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Was Paul Ever Married? · Scripture-ish

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher and I'm going to be talking about whether or not Paul
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: the Apostle had ever been married.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: But before I get to that,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do a little self-promotion
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: and alert you to a couple of things.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: One is that I recently received my contributors copy For a new book
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: that I contributed to,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: this is a book, the title of the book is, I think it's Apocrypha and Septuagint.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was edited by Bruce Longenecker and Marika Dont.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was published by Zondervan just last week.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And If you're interested in the things I talk about here,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: you'd probably be interested in this book.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd check it out.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not too expensive.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe it retails for, I don't know, $50 or something, but it's like 600 pages long.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it contains articles on all of the books of the Apocrypha and then some articles
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: on the Septuagint as well.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It provides a pretty good All of these articles are written by different scholars,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: experts in the field.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: It provides a good introduction to all of these things.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: My particular article was on the Septuagint,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: on the use of the Septuagint in early Christianity in the patristic period.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So not New Testament, but after the time of the New Testament.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing you might want to check that out.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another thing, uh,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: that I'll mention is that it has recently been announced and I want to alert you
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: to it as well,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: that I will be at Lipscomb university on October 13th, giving a public lecture.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a Tuesday evening.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The lecture actually starts pretty late, 7 30 PM.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's late for me to be out, you know, um, But before that, there's a book signing.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So 6.30 p.m.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it's going to happen, but somewhere on the campus of Lipscomb.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hazel Lipp School of Theology.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Hazel Lipp Lecture is the thing I'm doing.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then, okay, there's a book signing before that at 6.30 p.m.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll have some of my books there and they will be available for purchase.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have been looking for a chance to buy my latest book on
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: the Apocrypha published by Oxford last year that is super expensive,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will have discounted copies available.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some discounted copies.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's still not going to be cheap, but...
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I figure some people will want to pick that up.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they are wanting you to register, I guess, so they – I don't know why.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they know how many to expect or something.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose that's the point of registration.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So – On theSubstack page for this episode, there's a link to the place you can register.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's all.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the topic of the speech, by the way, is about the Apocrypha.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: At Lipscomb, I'll be talking about the Apocrypha in the Bible.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now to St.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Paul and whether or not he was ever married in And I'm talking about this because
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: the question came to me at church from somebody recently, and so I did some digging.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And here is what I have come up with.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, before I start reading my little essay,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: let me say,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: definitely when Paul writes 1 Corinthians, he is not married because he says it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: In 1 Corinthians 7, that's the marriage chapter.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he says,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wish all people were like me,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: unmarried, because unmarried people can devote themselves totally to God.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he's definitely not married when he writes 1 Corinthians.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible gives no indication that he was ever married, I think.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people actually think it does, but we'll get to that in just a moment.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: But some people think it's likely that he had been married.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some modern people, some ancient people.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So some people think the Apostle Paul might have been married at one point in his life.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was an early Christian tradition about it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Eusebius,
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  SPEAKER_00: the church historian in the early fourth century,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: quoted Clement of Alexandria, who wrote at the turn of the third century.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Eusebius in the fourth century,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: let's say about 330 AD,
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  SPEAKER_00: is quoting this guy,
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  SPEAKER_00: Clement of Alexandria, who lived about 130 years earlier, around the year 200.
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  SPEAKER_00: And here's what Eusebius says about Clement.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote, Clement,
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  SPEAKER_00: whose words we cited recently in the context of the previous quotation,
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  SPEAKER_00: enumerates,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: on account of those who reject marriage, those of the... Let me just pause there.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there were people who reject marriage and Clement is responding to them.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so Eusebius says Clement enumerates...
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Those of the apostles who were married.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: He just talks about the married apostles.
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  SPEAKER_00: Saying, and now Eusebius is quoting directly from Clement.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is Clement then.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or will they disapprove even of the apostles?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: For Peter and Philip begat children.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Philip even gave his daughters to husbands.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: While Paul himself does not hesitate in one of his letters to address his wife.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whom he did not take about with him in order to facilitate his mission.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the end of the quotation.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is Clement talking about?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Did Paul address his wife in one of his letters?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's an interpretation.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: He is referring to the, quote, true yoke fellow that Paul mentions at Philippians 4 verse 3.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Yodi and Syntyche context when Paul says in Philippians 4,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yodi and Syntyche, y'all need to be nice to each other.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then Paul says, and I ask you, true yoke fellow, that you will help them.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So Clement thinks that the true yoke fellow that Paul does not actually name,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Clement thinks that's his wife, that that is Paul's wife.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why he thinks that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But a little bit later,
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  SPEAKER_00: just a couple of decades after Clement,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Origen also knows the same tradition about Paul's marriage.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a quote from Origen's commentary on Romans.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote, Paul then,
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  SPEAKER_00: if certain traditions are true,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: was called while in possession of a wife concerning whom he speaks when writing to
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Philippians.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote, I ask you also, my loyal mate, true yoke fellow, help these women.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's Origen quoting Philippians.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to Origen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Since he had become free by mutual consent with her, He calls himself a slave of Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if, as others think,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: he had no wife,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Origen leaves open the possibility that actually Paul never was married.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the case,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Origen says,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: nonetheless, he who was free when he was called is yet a slave of Christ.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the end of the quote from Origen.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: If Paul had a wife at one time, what happened to her?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can think of the options.
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  SPEAKER_00: The options are death and divorce.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the apostle was a widower,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: as some people think,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: and they think Paul actually refers to this in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 8,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: but we'll discuss that in just a moment.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or if he wasn't a widower, then there would have been a divorce.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: We could imagine a couple of scenarios.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that Paul divorced his wife?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: before he was a Christian,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus might have divorced his wife for any number of reasons,
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  SPEAKER_00: assuming he adhered to the views of Rabi Hillel,
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  SPEAKER_00: who was pretty lenient on such matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: There was a dispute there.
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  SPEAKER_00: In ancient Judaism,
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  SPEAKER_00: according to the Mishnah,
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  SPEAKER_00: between the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai,
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  SPEAKER_00: the school of Shammai said, There are very few reasons for a legitimate divorce.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the school of Hillel said there's all kinds of reasons for a legitimate divorce.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Hillel, as you can well imagine, was the more popular of the rabbis.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so if the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus followed Hillel's, well, I mean, sure,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: he may have been married and divorced and been considered it perfectly fine at
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, maybe his wife left him.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: We could imagine that,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether in Judaism or after Saul had become Paul,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: after seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe his wife left him because she didn't want to be married to
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: a Christian missionary or something.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what sort of evidence might suggest that Paul was at one time married?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to quote from a book on Paul,
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  SPEAKER_00: a book written by two scholars, Bruce Knott, Longenecker, and Todd Still.
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  SPEAKER_00: This book was published in 2014.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote,
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  SPEAKER_00: it may also be that Paul was married prior to the time that he wrote 1 Corinthians
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  SPEAKER_00: in the mid-50s.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: In that letter, he indicates he was not married.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some scholars have noted, however, that Paul employed the term agamoi.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which may be rendered widowers in 1 Corinthians 7, 8.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suggest, the scholars suggest that the apostle included himself among that group.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: If Paul were at one time married, I'm still quoting from Long and Necker and Steel.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: If Paul were at one time married,
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  SPEAKER_00: this would coincide with Jewish traditions that praised
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: and even stipulated marriage.
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  SPEAKER_00: Such an expectation was probably present among Pharisaic Jews in the first century.
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  SPEAKER_00: As a result,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Paul might well have thought it appropriate, both appropriate and prudent, to marry.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm done quoting from Longenecker and Steele.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, possibly, according to them, Paul possibly called himself a widower in 1 Corinthians 7, 8.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the verse in the ESV.
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  SPEAKER_00: To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Corinthians 7 verse 8, according to the ESV.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: To the unmarried and the widows.
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  SPEAKER_00: But that word unmarried at the beginning, that is the word agamas, agamas.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And some interpreters say,
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Think that that term, agamas, actually means widower here.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he would say to the widowers and the widows,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then some interpreters also,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: not only do they say that agamas means widower,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: but they also say that Paul is including himself in the categories.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And since he cannot be calling himself a widow, he must be calling himself an agamas.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if that means a widower, well, then there you go.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: QED.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Paul was married at one time.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: He calls himself a widower.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if the word agamas suggests widower,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: and if Paul is including himself in the categories mentioned
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  SPEAKER_00: in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 8, then Paul would be widower.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Self-identifying as a widower.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think this argument is fairly weak.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of assumptions there.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're going to go a different route.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's another route to a married Paul.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: What if it was expected of Jews in the first century?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage was.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's F.F.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce from 1977.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: it may be pointed out that marriage was normal and indeed expected in pious Jews
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: when they came of age.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Bruce here cites the Mishnah,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pirkei Avot,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: chapter 5,
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  SPEAKER_00: Mishnah 21,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: which says something like, age 18 is the appropriate time to get married.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I'm going to go back to the quotation from Bruce.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Bruce.
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  SPEAKER_00: True, Jesus had spoken of certain exceptions,
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: those who,
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: as he said,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: had made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 19, 12, among whom he may have included John the Baptist himself.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul was not presumably influenced by considerations of this kind in his pre-Christian days.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: What then, was he a widower?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he was.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: The question has received a positive answer from Joachim Jeremias, for example.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Rather more probable is the view that his wife left him when he became a Christian,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: that when he suffered the loss of all things,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Philippians 3.8, for the sake of Christ, he lost his wife too.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: This cannot be proved,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: but if something like this did happen,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: it might explain Paul's specially sympathetic understanding of
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: the domestic situation in which the unconverted partner walks out on the husband
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: or wife who has become a Christian.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Quote from 1 Corinthians 7 verse 15, in such a case, the brother or sister is not bound.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, for his part, Okay, all of that was a quotation from Bruce.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are other arguments for a married Paul.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: For instance,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jerome Murphy O'Connor's biography of Paul from 1996 has about a four-page argument
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: about it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And not everybody mentions it.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like E.P.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sanders has a book on Paul that came out about 10 years ago.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't find it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a thousand pages long.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can't find that he ever brings up the issue of whether Paul had been married before.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the idea that Jews in the first century,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: pious Torah observant Jews were generally expected to marry.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Was argued a century ago by Joachim Jeremias.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: F.F.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce mentioned this.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Joachim Jeremias in two very brief articles in a German language journal.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got the references on my Substack page.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's even a link to, you can see it for yourself.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you read German, you can read this article.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't read German, your phone probably does.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can read it if you want to go that route.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But let me, I'll summarize for you.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremias, so these are articles from 1926.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So...
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the first one is from 1926, so literally a century ago.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeremias is pretty confident in his interpretation.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says that a unanimous rabbinic teaching regarded marriage as a religious obligation.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the evidence he cites.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, the Mishnah.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've got the link on my page.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to see the mission of yourself, I've got the link.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can go there and read it for yourself.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: The tractate is Yevamot 6.6.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: It states that Jewish men and maybe Jewish women,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: although the jury's out on that,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: are under obligation to fulfill the commandment of Genesis 1.28,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: to be fruitful and multiply.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the sages suggest that a person can consider himself to have performed
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: that mitzvah if he has produced two children.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have done the thing if you have two children,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: at least one of whom is male.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, so important is the mitzvah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: That after 10 years of marriage with no children, a man needs to seek a different wife.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's all from the Mishnah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now this Mishnah is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud at Yivimot 61b.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I've got the link if you want to see it, which then leads to a long discussion.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: At the very beginning of the discussion,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: it becomes clear that some rabbis thought that a Jewish man was obligated to have
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: a wife, Irrespective of children.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, even if he already had children, he still needed a wife.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Being married was a separate obligation, according to these rabbis.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody maybe believed that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's a command in the Bible to be fruitful and multiply.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: That applies to everybody.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is the logic.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, marriage sort of comes into it because you got to reproduce.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: In another part of the Talmud,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: this is Pesachim 113b,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: there is a list of seven categories of people who are ostracized by heaven.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the text says.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Here are people who are ostracized by heaven.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one on the list is a Jew without a wife.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: This all seems pretty clear,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: but there are two problems with the argument of Yeremias that I want to mention.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: First, we're using the Talmud for evidence of a first century Jew, Paul.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Talmud is not first century.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's from some centuries later, maybe around AD 600.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely contains traditions from the first century,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: but the trick is knowing how to identify them, and I cannot do it.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Scholars these days are much more reticent.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: In
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: other words,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: that was pretty common 100 years ago,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: but in the 70s and 80s,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: it became a much more problematic approach to use the Talmud
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: to say this is what first century Jews were like.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: The basic issue applies also to the Mishnah,
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Though to a smaller degree,
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: since the Mishnah is much closer to the New Testament, around AD 200.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Still, it's from after the time of the New Testament,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: so you'd have to make an argument that this idea was there 150, 200 years earlier.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's one problem, is just the methodology.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: The nature of the evidence is much later than Paul.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Second, there is another lifestyle that That some faithful Jews pursued.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: They avoided marriage to devote themselves to God.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: This idea was there in the first century.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: We do have documentation about this.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Philo and Josephus.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Both are first century Jews and both mentioned celibacy in regard to the Essenes.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they are not exactly accurate,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: In their description of the Essenes, neither Philo or Josephus were at Essenes.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they misinterpreted the Essenes.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that they imagined Jewish celibacy as a possibility for a faithful Jew,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: because they represent the Essenes as hardcore, pious Jews, all-in kind of Jews.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea that they imagined Jewish celibacy As an ideal is suggestive.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Talmud,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: likewise,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: presents such a case,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: at least with reference to one scholar,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: and his name is Benazai,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: and he's so well known, he's even got his own Wikipedia page.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: His example is presented in the Talmud at Yivamot 63b and some other passages
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: in rabbinic literature.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't Benazai get married?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: He explains,
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: my soul yearns for Torah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Benazai says.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's quoted in the Talmud as saying this.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He acknowledges that procreation is a universal command binding on him as well as others.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: But his love of Torah takes precedence.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: His attitude was, let others keep the human race going.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm devoted to Torah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: According to Michael Satlow,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: who is a scholar of rabbinics,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: who I think he teaches at Brown,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: everyone agrees that procreation is good,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: but Benazai says there can be a conflict between this good and And the better good
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: of Torah study,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Benazai feels that he can have only one erotic attachment,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: and he lusts for Torah rather than women.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote from Satlow.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: As Satlow goes on to discuss,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: there's another passage in the Talmud,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: in another tractate called Kiddushin 29b, and it centers on the same dynamic.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which takes precedence, marriage or study of Torah?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: The first advice in this discussion in Kiddushin 29b,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: the first advice is what you need to do is study Torah first and then get married.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And only reverse that order if you need a wife.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: This all sounds strangely familiar, doesn't it, to the reader of Christian scripture?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't there someone in the New Testament who also talks about foregoing marriage so
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: that you can devote yourself to God?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Who was that?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: To shift gears for just a moment,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to acknowledge that this take on marriage as a hindrance
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: to spirituality is Is not the only view there is and is not the only view expressed
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: in the New Testament.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly it is in the New Testament.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: As we saw earlier,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus mentioned people who had become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul strongly endorses the single life because it allows one
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: to pursue God more passionately.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what 1 Corinthians 7 is largely about.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there are other ways of looking at marriage, and at some point I'll talk about that.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, was Paul ever married?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I see little reason to think that he was.