Throwing Rocks at Old People

AJ's comments about 'not being convinced' come from a person who hasn't bothered to read the texts.

What does stoning mean? The Torah doesn't say. What's the procedure? The Torah doesn't say. So you go to the Talmud, where they spell it out very clearly. It's not rocket science. There's no reason to suspect that scholars 2,000 years ago were trying to whitewash the behavior of their forebears.

I believe that the traditional Muslim interpretation is that "stoning" should be accomplished by having the guilty party stand underneath a stone wall and collapsing the wall on top of them. And to prove adultery there have to be FOUR witnesses to penetration rather than the two witnesses of Halacha.

Who wins? Which tradition is more progressive in its stoning of adulterers? Please don't tell me we lose this one...I couldn't bear it.

This the myriad forms of execution that can be found in the Bible are definitely morally troubling.  No matter how merciful and infrequent it may be claimed that these forms of torture and execution actually were, we are still faced with the difficult issue that we consider them to be morally repugnant today.  In addition, it is completely reasonable to consider them to be morally repugnant even in the time that they were practiced.  Just because our ancestors lived in a barbaric world doesn't mean that it was ever excusable for them to act like barbarians.

What I find to be the most compelling aspect of the Bible however is that it contains both the ugliness of immoral statutes such as these as well as morally uplifting statutes that are even progressive in our own time.  It is not a book that can solely be looked upon for moral guidance but neither can it be totally condemned for its lack either.  In many ways, the Bible is representative of the human condition.  We are capable of utter depravity, complete goodness, and everything in between.

Good grief. A Sanhedrin that sent one person to death in 70 years was considered a murderous Sanhedrin. You didn't just have to have 2 witnesses - they had to warn the transgressor ahead of time and the transgressor had to acknowledge the warning! I am a fierce foe of capital punishment, but if the rules for the administration of capital punishment in the US or Canada were this stringent, I'd be a supporter. You want immoral statutes, you want moral repugnance? You need only look in your own backyard - look at Texas, look at Florida and other States in the US that allow capital punishment. Look at how defendants who are poor and of color are far more likely to be executed than are white folks. I remain amazed...

Oh, I know that capital punishment in the US is morally repugnant. I am against the death penalty entirely - whether it be by lethal injection or by stoning. Any legal system that assumes the the death penalty is applicable in any case what so ever is a morally repugnant system. However, biblical law was practiced for at least a thousand years before the rabbis introduced those measures that basically abolished it because they realized how immoral it was.

Why would anyone compare supposed stoning in Judaism that occured 2000 years ago bears no resemblance to the form practiced today to what occurs in Islamic countries today?

 Is this a fair comparison? An intelligent and reasonable argument?

Not GMILF.

The rulings of the rabbis (which eventually found their way into the Talmud) came many hundreds of years after the Bible was written (see Neusner, R. Friedman, etc.). So, there is good reason to believe that the form of stoning practiced in ancient (as opposed to Talmudic) times was different.

 The rabbis of the talmudic period came along and attempted to soften the harshness of the biblical text in response to the then-current morality. Sadly, the current Orthodoxy does not follow suit, but instead, blindly clings to norms that were first established during the talmudic and later, medieval, period.

Jews, no matter how Orthodox, don't stone anybody today, and haven't for thousands of years. Do-it-yourself-Judaism is only a place to start. Eventually you are going to need a guide, a rabbi. Because it isn't all in the book. And, you cannot be sure you really understand the book. This is a way of life, not a science. You don't cut your own hair, do you? You can consult trained people. Chabad is useful.

There are REASONS for things. Did you know why one does not eat milk and meat together? Because one is life (milk- newborns) and the other is death (meat - carcass). Judaism is full of reasons and reasonableness. Even stoning people demotivates them so it never actually has to be done, in reality. We have achieved a lot. There must be something to all this therefore. It can't be empty posing and neurotic obsessing. Logic says that.

What is the problem living torah  ( the written Torah ) ?  Torah living protects you, blesses you, amazes you.  If I can do it - anyone can do it.

Aside from the whole issue of how often the death penalty was carried out, there is another issue to consider:

Perhaps the mere theoretical possibility of the death penalty teaches how severe that sin ought to be in our eyes.

Few would advocate the death penalty for adultery today, but perhaps, if we really understood marriage, we'd think differently. The entire book of Hosea compares adultery with one's spouse to disavowal of one's Creator. It is said that when a man and women have marital peace, the Shekhina dwells between them, and it is noted that when man (ish איש) and womean (isha אשה) come together, the extra yud and heh (אש plus either י or ה) forms G-d's name. So perhaps we ought to have a different, more sanctified view of marriage than we do today. In Malachi 2:13-16, we read, "And this further ye do: ye cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with sighing, insomuch that He regardeth not the offering any more, neither receiveth it with good will at your hand. Yet ye say: 'Wherefore?' Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously, though she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And not one hath done so who had exuberance of spirit! For what seeketh the one? a seed given of God. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For I hate putting away, saith the LORD, the God of Israel, and him that covereth his garment with violence, saith the LORD of hosts; therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously." Apparently, after the exile, after the women had been darkened and wrinkled by the sun and the journey, the men divorced them. And for this, for merely this, G-d condemned them so - imagine if they had committed adultery instead!

As for Shabbat: the Hazon Ish (a prominent and renowned Haredi rabbi of Benei Beraq) noted that not only would religious coercion not work today, but that even if it did work, we wouldn't want it, as we want the Torah to be kept voluntarily, and certainly not because a human government coerced it. Additionally, he said, all the Torah and Talmud's denunciations of non-ritually-observant Jews and non-believing Jews applied only in past times, when religiosity was the norm and disbelief was a form of rebellion and social deviancy. Plato, even until Spinoza, held that belief in G-d was an indispensable part of public morality. If I remember correctly, Kant remarked that even if G-d isn't real, he'd still want his wife to believe in Him. In the Middle Ages, during the height of the pogroms and Crusades, it was said that if a Jew rode on a carriage, and the Christian driver didn't cross himself upon passing a church, the Jew should disembark immediately; Christians killed Jews, but an atheist was even more dangerous. The point being: in Biblical and Talmudic times, anyone who today violated Shabbat (which symbolizes G-d's having created the world) was likely to murder tomorrow. Now, these all doesn't apply today, as I noted, but we can still learn two things: one, that sociologically, this is how indispensable Shabbat observance (which testified to belief in G-d) was back then at least; and two, we might learn something about how Judaism even today theoretically considers belief in G-d, even if practically speaking we don't actually execute anyone for heresy.