Dear Editor,
Mark Gilbart-Smith in his article ‘Can Christians marry non-Christians’ (en August) asserts that 2 Corinthians 6:14 is not ‘explicitly about marriage’. Strictly speaking, he is right, but our English trans-lations obscure a very strong implication to the contrary. There is a wide consensus in translating the Greek word, very literally, as ‘unequally yoked’. Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9 are explicitly about marriage, but the translators are in widespread agreement in not translating so literally. A more literal translation would be ‘What God has yoked together’ instead of the familiar ‘joined.’
There can be little doubt that the first readers of the New Testament would have seen a reference to marriage in Paul’s choice of word.