Roland

If the Jewish leaders could get Jesus executed only by having the Romans put him on trial and having him condemned, how could these leaders be allowd to stone a woman to death whom they found committing adultery without even the semblance of a trial? That never seemed to make much sense to me.

andrewcriddle

The story in John 7:53-8:11 is not part of the original text of John and its historical status is dubious.

However I suspect Pilate would have been far more concerned about the leaders of one Jewish religious group killing the leader of another Jewish religious group without consulting him, than he would have been bothered about the lynching of someone he would probably have regarded as a no-account slut.

In any case the story as it stands has Jesus being asked as a religious expert what should be done to the woman involved. What we are meant to assume would have happened if Jesus had recommended stoning her is not clear, some commentators suggest that Jesus would have been denounced to Pilate by his religious opponents for trying to take the law into his own hands.


Andrew Criddle

Th1nk3r

I'm not sure, but i believe that back then women weren't much above slaves as far as the law was concerned.

Phishfood

well, yes, spontaneously stoning was legal back then. But that was before the War on Drugs. Since then it has not been legal to get spontaneously stoned. But just like back then, it never really stopped anyone. For instance, I am spontaneously stoned right now.

-Pf

Roland

Touche :wave:

ohwilleke

Whose law? The law of the Romans or the law of the Hebrew? One way to read the passage is as part of the larger "render unto Casesar" dialog that sought to assuage would be Gentile converts about how scary the Christians were or were not. In other words: "Yeah, those Jews are pretty scary people, they go and stone adulterers. We aren't like that, we're nice."

Roland

I guess what I'm wondering is just what sticklers Romans were in regards to the law. I know that they allowed fights to the death in the arena so they couldn't have had a very high opinion of human life, but I didn't realize they allowed religious leaders to just go around willy nilly stoning people to death who did something to offend the religion. It seems rather anarchic for a civilization as grand as Rome's.

ohwilleke

I think "willy nilly" is an overstatement. The American South (and much of the American West) had frequent lynchings for prolonged periods of time. But, because the circumstances of the lynchings were such that they didn't threaten the large society, they could afford to be blaise about punishing lynchers, while strict about other laws. Likewise, many governments in Latin American are rather lax about going after "death squads" because the targets are often "undesirables" or opponents of the current regime.

Also, lynchings or stonings are much harder to prosecute than crimes committed by individuals. Who is the murderer when 100 people throw stones? And, the notion of widespread mutual culpability also makes it difficult to secure honest witnesses and politically troubling to imprison or otherwise seriously punish everyone involved.

It is much easier to punish deviant action, than community action.

Roland

I agree with you in some respects, but the stoning is not portrayed as the result of mob violence but an action led and sanctioned by the religious leaders of the time. Still, you have come up with interesting points.

Boomeister

So, is the question "Why didn't they just stone Jesus?"

Boomeister