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Word Gems 

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New Testament scholar Dr. Elaine Pagels of Harvard
states that the phrase, "except for marital
unfaithfulness," was added much later to the Matthew text,
an attempt by manipulating churchmen to water down
the impact of something they didn't understand -
what they considered to be Jesus' too-harsh teaching   

return to the main-page article on "Bible"

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the article on Divorce. Please see the entire article with this link.

a bigger bomb is dropped

9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.

After allowing his audience, these materialistic men, the point that Moses had permitted divorce, Jesus regains the floor with, but "I tell you" that divorce is not allowed under any circumstances! - or does he take it back?
 
 
wait a minute - if the original intent was Twin-Soul love, why does Jesus grant an "exception clause" in what we heard was an unbreakable, eternal union?

The answer is this: the phrase "except for marital unfaithfulness" was added hundreds of years after the fact!

It is an unwarranted insertion, an interpolation, a fraudulent doctoring, of the original text by religious spinmeisters.
 
New Testament scholar Dr. Elaine Pagels of Harvard states that the phrase, "except for marital unfaithfulness," was added much later to the text, an attempt by manipulating churchmen to water down the impact of something they didn't understand - what they considered to be Jesus' too-harsh teaching.

Editor's note: In my "Bible" article I offer many examples of fraudulent doctoring of the text; however, for me, there's an interesting side-issue to this. The fact that Matthew 19 was altered by church politicians suggests the greater likelihood that this section of the New Testament represents authentic teaching by Jesus. If this teaching-episode had been written, or dreamed up, by fraudsters a hundred years after Jesus' death, it would have been structured differently, with a "normal" sanitized message, not a Zen-master conundrum creating confusion among the church-members.