Erasmus’ Exceptive Clause (εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ) in the Divorce and Remarriage Saying (Matthew 19:9): An Assessment

Abstract

The Protestant/Evangelical view of marriage, divorce, and remarriage is also known as Erasmian view because Erasmus (1466 – 1536) laid the foundation for it as he interpreted Jesus’ saying from the Gospel of Matthew. The view rests on the premise that when the divorce is grounded on πορνεία, the innocent spouse has a biblical permission to remarry; otherwise, remarriage would be adultery. In his critical edition of the Greek New Testament, Eramus made his text read ὃς ἂν ἀπολύσῃ τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ, εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ, καὶ γαμήσῃ ἄλλην μοιχᾶται, thus making the exception (“except for πορνεία) explicitly clear and without ambiguity. This paper comes to the defense of his interpretive text.