the gram or whatever. But for now, for now, it seems to be a no from a pastoral shepherding lens. And that's what it feels like Jesus is doing here to me in the context of the people around him being like, well, sure, she makes clothes for my kids, but like, are they that nice? Or I saw her spin in the street the other day. Which also blows the doors off the Pentecost story for me. You know, women were included in the Pentecost and there they are being wandering around the street like men are, and people are saying, what are they drunk? That was just not allowed for women. And we miss like the gendered dynamic of that, of their behavior there that God evidently did not care about at all.

[Brent Billings]

Do we have a sense of how this list developed? Because I feel like a lot of the laws that we see in Torah, it's like, oh, well, if we look back at this story in Genesis, like we can see why that law is there. Is there something like that for all of these tongues, Talmudic things? Are there stories associated with each of these?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Honestly, I would have to go back to the source and look around, which is a little bit more charitable than I feel like being. To be like, tell me, what beautiful statement are you trying to make from the Proverbs about how if your wife drinks greedily, then she should be thrown in the street? So usually that is the case. Right? That it's a comment on that would be the best eye you have. The most tov ien that I know in the Whole world, Brent, it doesn't surprise me that you would ask.

[Brent Billings]

Well, I'm not saying. I'm just wondering if the Talmud works in the same way that Torah does. In like it's. It's creating these laws based on some previous story, or if it's just, you know, they're just being petty in general, which, I mean, I think they are, but also, like, was there a reason behind it? Did they have some sort of, like they made some kind of an argument that has been recorded? That's what I'm asking.

[Marty Solomon]

Well, I think that could be the heart of Jesus's critique. And the way he's shaping this conversation is typically there are those reasons and there could be that charitable. But if you're not actually, if you then start leveraging all these laws not for. If they have the best intentions, like give it the best eye possible. And this is actually rooted in a. Almost like a Pardesian, like we're calling back to these stories. You're not supposed to be. But you start using these laws mechanically, literally leveraging them for your own self interest and the exploitation of others. Yuck. And that could be totally a part of what Jesus is adding commentary to, right?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

The general idea behind those is, here's a quote that kind of answers your question, maybe, Brent, is that they're worried about the suffering and the time of the man involved and also his eternal destination. So this is a quote. Three, do not see Gehenna, for they have already had hell on earth, whoever has to deal with oppressive poverty, whoever has to deal with abdominal suffering with the authorities, and he who has an evil wife. So it's like, boy, are we upset about poverty. Boy, are we upset about our tummy aches. Boy, are we upset about Rome. But boy, we were really upset by women, right? It's just like all thrown. Thrown in the same thing. And reminds me from last week, right? It was like, if you talk to your wife, that's distracting you from talking about Torah because apparently you can't talk to Torah about your wife. So same kind of vein there that I think, as Marty said, Jesus is addressing, like, hey, and Jesus breaks all of these rules, right? He does speak to women and they are emotional when they talk to him, right? When Lazarus dies, his female friends come running out of the house and say, you did this. Why weren't you here? Right? She's not supposed to be talking to a man. She's not supposed to be talking to a man outside. She's not supposed to be raising her voice all of the Above. But let's. Let's check out Roman marriage for a moment. What's the Roman context? Because the first century land is not just run by the Pharisees. Right. Let's split. Go back to those great foundational teachings, Herodians, Pharisees, et cetera. And so there's also this Roman context bubbling around. And presumably not everybody was walking in those really strict school steps. And in big urban areas, most likely especially in the Decapolis, where Jesus spends some time, where his disciples do, we got some Roman culture. So there's three different kinds of Roman marriage. There is not just marriage. Three kinds. And we're going to talk about all three.

[Brent Billings]

As bad as the Talmudic one was. I feel like this is going to be so much worse.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

I mean, we'll see. The first kind of marriage is called confreio. And confer ratio is for the ruling class specifically. This is what the people at the top of the social cast do. You have to have a high priest at your confrecio. You must have at least 10 witnesses. You must eat a cake. The woman must be passed from the hand of the father to the hand of the groom. You must sacrifice a pig and eat it at a feast which is thrown by the husband. And the woman has to dedicate herself to the new household gods. So minus the pig sacrifice. Our quote unquote Christian weddings are 100% modeled off of these bacon Roman traditions.

[Brent Billings]

Yep.

[Marty Solomon]

Wow.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

We've got clergy, we've got parties, we've got a cake, we've got a woman being passed from the hand to the other hand. We've got a father by the father. We even have conversions happening around weddings because if you want to have a Catholic wedding or you want to have a Jewish wedding, et cetera. And people often convert right before they get married.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

And I just think it's worth taking a sec to meditate on how much we get worked up about our Christian practices not being impinged upon. And our rituals, when they're not even biblically based, they're Roman based. There's no cakes in the Bible. There's no God doesn't say this is how exactly our wedding should go. And make sure you have X, Y, Z. We're defending Roman practices when we talk about women being shifted from the jurisdiction of a man to another man. That's still pagan. Pagan, pagan. And I think we could probably check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. Important to know in Conforratio, divorce is super rare. Extremely rare. Nigh into not allowed. Unless you're like Caesar's wife. That makes sense because it's a ruling class marriage and it's doing political things and it's accomplishing treaties and economics. And so you can't just yank yourself out of that. If the divorces that we do have recorded, again for the highest of the high people, they were entirely political. And the parents do that in order so that they could marry the woman to the new Caesar, to the new ruling. What did they call it? Who's the head of parliament in the Greek Senate? I'm not remembering the name of that. So divorce hardly. Hardly ever happens. If it does, it's only for politics. And if you do divorce, you have to have another sacrifice and another cake. Lots of cake.

[Brent Billings]

Are they allowed to have multiple wives? Is this an exclusive type of marriage or is there only the one?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Well, that would be its own whole episode, Brent. Depends who you're talking to. The women certainly only have the one spouse. Like if we talk about monogamy and Rome. Marital monogamy, sure. Other kinds of monogamy. No.

[Brent Billings]

Yeah. Okay.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Okay. So what if you're not of the ruling class? What if you're an equestrian or even a commoner? Well, you have coimto coempto means purchase, and it is what it sounds like. So the woman brings her dowry, she gets purchased by her husband to be part of his family. Not my total preference. Don't love that. But you only need five witnesses. You and your possessions now belong to your husband, and your name has changed to whatever the feminine version of his is. So I be Georgia, Becky would be Martina, Maggie would be Brenna.

[Brent Billings]

Okay.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Which has to do with the confusion with Harrods earlier, right? Yeah, but so you could divorce at any time in co empt. Show. So no certificate, no real closure or finality. Because the way it works is the woman just takes her dowry, which is possible because it was material possessions, like mirrors. Wasn't like in a bank account somewhere. She just picks up her mirrors and goes home. Ta da. If she's gone for three days, you are divorced. That can lend to some confusion. Like, what if your husband goes off, gets into a bar fight, gets thrown in jail for four days? Are you now divorced? Where's your spouse? What's happening? So very nebulous. Very just like, okay, fine, then we're divorced. And it gets even more nebulous from there. The last one is usis and. And USAS is also for commoners. In usas, you move in together. And if you've been together for a year, even with no ceremony. The idea is, nah, you're legally married by now. If you want to move in together as roommates but not get married, one of you has to vacate your shared home for three days and three nights before the end of the year, have a mini vacation, or else you're accidentally married. And then, same as in co empt show, if you're gone for longer than three days and three nights, boom, divorced. No problem, no conversation necessary. You just leave. So I would posit, therefore, that there isn't a really meaningful divorce process in Rome. Either you're trapped in a conforracha marriage or you just walk out. And given that approach, the idea of paperwork and finality and you have to notify someone, even if it's by sending the cow into the house, that feels more like a grace. Right. Jesus's commandment that divorce is possible if somebody is actively hurting you and betraying you feels like a healthy fence, you can get out. And you have to go through this process which involves community and involves finality and a finish line.

[Brent Billings]

Well, the Roman side of it was bad, but not in the way that I expected.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

What were you expecting?

[Brent Billings]

I was just expecting a different list of more ridiculous reasons, but it's just their approach is just this casual, almost.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Meaningless, very laissez faire.

[Brent Billings]

Yeah.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Which makes sense. If your spouse is in the army and they're going to be gone for 12 years, you're like, who wants to wait?

[Brent Billings]

It really kind of ruins gladiator.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

That's true.

[Marty Solomon]

So I was recently in this last semester, my final project for this Bible interpretation class I was taking, I chose to do on the marriage passage you were just talking about in First Corinthians.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Oh, nice.

[Marty Solomon]

And I really wrestled with whether or not Paul. I think this is relevant to the Jesus conversation. I think maybe there's a similar principle there of whether or not Paul is. Because everybody debates, is Paul doing this or is Paul doing that?

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Sure.

[Marty Solomon]

And I kept wondering if not really Paul's doing both. But I mean, is Paul doing both? Like he's dealing with a culture where he's trying to give. Like you pointed out, he addresses women first.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

He's essentially giving them options within a biblical ethic. At the same time, he's also preaching against this laissez faire.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

Like I can just kind of like you can't just leave because you can't leverage the Gospel for your own self interest.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

And so he's kind of doing both with this rule for all churches. Like he has this guiding Principle that cuts both directions. And I hear that kind of in Jesus when he's speaking to this crowd, where on one hand you've got like no respect for the institution. We call it the institution of marriage for this covenantal relationship.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

On the other side, you've got the potential for all kinds of mistreatment and abuse.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

And Jesus is essentially cutting against both of those crazy extremes and say, no, marriage is meaningful and not something to be exploited to harm other people.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

It's good stuff.

[Marty Solomon]

All right. I'm going to add El Gribber Fricks to my bibliography on that.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Yeah, sounds like a good paper. Just mark it with an A. L said it was great. So if Jesus is doing that work of cutting against both cultures in that incredible tell it slant way that Jesus does. Yes. I'm just curious about what kind of things Jesus might cut against today with the, you know, we don't have a monoculture. We have multiple cultures bubbling around in our milieu's.

[Marty Solomon]

No, no, no, El. We can't. We are not allowed to apply things. We only study them in history in a vacuum. We're not supposed to think this is good. That's a good question.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Good to know. If Jesus is so culturally sensitive, what kind of issues might he be worried about? Not just in divorce, but in our marriages today? I think it's a question for individuals and for communities and for the church and for society. How are we honoring one another? How are we putting up safe fences against harm and abuse? We can ask that in our own marriage, if we are married. How am I honoring my spouse or my ex spouse? Are there safe fences against harm and abuse on both sides? We can ask that in our church communities. Are we teaching and modeling and supporting honor for both parties in a marriage? What are our programs? How does the pastor talk about marriage and gender? Is pastor doing a whole bunch of like, ugh, you know, wife jokes that communicate not awesome things that sound a lot more like those toxic Talmud teachings. Yeah. Women in their hair. I don't know why they always open that way. Now that we're all on the same page and we really, really feel at ease.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

How are we teaching and modeling and having accountability against harm and abuse in the church? Right. And then finally, societally, how are we encouraging honor and safety against harm? Are we encouraging folks to get trained in marriage and family counseling? Are we just telling people to stick it out without leaning in anymore, asking any other questions? Are we training social workers and law enforcement to know how to protect folks and de escalate abusive and harmful on situations. So lots of levels for discussion, lots of levels for wrestling. And I hope folks do that on their own with God and in their own marriages, but also in community. That's what I want to leave us with.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah. As a spiritual leader in those spaces, the two that just immediately fly off as those same fly off the page for me as those same principles just in our own context, which is we love to value a contract, a covenant above a person. Like, we love to hold biblical morality as a high like this adherence to whatever code as more important than the safety and flourishing of the human beings, that that code is meant to facilitate their flourishing.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

And we do that with marriage all the time in all kinds of different directions.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Right.

[Marty Solomon]

On the flip side, I think as a campus minister, we do have another cultural approach which is very, it feels very. The, the last two options of laissez faire marriage relationship. And I think there's a danger to that too. One is exploitive and oppressive. The other one is impotent. And it's also destructive. But unlike the opposite, there's like two different wavelengths that do two different kinds of damage.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Sure.

[Marty Solomon]

And that feels very, very, very relevant to conversations today.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Ghosting other buzzwords that'll come to mind soon.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, well, that's pretty good. That was pretty good up here. Yeah, that was pretty good.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Vrn for a bummer of a time. But also, you know, we had fun stuff. We had cows involved. We had fruit juice.

[Marty Solomon]

We did, we did. I'm glad we had at least a little bit of room for joking because this was a. This is a hard one to look at and be honest about in our own context as well.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Goodness, yeah.

[Brent Billings]

And if you don't feel like diving into the work of the actual subject here, you can just work on that time machine that I need.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

That's right.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Define 12 year old Brent in Kansas.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep, that's right.

[Elle Grover Fricks]

Well, next episode we're talking oaths. There's plenty of craziness that feels at first a lot less applicable to us. And so you can just have fun listening to me read totally wild passages from especially Greek and Roman contexts. So come on back. Don't worry, it'll be good once again soon.

[Brent Billings]

But you can find all the details about our [e-mail] you can use the contact page there to get in touch with us. The most recent way to do that is always available on the website. But thanks for joining us in the Beermom podcast this week. Wrestle on. And we'll talk to you again soon.