In his discussion of the “Matthean exception” – the prohibition of divorce “except for porneia” (Matthew 5:32, 19:9), Garland writes about one possible line of interpretation that doesn’t focus on adultery breaking the marriage:Īn increasing number of scholars have therefore argued that the Greek word porneia can refer to sexual sins in general and does not mean “unchastity” in this instance. In his commentary on Matthew in the Reading the New Testament series, David Garland followed the same train of thought. The categories at work in what a Jew in the 1st Century meant by porneia were shaped by the Torah, and that means Leviticus 18. a woman and her daughter and her children (18:17),.spouses of one’s children or their children (18:10),.parents (18:7) and the spouses of parents (18:8),.Thus, the chapter overtly distances Israelites from the Egyptians and Canaanites (18:3, 24-28, 29-30) in prohibiting sexual relations with: Leviticus 18 was for the Jewish world of Torah observance God’s covenant gift to the Israelites (18:1-2) that both clarified how to live and set them apart from pagans. In fact, the importance of this chapter for defining what porneia would have meant for a 1st Century Jew cannot be exaggerated. If one wants specifics, no better listing can be found than in Leviticus 18. So, while porneia can be a sweeping generalizing term referring to any kind of sexual immorality, for the Jew there was an established list of what was meant. When you double-click on the term porneia, then, it takes you to Leviticus 18. He returned to the subject in a 2015 post, here.īut what does porneia mean? There are two basic meanings: (1) sexual relations with a prostitute or, in a more general sense, (2) sexual immorality, which for a Jew refers to prohibited degrees of intercourse. The term porneia is a Greek term that has two basic meanings:įor the “in general” definition of porneia, McKnight looks to Leviticus 18. In his 2014 post What is Porneia to a 1st Century Jew, Scot McKnight wrote:
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