The Bible and Its Divorce Contradiction

Accord­ing to the Bible, can a per­son get divorced and remar­ry with­out com­mit­ting adul­tery ? Remar­riage after divorce is pro­hib­it­ed because it is adul­tery. Jesus clear­ly says so.

Mark 10:2 – 5, 9 – 12 : ​“And the Phar­isees came to him, and asked him, Is it law­ful for a man to put away his wife ? tempt­ing him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses com­mand you ? And they said, Moses suf­fered to write a bill of divorce­ment, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hard­ness of your heart he wrote you this precept…What there­fore God hath joined togeth­er, let not man put asun­der. And in the house his dis­ci­ples asked him again of the same mat­ter. And he saith unto them, Whoso­ev­er shall put away his wife, and mar­ry anoth­er, com­mit­teth adul­tery against her. And if a woman shall put away her hus­band, and be mar­ried to anoth­er, she com­mit­teth adul­tery.“cf. Luke 16:1 – 18 

Hence the log­i­cal nota­tion or form of the pro­hi­bi­tion on remar­riage based on the above verse is :

(x)(Dx & Rx => Ax)

where D is for ​“divorced,” R is for ​“remar­ried,” and A is for ​“com­mits adul­tery.” It is read, ​“For any­thing x, if x is divorced and x is remar­ried, then x com­mits adul­tery.” This is uni­ver­sal and applies with­out excep­tion to any x, accord­ing to the above quo­ta­tions from Jesus. ​“Whoso­ev­er” means ​“any­one”. Jesus also says this applies for any divorced man and any divorced woman :

“Whoso­ev­er shall put away his wife, and mar­ry anoth­er, com­mit­teth adul­tery against her. And if a woman shall put away her hus­band, and be mar­ried to anoth­er, she com­mit­teth adul­tery.” Mark 10:11

Oth­er parts of the Bible also state that if some­one divorces, the per­son is not to remar­ry.See Matthew 5:31 – 32 ; 1 Corinthi­ans 7:10 – 11 and Romans 7:2 – 3

So no one who divorces can remar­ry with­out com­mit­ting adul­tery. But, on the oth­er hand, the Bible also says that not every­one who divorces a spouse and remar­ries is com­mit­ting adultery :

“When a man hath tak­en a wife, and mar­ried her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some unclean­ness in her : then let him write her a bill of divorce­ment, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is depart­ed out of his house, she may go and be anoth­er man’s wife.“Deuteron­o­my 24:1 – 2

Jesus agrees that you can get divorced and remar­ry as long as you divorce because of fornication :

“And I say unto you, Whoso­ev­er shall put away his wife, except it be for for­ni­ca­tion, and shall mar­ry anoth­er, com­mit­teth adul­tery ; and whoso mar­ri­eth her which is put away doth com­mit adul­tery.“Mt. 19:9

But if you can divorce and remar­ry with­out com­mit­ting adul­tery (in case of for­ni­ca­tion), then this implies the following :

~[(x)(Dx & Rx => Ax)]

If there is an excep­tion, then the con­di­tion­al can­not apply to any and all things x and it is not the case that who­ev­er divorces and remar­ries com­mits adul­tery. This is a for­mal con­tra­dic­tion, since the Bible, and even just the New Tes­ta­ment, endors­es both sides of the issue :

(x)(Dx & Rx => Ax) & ~[(x)(Dx & Rx => Ax)]

So the Bible con­tra­dicts itself on whether one can get a divorce and remar­ry with­out com­mit­ting adul­tery. This is a for­mal con­tra­dic­tion sup­port­ed by the Bib­li­cal text. It should be not­ed that New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars are not even sure what Jesus^(P) orig­i­nal­ly said on the top­ic of divorce and remar­riage. What we find in the Gospels are a vari­ety of forms of say­ings which were devel­oped at dif­fer­ent times among dif­fer­ent Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties. D. C. Park­er concludes :

“The main result of this sur­vey is to show that a recov­ery of a sin­gle orig­i­nal say­ing of Jesus is impos­si­ble. We have been able to show that some forms of text were devel­op­ments. But it does not fol­low that one of those with which we are left is more orig­i­nal than the oth­ers. The dif­fer­ences between the four pas­sages in Matthew (twice), Mark and Luke are already great. But the devel­op­ment of the tra­di­tion goes beyond that, both in time and in extent. We can see the tra­di­tion being devel­oped right through to the for­ma­tion of the Byzan­tine text.

The quest for a Law in the teach­ing of Jesus can­not be pur­sued in the face of the evi­dence that, for those ear­ly Chris­tians who passed the tra­di­tions to us, there was no law, but a tra­di­tion whose mean­ing had to be kept alive by reflec­tion and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. What we have is a col­lec­tion of inter­pre­ta­tive rewrit­ings of a tra­di­tion.” D. C. Park­er, The liv­ing text of the Gospels, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1997 pp. 92 – 93

And only Allah knows best !