Biblical scholars explore capital punishment in the Bible
When the Israelites were in the wilderness one of them was found gathering sticks on the sabbath. After Moses (pictured, from a 14th-century Haggadah) had consulted the Lord, the man was stoned to death. Does this lend support to capital punishment today?
The question is asked by two scholars of the Hebrew Bible, Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky in their new book The Bible Now (Oxford, £16.99). Since there is an online petition urging a Government debate on the death penalty, the question is timely.
The authors also look at: homosexuality, abortion, the status of women and the treatment of the Earth. They do not try to force the Bible text to match present-day assumptions, nor do they read across, if that were possible, from biblical injunctions to modern law-making.
Before returning to the man gathering sticks, it is worth mentioning that, historically, few have thought the Bible (in part seen by Christians as the Old Testament) to be a plain manual of law. Aelfric, the Abbot of Eynsham who died exactly 1,000 years ago, translated some of the Bible into English but warned against presuming that, for example, just because the patriarchs took several wives, we might do so now....