Texts in Conversation
Genesis says God created humankind male and female. In Mark, Jesus quotes this line from creation to argue for monogamy as the ideal, treating the first couple as the pattern for lifelong marriage.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Genesis 1:27
Septuagint
26 And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the flying creatures of heaven, and over the cattle and all the earth, and over all the reptiles that creep on the earth. 27 And God made man, according to the image of God he made him, male and female he made them. 28 And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and flying creatures of heaven, and all the cattle and all the earth, and all the reptiles that creep on the earth.
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.
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Notes and References
“... like the writers in the Dead Sea Scrolls, he insisted on monogamous marriage as a renewal of the undivided union of Adam and Eve. In one of his very few breaches with Jewish custom, he even went so far as to rule out the possibility of divorce. The ‘hardness of heart’ that had rendered divorce necessary in the laws of Moses would simply no longer prevail in the renewed Israel of the future. ...”
Brown, Peter
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
(pp. 40-41) Columbia University Press, 1988
* 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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