Texts in Conversation
The Damascus Document from the Dead Sea Scrolls quotes Genesis to show that creation established one man and one woman, using this to forbid polygamy. In Mark, Jesus also refers to Genesis when discussing divorce, basing marriage in creation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
CD 4:21
Damascus Document
Dead Sea Scrolls, Sectarian and Community Texts
15 the three nets of Belial, about which Levi son of Jacob spoke, 16 with which he catches Israel, and he makes them appear to them as three kinds of 17 righteousness. The first is fornication, the second is wealth, the third is 18 defiling the sanctuary. Whoever climbs out of one is caught in another, and whoever is delivered from one is caught 19 in another. The builders of the wall, who walked after Zaw (Zaw is a spouter, 20 of whom it says, “They shall surely spout”), are caught in two: in fornication, by taking 21 two wives in their lifetime, whereas the foundation of creation is “male and female he created them.”
Date: 100–80 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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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 Teicher has 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 ..."
W. D. Davies, Christian Origins and Judaism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 101–102.
* 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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