StrongerBible

apostasion

ἀποστάσιον

GreekG0647“certificate of divorce, bill of divorcement”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 5:31Mat 19:7Mrk 10:4
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-po-STAH-see-onnoun

What apostasion means

a certificate of divorce: the written legal document a husband gave his wife to end the marriage and release her to remarry

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

In the Gospels this word names one thing: the written document a husband handed his wife to end their marriage. It appears three times, always in Jesus' debates with the Pharisees about divorce. Twice it comes in the fuller phrase "a scroll of divorce", quoting the Greek Old Testament word for word; in the Sermon on the Mount the noun stands alone, by itself meaning the whole certificate.

The word was not originally a divorce word at all. In everyday Greek legal papers of the period it meant a deed of relinquishment, a "quitclaim" by which a person formally gave up a property or dropped a legal claim, the paperwork partner to a sales contract. When the ancient Greek translators of the Hebrew Scriptures needed a term for the Hebrew phrase meaning a document of cutting off (כְּרִיתוּת), they borrowed this ordinary legal word. So underneath the English "certificate of divorce" lies the picture of a husband formally standing away from his claim on his wife.

That background gives the certificate a releasing, not merely a dismissing, character. Its purpose was to free the woman to remarry by cancelling the husband's remaining hold on her, which is why it always comes paired with the act of sending a wife away (ἀπολύω): the sending-away is the deed, and this certificate is the document that formalizes and legalizes it. Recognizing this also clarifies the Gospel debates, which are not arguments about the paperwork but about when a husband may lawfully divorce at all.

Mat 5:31Mat 19:7Mrk 10:4

Disputed

Whether the ancient certificate of divorce chiefly protected the woman (freeing her to remarry and restraining impulsive divorce) or chiefly formalized a husband's unilateral power to dismiss her. This is a debate about the document's social function, not about what the word denotes.

  • majorityProtective and liberative: because the noun means a release of the husband's claim, the required written, witnessed, delivered document freed the woman legally to remarry, blocked the husband from reclaiming her, and slowed hasty divorce. This is the prevailing reading among commentators on the Gospels.; David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans, 2002); R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, Eerdmans, 2007)
  • minorityA patriarchal instrument: only the husband could write the certificate and the wife was the passive object of a unilateral act, so the protective reading is largely apologetic.; Louis M. Epstein, The Jewish Marriage Contract (Jewish Theological Seminary, 1927)
  • contestedA mediating settlement: the legal form of the certificate was genuinely liberative in effect, while the social distribution of power remained patriarchal, and actual practice diverged from the rabbinic ideal.; Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2001)

What scholars say about apostasion

ἀποστάσιον is the neuter substantivized adjective built on ἀφίστημι ("stand off, withdraw") through the abstract noun ἀπόστασις. Classical Attic knows it almost only in the forensic phrase δίκη ἀποστασίου, the suit against a freedman who had stood away from his patron (Demosthenes, Contra Lacritum 35.48; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 58.3), which led pre-Deissmann lexicographers to file it as "Biblical Greek." Deissmann's papyrological revolution and, in detail, Moulton-Milligan's Vocabulary of the Greek Testament overturned this: in Ptolemaic and Roman papyri (P.Hib. I 96, 258 BCE, through BGU III 919, 2nd c. CE) ἀποστάσιον, often in the fuller συγγραφὴ ἀποστασίου, is the standard notarial term for a deed of cession or relinquishment, the counterpart-document to a sale (πρᾶσις), and Sian Thomas (Journal of Juristic Papyrology 42, 2012) shows it renders the demotic skh n wy. It is not, however, the usual papyrus word for a divorce document (Yiftach-Firanko, Marriage and Marital Arrangements, 2003). The specifically marital sense is a Septuagintal calque: the LXX uses βιβλίον ἀποστασίου four times (Deut 24:1, 3; Isa 50:1; Jer 3:8) for Hebrew sefer keritut, borrowing the nearest Koine legal noun (Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy, 1995; Schlier, TDNT 1:512-514). Matthew 19:7 and Mark 10:4 quote the fixed LXX phrase; Matthew 5:31 has the shorter δότω αὐτῇ ἀποστάσιον without βιβλίον (NA28; Metzger treats it as original), a lexicalized use of the noun alone paralleled in BGU III 919.28. BDAG glosses "notice of divorce," Louw-Nida 33.41 flattens the range to the divorce sense, and Instone-Brewer (Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, 2002) argues the certificate's defining function, traceable through Elephantine contracts to m. Gittin 9:3, was to free the wife to remarry. His related reading of Matthew 19:3's "for any cause" as a citation of the Hillelite position, with Jesus siding with the Shammaite exegesis, is influential but contested.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), s.v. ἀποστάσιονlexicon
  • BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ἀποστάσιονlexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. ἀποστάσιονlexicon
  • Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (UBS, 1988), 33.41lexicon
  • Heinrich Schlier, "ἀφίστημι κτλ.," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1, pp. 512-514dictionary
  • Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, trans. L. R. M. Strachan (Hodder & Stoughton, 1927)monograph
  • John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SBLSCS 39, Scholars Press, 1995)monograph
  • David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Eerdmans, 2002)monograph
  • Uri Yiftach-Firanko, Marriage and Marital Arrangements: A History of the Greek Marriage Document in Egypt (C. H. Beck, 2003)monograph
  • Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2001)monograph
  • Sian Thomas, "The Meaning of apostasion," Journal of Juristic Papyrology 42 (2012), pp. 301-335article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἀποστάσιον

genitive n s

ἀποστασίου

Mat 19:7, Mrk 10:4

accusative n s

ἀποστάσιον

Mat 5:31