General
Christian Marriage in the New Testament by Prof. Pheme Perkins (2005)
Christian Marriage in the New Testament by Prof. Pheme Perkins, Boston College
First century Christians lived in a world where marriages were contractual arrangements between families, not personal choice. High mortality rates and easy divorce made it likely that individuals would marry more than once. For slaves, former slaves and others from the laboring class, marriage in the full legal sense was not possible. Many of the first Christians who heard Paul’s teaching on marriage may have been living in family relationships that were technically not marriage but concubinage. Though governed by Mosaic law and tradition, Jewish marriages were also a matter of legal contract and social custom much like their non-Jewish contemporaries.
For most of human history – and even in many traditional cultures today – the 21st century preoccupation with marriage as a source of personal fulfillment, as a private matter of commitment between the two individuals rather than a familial and social arrangement. To consider marriage as an arena in which the equal rights or responsibilities of the husband and wife are constantly negotiated would likewise seem quite alien. No one in the first century asking “who could marry” would imagine same-sex unions – though they knew that attachments between males, married or not, could involve long-term homo-erotic relationships.