In the whole of Luke’s gospel, there is just one context in which the verbs “divorce” and “marry” appear together. That passage–only one verse–ought to contribute to a correct understand of Jesus’ attitude toward divorce and remarriage; however, there exists no scholarly consensus on the passage’s meaning.

Any man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. (Luke 16:18)

In the first half of Luke 16:18, Jesus appears to teach that a man who has divorced his wife should not remarry.^[1] In the verse’s second half, Jesus seems to say that no man should marry a divorced woman. Does this simplistic interpretation of a difficult verse do justice to Jesus’ approach to Torah?

Luke 16:18 is very “Semitic,” that is, it is full of Semitic idioms, an indication that Jesus may have uttered it in Hebrew or Aramaic. Members of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research have learned that the most effective way to approach a passage from the synoptic gospels is, first, to put its Greek text into Hebrew, then, study the resultant Hebrew reconstruction in light of first-century Jewish exegesis.^[2]

Nuances of Hebrew “And”

While the English word “and” can mean “also,” “as well as,” or can be used like a co

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