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
Genesis 1:27
Hebrew Bible
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” 27 God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”
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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