Thank you, yes I should reinforce that Jewish law is fine with divorce. With an anti-Semitic flourish, traditional Christians view Jesus in Matt 19:8–9 as tightening the screws on divorce.

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Christians are unable to process the problems with this. If understood as a human requirement, then a divorced person becomes an adulterer, and thus must be executed.

It seems to me the context here is being misunderstood. As in the OT, relationships between nations and deities are seen as ‘marriages’. The God of Israel is married to her (since Sinai), and so most likely the deities of other nations are seen as married as well.

When Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, the narrative intends the reader to understand that he is not speaking to them, exactly. He is speaking to the deity-forces who are controlling them— the other ‘Sons of God’ who abused and abandoned the nations they were put in charge of (cf. Deut 32:8).

In John 8:44, Jesus would be speaking to the humans who are controlled by malign deities: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.”

The human person is always seen acting in concert with deity. The Christian idea is that Gentiles shift deity assignments: from evil deities to Jesus.

Throughout the gospel narratives, Jesus seems to regularly address evil deities. A key tip-off to this shift in context is when he seems to be addressing only men.