The Greek word for "fornication" is Strong's number 4202 "porneia". This word is widely recognized to include a broad range of sexual vice. There is however a hardline interpretation floating around that this word, in this context, only refers to "premarital sex, not admitted to, prior to marriage", i.e. not being a chaste virgin. The reasoning being that this one exception is allowed because the marriage was made on fraudulent terms and hence no real marriage existed.Quoting Jesus, in the 19th chapter, Matthew wrote: 9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. (KJV)
Such a doctrine is found in churches/sects/cults that take an extreme hard line on divorce and remarriage (AKA "D&R"). Having read some explanations as to why this is alleged to be so, I found the conclusions to be not credible. Over the years I have encountered this interpretation from more than one source. Does anyone know where this originated. It is a non-sequitur to me that if one's spouse turns homosexual, prostitute, adulterer or takes up with the family dog, that the spouse is just stuck in the marriage.
I have heard such incredible supporting arguments, for instance, that adultery would not be grounds for D&R because when this was written the adulterer would be stoned to death there by resolving the issue. This argument is specious in that it totally ignores that the law required 2 or 3 witnesses to the same act . So if the husband walks in on his wife and his neighbor in the act of adultery, where is he going to get a second witness? It is pretty sure that the neighbor and wife are not going to testify to having witnessed it!
I cannot believe that the notion that Christ's words only refer to "unconfessed and forgiven pre-marital infidelity". I would like to know how far one has to go back to find the origin of this doctrinal teaching, and who came up with it.
So please feel free to comment, criticize, support or reject, the doctrine as you wish. But the real question is, "Where did this doctrinal interpretation, originate, Who first asserted this interpretation"
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In this edit, I take the time to cite a few examples of this doctrine. My search words were +divorce +remarriage +pornea This yielded many pages of hits with several relevant to the topic of this post. I offer the following examples.
http://www.biblicalresearchreports.com/divorceandremarriage.php
One of the arguments made in some of the attempts to support the doctrine we speak of here by un/ill- supported claims of the meaning of certain words is at:http://www.rmsbibleengineering.com/Page2/MarriageDivorce/Page1_JesusDivorce.html
However no proof of this claim for the limitations of these words is offered.The author of this page wrote:It is important and imperative to know that Adultery is ONLY applicable to "MARRIED" persons while Fornication is ONLY applicable to "UNMARRIED" or "SINGLE" persons.
So it would appear this doctrine is widely touted as being biblical, but the exegesis seems to be poor quality yet widely taught. I just would like to know who started this idea.
Of course it would be nice to know if anyone has soundly refuted the commonly presented reasoning. It would be nice to put this doctrine down if it is indeed heretical or if it can properly shown without wild claims about what words mean or rambling disputations, then it should be supported.