The test question “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?” lands in Perea, Herod Antipas's territory, where John the Baptist had just died for saying Antipas's marriage to Herodias was unlawful. Behind the question stands the recorded dispute of the Pharisaic schools over Deuteronomy 24:1: the house of Shammai allowing divorce only for unchastity, the house of Hillel for far less (“even if she spoiled his dish,” Mishnah Gittin 9:10). This site's Matthew 19 note walks that dispute; Jesus answers from creation, behind Moses.

Mark alone adds: “and if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery” (10:12). Under Jewish law of the period, the get (bill of divorce) ran from husband to wife; a wife initiating divorce was Roman law's provision, and famously what Herodias had done to her first husband. Mark, writing for Roman readers, translates the ruling into their legal world, one more instance of the New Testament doing for its first readers what this layer does for the modern one.