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Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 6, fourth mishna states: MISHNA IV.: The stoning-place was two heights of a man. One of the witnesses pushed him on his thighs (that he should fall with the back to the surface), but if he fell face down, he had to be turned over. If he died from the effects of the first fall, nothing more was to be done. If not, the second ...

Occam's answer: The toleration of polygamy in the OT is not to say that it was an ideal, and we see that the laws dealing with it are mostly proscriptive. The ideal is more likely represented by the monogamous story of Adam and Eve. But for various reasons, the position of women in the ancient world was such that polygamy was an unavoidable fact of life ...

This test has many dimensions to it. It has little to do with the guilt or innocence of the woman. In order for the test to apply, the woman must become foolish. This has been interpreted to mean that she has aroused her husband's jealousy by flirting. Or she has aroused the suspicion of witnesses to her flirting, but they have not witnessed adultery, and ...

Jesus had the legal authority to cleanse the temple not because he was a rabbi but because he claimed to be like Solomon, the "Son of David" and thus the builder of God's house (2 Samuel 7). This is evident from a careful reading of the gospels through the lens of the Hebrew Bible. In the synoptics the temple cleansing is immediately preceded by Jesus' ...

The Hebrew word here is כרת‎ (karet). The precise meaning is uncertain, but it seems to be a punishment at the hands of heaven, not one that a human court hands down. Depending on whom you ask, this might be an early death (at the age of 50, according to one talmudic opinion), extinction of the soul (spiritual, not physical, punishment), or a punishment in ...

The torah commands the Israelites not to "work" on Shabbat or on festivals (here, Pesach). The torah does not define what this means; that was expounded in the oral law, which was transmitted (orally) from teachers to students and finally written down after the destruction of the temple, probably around 200CE. The mishna attributes the arguments it records ...

From these verses it is easily gathered that the Christian view of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is presented as the only foundation of the New Testament. If we were to remove the Old Testament, it would be like removing the walls from a building – the roof with instantly fall to the ground. From the Old Testament scriptures one finds the only logical ...

We often think that the punishment for adultery in the Bible was stoning but according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) it was strangulation. John Owen says, strangulation was used for: adulterers, strikers of parents, man-stealers, old men exemplarily rebellious against the law, false prophets, and those who predicted the future under the names of idols (John ...

Under torah a woman does not have standing to bring a legal claim against her husband, nor can she initiate a divorce. It seems to follow, then, that she could not initiate the sotah ritual against a straying husband. (Note that if there has been adultery, then this means the other man's wife, if he is married, has no recourse against him.) According to ...

If you believe that the text is divine, then this isn't a question about the text. It's a question about why G!d chooses this asymmetrical policy. And, as such, that question belongs, I believe, on a doctrinal site. If you look at the text as a text, then you are looking at the social and cultural context of the time in which it was written. In that society ...

Polygyny was acceptable because women were considered to be possessions. That is why Sarah called Avraham adon (Gen. 18:13 cp. 1 Pet. 3:6), or "sir"/ "lord"/ "master." The husband is essentially considered to be his wife's "master," and she, his servant. This is why women did not have the right to divorce their husband. The only way they could re-marry was ...