Texts in Conversation
The Damascus Document from the Dead Sea Scrolls cites Genesis to show that creation established one man and one woman, using this to forbid polygamy. In Matthew, Jesus also refers to Genesis when discussing divorce, basing marriage in creation. Both use the Hebrew Bible to settle questions of practice.
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4Q266
Damascus Document
Dead Sea Scrolls
The ‘builders of the wall’ who have followed after ‘Precept’ - ‘Precept’ was a spouter of whom it is written, They shall surely spout - shall be caught in fornication twice by taking a second wife while the first is alive, whereas the principle of creation is, Male and female created He them’ V Also, those who entered the Ark went in two by two. And concerning the prince it is written, He shall not multiply wives to himself; but David had not read the sealed book of the Law which was in the ark (of the Covenant), for it was not opened in Israel from the death of Eleazar and Joshua, and the elders who worshipped Ashtoreth. It was hidden and (was not) revealed until the coming of Zadok. And the deeds of David rose up, except for the murder of Uriah, and God left them to him.
Date: 100 B.C.E. - 80 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Mark 10:6
New Testament
4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts. 6 But from the beginning of creation he made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, 8 and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Date: 60-75 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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Notes and References
"... For example, in Mark 10 we have Jesus' discussion of divorce where He declares that monogamy is, as it were, part of the order of creation itself ... as Teicherhas recently pointed out, the Sect's literature provides us with an almost exact counterpart of the Greek of Mark 10:6 in Hebrew. In CDC 4:21 we have the phrase, 'the principle of nature is: a male and female He created them'. Mark 10:6 merely seems to reproduce in Greek what is expressed in Hebrew in CDC 4:21, and in both passages the same appeal is made, implicitly at least, to Genesis 1:27 ..."
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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