Commenting on the injunction that a bishop should be a “husband of one wife” in the Pastoral Epistles, Nathan Nzyoka Joshua wrote:
. . . faithfulness
before marriage and in marriage is most likely what Paul was proposing for the
overseer to adhere to. A prominent biblical example of the great significance
attached to premarital faithfulness is the relationship of Joseph and Mary in
Matthew 1:18-25. A non-biblical equivalent to that requirement is found in Xenophon’s
second-century AD writing, Ephesiaca 1.11.3-5, in which there is a vow
of a young couple to remain chaste for each other. Notably also, in the first
century AD, marital faithfulness was also portrayed by remaining unmarried
after divorce or after the death of a spouse; a practice that was regarded as
honourable. There are many inscriptions on tombstones praising women who had
been married to one husband only (see Meeks, First Urban Christians,
228n135). It was common to find on epitaphs the epithets, unavira (“married
to one man only”), or virginius and virginia, meaning
respectively “a husband who never had but the one wife” and “a wife who never
had but the one husband.” Kelly supports that interpretation by saying that it
was considered meritorious for one to remain unmarried after the death of a
spouse or after divorce because remarriage was viewed as self-indulgence. He supports
his argument with Paul’s suggestion to abstain from remarriage and even to
occasionally abstain from sexual pleasure within marriage (1 Cor 7:1-7, 40). He
says that church officers were expected to set a good example to the other
people by being satisfied with a single marriage. However, he points out that, second
marriages were not absolutely forbidden in the early Christian centuries (J.N.D.
Kelly, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles: I & II Timothy, Titus,
Black’s New Testament Commentaries [London: Black, 1963], 75-76). Paul supported
and encouraged remarriage, especially for young widows, instead of enrolling
them for support by the church (1 Tim 5:11-15). Nevertheless, it is likely that
those who had remarried could not be chosen to be leaders in the church, just
as they could not be enlisted to get benefaction from the church in case they
became widows again (1 Tim 5:9). (Nathan Nzyoka Joshua, Benefaction and
Patronage in Leadership: A Socio-Historical Exegesis of the Pastoral Epistles
[Langham Monographs; Carlisle, UK: Langham Publishing, 2018], 175-76)
As an aside, here is the note from Meek’s The
First Urban Christians, referenced by Joshua above:
In Greek romances of the Roman
period, the plot customarily depends upon the chaste devotion of a couple to
each other, preserved despite the most bizarre threats. In the Ephesiaca
of Xenophon of Ephesus, for example, Habrocomes and Anthia vow "that you
will abide chaste unto me and never tolerate another man, and I that I shall
never consort with another woman" (1.11.3-5, trans. Hadas 1964, 80). That
such sentiments were widely cherished is suggested not only by the popularity
of such novels, which would hardly have appealed to the well educated, but by
the existence of many epitaphs praising women who were μονανδρος or univira.
Examples from Jewish tombs in Leon 1960, 129f