A thought about thought crime.

[Esquilax]

Esquilax. If you look at the context you'll find teachings of plucking your own eye out if it leads you into sin, or cutting a hand off similarly. It's clearly a pedagogical, rather than literal, form. Hyperbole is common in rabbinic teachings, and Jesus frequently uses such a rhetorical device.

So, for example, you'll find the same technique used in the Talmud...

'The pain of humiliation is more bitter than death. Therefore, one should rather fling himself into a fiery furnace than humiliate someone in public' (Talmud, Bava Metzia 59a)

Which is all well and good, in a novel or a poem or anything clearly fictional. But this is supposed to be a moral code that everyone, throughout all of human history, is to follow. Countless billions of lives are literally on the line; I don't think some unambiguous straight talking is too much to ask, given the stakes.