I'm from Canada, and like most of my fellow citizens I am opposed to the death penalty, which fortunately has not been imposed for over half a century and has been off the books for decades.
I've mentioned before that I belong to another forum, limited to clergy past and present who have shed their supernatural beliefs. One of our members is an orthodox rabbi, and he has graciously responded to my queries a couple of times about later interpretations of Old Testament laws.
As you may know, the OT decreed the death penalty for damn near every infraction. I asked him about the penalty for apostasy as there have surely been Jews down through the ages who abandoned their religion to conform with the majority. In the time of Jesus there must have been Jews who took up the worship of Apollo or Zeus, but I am unaware of any stonings as prescribed in Deuteronomy.
Here is his response:
I've mentioned before that I belong to another forum, limited to clergy past and present who have shed their supernatural beliefs. One of our members is an orthodox rabbi, and he has graciously responded to my queries a couple of times about later interpretations of Old Testament laws.
As you may know, the OT decreed the death penalty for damn near every infraction. I asked him about the penalty for apostasy as there have surely been Jews down through the ages who abandoned their religion to conform with the majority. In the time of Jesus there must have been Jews who took up the worship of Apollo or Zeus, but I am unaware of any stonings as prescribed in Deuteronomy.
Here is his response:
Quote:I think the answer here is the general aversion of the Rabbis to carrying out the death penalty. There is actually a statement in the Talmud that a court that executes more than one person every 70 years is considered a 'killer court'. Even though the death penalty for apostasy is still on the books, like all the other death penalty cases it will seldom if ever be carried out.It's worth noting, as is so often the case, people responding in a human way are more merciful than people pretending to speak for God.
How do the Rabbis arrange for so few executions when so many crimes are punishable by death according to the Torah?
The Rabbis require an almost impossible set of conditions to be fulfilled for the punishment to be carried out. For example:
1. The crime has to be witnessed by two kosher eye witnesses, who then give testimony that exactly matches one another. According to the Talmud, if the Rabbis choose they can question the witnesses even about irrelevant details (What was the species of tree under which the crime was committed, were the shoe laces of the accused tied or untied, etc.) If the witnesses contradict each other even about these details their testimony is thrown out.
2. The witnesses have to actually warn the perpetrator that he will be subject to the death penalty if he commits the crime before the crime is carried out, and the perpetrator has to acknowledge the warning and state that he is carrying out the crime intentionally nevertheless.
3. The witnesses have to meet lots of criteria to be considered kosher- not related to one another nor the accused, they have to be observant of all the Jewish rituals and laws, and so forth.
So there are lots of loopholes to let folks off. Remember, stoning is also the punishment for violating the Sabbath and other mundane crimes like that, so if the death penalty was to be carried out strictly stonings would be constant.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
