Talk:Capital punishment in Judaism

April 2005
what are the jewish views and opinions on corporal punishment? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.93.21.7 (talk • contribs) 27 April 2005

Lack of Balance
The article is quite unbalanced. Nowhere is there mention that classical Jewish law contains many provisions for the death penalty outside of the strict requirements that bind the Sanhedrin listed here, and that the laws, furthermore, do not bind contemporary non-Jewish society, thus leading many Jewish legal authorities to support the death penalty today. There is an assertion that Orthodox rabbinical bodies are opposed with no citations apart from two individual rabbis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nelamm (talk • contribs) 11:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Name change
I think we should change this articles name to corporal and capital punishment (Judaism), because corporal punishement does not include capital punishment (at least I think), so the new title would be more accurate.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 10:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes. Unless this article is split into two articles, it would be best if it was titled "Corporal and Capital Punishment (Judaism)" Moreh405 (talk) 16:54, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I have inserted what I believe to be a more accurate translation of the phrase in the Mishnah.66.108.4.183 20:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)Allen Roth

Lack of Content
I'm reading this page and I find it severly lacking. I see no description of how to properly drug the executee, nor a full description of how any of these carried out. A casual reader could interpet "Serefah - burning" as what was done in Salem, as opposed to how we do it, having one witness start choking the executee and the other pouring hot molten down the executee's throat. Also more detail should be applied such as listing the 18, 10, 2, and 6 crimes to recieve Sekila, Serefah, Hereg, Chenek respectively. 217.132.56.235 23:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree. You wanna do it? JFW | T@lk  20:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry it has taken me so long, but I finally got around to adding the 18, 10, 2, and 6 crimes. Still need to elaborate how these punishments were carried out. 89.138.192.76 (talk) 23:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think after each one we should mention the verse that specifies it. And IIRC, there's a verse for each one except one's daughter, which we learn out from it mentioning one's granddaughter. NachMS (talk) 05:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably a good idea. In any event I added where to find the list in the Mishneh Torah, so it doesn't have to remain a section not citing sources. 89.139.169.147 (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

From the article
Somebody left this behind in comment tags:


 * having your head chopped off is less serious than stoning?

I would certainly say so. Severance of the carotid arteries will lead to rapid loss of blood pressure over the cerebral hemispheres and incapacity to feel pain. Stoning, in contrast, involved being thrown in a pit, followed by being pelted with rocks. The latter is obviously more unpleasant. Guillotin was right. JFW | T@lk  20:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The issue isn't public opinion. The statement comes from an expert in the law.  It's in Talmud and IIRC also in Mishnah.

4.249.63.167 (talk) 12:10, 16 August 2011 (UTC) "Stoning" was actually only performed if the victim survived being pushed off a 15-20 foot cliff (enough to kill instantly without damaging the body more than necessary) in a loincloth first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:6000:6015:2300:2D7A:3A37:25B0:BA71 (talk) 08:42, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: article moved by Moreh405  GB fan  02:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Corporal punishment (Judaism) → Capital and corporal punishment (Judaism) — Both are included in the article, and they are generally considered two different categories. Moreh405 (talk) 17:03, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merger Proposal
I propose (although I saw Koavf suggested this also) that Capital punishment in Judaism be merged into this article, as most of the information there is located here. Furthermore, that article is a wreck, while this article is decent, so that one has no further reason to exist. (I hope there weren't too many pronouns here) ypnypn (talk) 02:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. Debresser (talk) 06:53, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree with merger --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:10, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree Jonney2000 (talk) 09:19, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree Rupert Loup (talk) 22:19, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

More sources
I know it's already been tagged as needing more inline references, but does anyone have a reference to the requirement that a witness in a capital case needs to have a profession? I've searched for a little while trying to find any proof of such, and am coming up empty. Either it needs to be eliminated or sourced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SilverEditor (talk • contribs) 19:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't remember this. Debresser (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm referring to the following passage "Two witnesses were required. Acceptability was limited to:

Adult Jewish men who were known to keep the commandments, knew the written and oral law, and had legitimate professions;" SilverEditor (talk) 17:03, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Witnesses, even in civil cases (I would say petty but Rashi in the first few verses of Deuteronomy says that a judge should treat civil cases regardless of the amount, "whether a perutah (about a quarter, 25 cents of a 2018 US Dollar to you non-Americans, the smallest amount that is considered money) or a hundred maneh (at least a million dollars)"), could not be rakes/gamblers/people who are known as shady characters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:6000:6015:2300:2D7A:3A37:25B0:BA71 (talk) 08:38, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

List of crimes
There's a text in the Pentateuch that says that when a man marries a woman who has never been married before and it turns out that she is not a virgin, she is to be killed upon his accusation. I don't know where exactly it is right now, but a Jew well-lettered in the law will probably know anyway :) At any rate, I can't find this crime "premarital sex by a woman with a man other than her husband to-be", as it might be defined, in the list of Maimonides. Is it not part of Jewish law? And how was it "argued away" then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.143.83 (talk) 16:17, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you mean the case of a betrothed woman? Debresser (talk) 16:41, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Umm, the Torah (at least the authentic Masoretic text) clearly states in Leviticus that male-male homosexuality is a capital offense. I hope this was not ignored due to someone wanting to align their interpretations of the Torah with Frisco-Berkeley "liberalism" (It's neither liberal nor the original old-milennium liberalism). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:6000:6015:2300:2D7A:3A37:25B0:BA71 (talk) 08:29, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Superfluous copy editing
IP user: you're copy-editing text quoted from published sources, which is inappropriate, or copied verbatim from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, which is superfluous. The punctuation you're trying to introduce is often idiosyncratic and doesn't improve the article. Please take your editorial acumen to the many articles which actually need improvement. Thanks. Eperoton (talk) 23:46, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Inconsistency in the "In the Pentateuch" section
The first paragraph lists crimes that can be punished with execution, while the second paragraph details forms of execution for certain crimes, but the second paragraph mentions a few crimes that aren't in the first paragraph, which shouldn't be the case unless the first paragraph is missing things. Namely: prostitution by a betrothed virgin, or deceiving her husband at marriage as to her chastity, bigamous marriage with a wife's mother, and communal apostasy.--108.86.122.98 (talk) 09:22, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Suggested name change
Would the contributing editors of this article agree to a simpler name for this article? My suggestion would be to change the title to: "Capital punishment in Jewish law". As for the current title, it can be used and explained in a separate paragraph.Davidbena (talk) 01:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with the suggestion to change the name to "Capital punishment in Jewish law" --GHcool (talk) 04:55, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Is there anything in the article about corporal punishment that is not capital? A cursory look at the Table of Contents does not reveal it. If so, I agree with removing "and corporal" from the title. I disagree, however, with changing "in Judaism" to "in Jewish law", since the article is not just about the legal aspects of capital punishment in Judaism. Debresser (talk) 16:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks, (Reb Dovid). Yes, I could agree to the title "Capital punishment in Judaism." It's actually more concise. By the way, such a definition would, most-likely, include the well-known Jewish position that Gentiles were generally thought of as being under a different system of laws, whereby it was sufficient that only one judge condemn a murderer and to sentence him to the death penalty. In thefts and brigandage, where there is no punishment of death in Jewish law, a Gentile caught stealing or purloining the property of others can be sentenced to the death penalty.Davidbena (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In general, according to Jewish law there is only one punishment for a non-Jew violating one of the 7 Noachide commandments, and that is the death penalty. That is obviously because only the most serious of crimes are forbidden to Gentiles in Jewish law. Debresser (talk) 21:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)