And Jesus said to his disciples ... ummm, I can't remember

CelticRambler

To defend a point being argued in another part of cyberspace, I'm trying to find a verse (or perhaps two) in the gospels, where (IIRC) Jesus speaks to the apostles and to the Pharisees, in both cases suggesting that some of the Old Testament texts had been "dumbed down" so that they could understand them, but the time had come for a more "adult" interpretation.

Again, IIRC, when he was speaking to the Pharisees, it was with reference to old rules or guidance that (?) Moses/Abraham had set out because the people then were "like children" and needed things to be kept simple. I'm not sure if the discussion with the apostles was in the same account.

It's quite possible that my recollection of this has been fuzzied by one retreat too many :pac: but I'm fairly sure that at least one of these episodes featured in the old set of readings for Sunday Mass.

Can anyone help?

hinault

Matthew's gospel Chapter 19 perhaps

19:1 And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these words, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea, beyond Jordan.

19:2 And great multitudes followed him: and he healed them there.

19:3 And there came to him the Pharisees tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

19:4 Who answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said:

19:5 For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.

19:6 Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

19:7 They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away?

19:8 He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

19:9 And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.

19:10 His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry.

19:11 Who said to them: All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given.

19:12 For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it.

Peregrinus

Just to put Mt 19 in context, Jesus wasn’t necessarily saying anything that his audience would have found revolutionary.

Strictly speaking, the Mosaic law doesn’t directly permit divorce. Rather, it lays down that in certain circumstances a man is not to divorce his wife, or that a divorced woman is not to remarry. (The question of a wife divorcing her husband never arises.)

By implication, the Law accepts divorce as a social reality; if not necessarily something which advances God's plan for his people, then something which God's plan can at times accommodate. But, increasingly, in the Jewish tradition divorce came to be seen as something that could be accepted, but that wasn’t desirable. (The same is true, incidentally, of polygamy. But let’s stick with divorce.)

So the debate in Jesus' time was not about whether divorce and remarriage were possible at all under the Law - they were - but about when they were justifiable, and when they were not.

There were (at least) three views offered at the time by different scholars or different schools of thought within Judaism:

- Divorce was justifiable only for adultery.

- It was justifiable for a man to divorce his wife for more minor faults ("She can't cook!").

- No-fault divorce; it was justifiable for a man to divorce simply because he wanted to.

To be clear, people weren’t arguing that a man who divorced his wife in any of these circumstances did the right thing. They were merely saying that he could do so; that society could accept that the divorce had happened, and the spouses could remarry.

So when Jesus says, in effect, “yes, the Mosaic law allows divorce, but that doesn’t mean it’s right”, he’s entering into a discussion that’s already going on within Judaism. When Jesus says that the law of Moses allowed for "hardness of heart", he means that the acceptance of divorce is pragmatic, but it doesn’t represent the ideal to which we are called. And - here he’s actually lining himself up with the Pharisee tradition - the individual shouldn’t be looking to find what he can get away with, under the Law; he should be looking to find what God is calling him to, which may be much more demanding that the Law.

So, relevant to the OP, he’s not really saying that the Law is “dumbed down “ and that it’s time to become a bit more adult. He’s saying that there’s more to living rightly than keeping the minimal requirements of the law. And that wasn’t a novel idea, in Jesus’ world.

CelticRambler

Verses 7-8 are definitely part of what I remember regarding the interpretation of the law, so thanks for that.

I thought, though, that there was another (less confrontational?) passage where Jesus explains to the apostles (?) that he expects them to adopt a more mature approach to his and the OT teachings, and uses a phrase along the lines of "because you were like children" ... ?