Specifying πορνεία in Matthew 5.32 and 19.9 via Overlooked Contextualization

Matthew’s divorce clause remains one of the most vexed questions in NT studies. The generality of the keyword πορνεία stumps commentators, while little help appears forthcoming from the clause’s immediate context, the wider statements of Mt. 5.32 and 19.9. Against the widespread view that πορνεία per the divorce clause is badly underdetermined, however, this paper argues that the clause as set in immediate context does indeed signal a specific meaning to πορνεία which redounds to the unique correctness of a particular clausal interpretation: the ‘betrothal view’. After outlining the semantic scope of πορνεία it critiques attempts by proponents of the ‘adultery view’, the dominant scholarly interpretation of the clause, to explain why the clause employs πορνεία but not μοιχεία. It then argues that the juxtaposition of the two terms within the parameters set by the ancient Jewish meaning of ‘wife’ and ‘divorce’ specifies a wife’s pre- nissuin unchastity as the referent of the divorce clause’s πορνεία.