NASO -Numbers 4:21-7:89
LA JOLLA, California — This parasha proceeds as follows:
Chapter 4 continues with the assignments of portage duties, respectively to the Gershonites and the Merariltes.
I. Numbers 5:6-7 “when a man or woman commits any wrong toward a fellow…he shall confess the wrong…He shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it…”
In the Hammurabi Code of c.1754 BCE, punishment for stealing property was death. There are enumerated nuances for theft, including purchase of stolen property. If one steals livestock belonging to a god or the court, he was to pay back thirty-fold. If he hadn’t the money to pay, he was to be put to death. If one sells proven stolen property, he was to be put to death On the other hand, if an accusing owner of stolen property can’t prove the article was his, he is to be put to death.[1]
In Athens, Greece, anger was central to the experience of wrong-doing, such that efforts were made to establish what levels of anger to assign to a plaintiff. Thus, Athenians punished in response to someone’s level of anger! The concept of disease was invoked, assigning to the wrong-doer a designation of “a disease in the land.” The whole community was felt to share in the ‘disease.’ Wrong-doers and their acts were ‘poisonous’ because they introduced anger to the community. In this conception, the victim (punisher) was diseased because he felt anger. The wrongdoer transmitted disease because, in angering people, he upset the harmony of social relations. Anger justified punishment since, as a disease, it demanded a cure.
As an added concept, a murderer’s glance was said to spread poison. In Greek conceptions of vision, sight involved the physical transfer of particles from one person to another.
Exile was one solution to avoid cycles of the disease of ‘anger.’ It removed the wrong-doer from the sight of the angered.
Trials for disputes over wrongs were unwieldy, with assignment of juries of up to 500 or more jurists to a case! Fines could be assigned, variably up to 500 drachmae or more.
Any citizen could initiate a trial, there being no public prosecutors. Sentencing could either be by a prescribed formula or penalty could be agreed upon by the litigants. Socrates’ troubles, leading to capital punishment, were in part due to his making a joke of the matter in his Apology, apparently an unforgivable faux-pas.
The list of possible punishments for a crime included: fines, imprisonment, public humiliation in the stocks, limited loss of political rights, total disfranchisement, exile from the city with confiscation of property and/or the razing of the convict’s house, and death with refusal of burial. Death by hemlock, as in Socrates’ case, was a clean method of execution.* Another method described was ‘bloodless crucifixion, in which the convict was fastened to a board with iron collars around wrists, ankles, and neck. The collar around the neck was then tightened to achieve strangulation.
Interestingly Athenians were functionally lenient in death sentences, via willingness to let convicts escape prison and flee into exile. Exile was not an easy option, for the exile might become a beggar in a strange land. On the other hand, exile freed the victim of anger, and put an end to social disruption plaguing the city.
Incidentally, exile remained an accepted punishment up to modern times. It was used in colonial America, and modern Australia has its roots as a penal colony for Britain. [2]
In Rome, there being no police force, victims were responsible for collecting evidence and taking a suspect to court. For a slave found guilty of doing a wrong, he might be lashed, but lasting damage was avoided to prevent compromised future labor. When slaves were beaten, they were suspended with a weight tied to their feet. Another punishment was branding on the forehead. An alternative was that the slave was was forced to carry a piece of wood around the neck. He might also be confined to a work-house, obliged to turn a mill for grinding corn. For murder, one was crucified.
The Roman death penalty, for such crimes as rape, murder, and stealing large amounts, might include stripping the convict stark naked, and with his head held up by a fork, whipping to death. Other methods included beheading, strangling, thrown from a height, crucifixion, burial alive, and casting into the river. [3]
II. Numbers 5:11-28 “If any man’s wife has gone astray and broken faith with him…and…a fit of jealousy comes over him…the man shall bring his wife to the priest…he shall bring a…meal offering…priest shall take sacral water…and earth that is on the floor of the Tabernacle…saying to her…if you have not gone astray…be immune to harm from this water of bitterness…But if you have gone astray…the priest shall administer the curse…the Lord causes your thigh to sag and your belly to distend…The priest shall put these curses…in writing and rub it into the water of bitterness…(then) to make the woman drink..if she has defiled herself…the woman shall become a curse among her people. But if …has not defiled herself…she shall be unharmed…”
Jacob Milgrom further clarified this so-called “Sotah Ordeal” as follows:
(a) Typically ancient Near East ritual was composed of two parts: an act and an incantation. The incantation guaranteed the efficacy of the ritual.
(b) Dust from the courtyard was a prophylactic potion for the horses and troops of the Babylonian kings.
(c) Dust from the city gates of Mari (in Mesopotamia) was used in a water ordeal, for warding off evil.
(d) In the case of Hammurabi’s drowning decree, if the person floated or swam a certain distance, he/she was innocent. If guilty, he drowned.
(e) A humane difference is evident between Mesopotamian law and that in the Hebrew text. In the Babylonian situation, guilt resulted in death, while in the Hebrew, it merely resulted in sterility.
Hammurabi’s Code for adultery provided the death penalty by drowning. However “If a free person accuses…a married woman of illicit sexual relations but cannot prove the charge, that free person shall be publicly flogged and half of that free person’s head shall be shaved.” [5]
Greeks turned to comedy in such cases, as depicted in an Aristophenes play, “Clouds.” In it the adulterer was punished by the insertion of a radish into his rectum. Other comic punishments included the removal of pubic hair. These methods were intended to ‘feminize’ the adulterer.
A married woman discovered to have committed adultery would be divorced and prohibited from participating in public religion. If her husband did not divorce her, he might lose his citizen rights. Such a husband might have risked this in order to keep the dowry or to avoid scandal.
An unmarried woman caught in adultery could be sold by her master into slavery.
Other Greek cities had similar provisions to those of Athens. Curious expressions included:
The people of Cyme called adulterous women ‘donkey riders.’ In Lepreum, male adulterers were bound and led around the city for three days. Adulteresses were made to stand in the agora in a transparent tunic for eleven days. In Psidia, adulterers and adulteresses were paraded around the city on a donkey. A more severe penalty was reported from Epizephryian Locris in the South Italian peninsula, wherein an adulterer was blinded. [6]
Rome-I found little on this matter from the internet. One item was that female adulteresses were sent into exile onto unpleasant remote islands. Alternatively, they might be charged a monetary fine. An informant to the adultery was given an award.
If a husband suspected his wife’s infidelity, he might be charged with pimping if he didn’t bring charges against her. [7]
III. Numbers 6:2-18 “If anyone, man or woman…utters a nazarite’s vow..shall abstain from wine…may not eat anything…from the grapevine…no razor (to) touch his head…not go…where…is a dead person….If a person dies suddenly near him (her)…shall shave…head…bring…sin offering and…a burnt offering…On…term as nazarite…completed…offering to the Lord…sin..and burnt…sacrifice…then shave…consecrated hair put on the fire…”
I found nothing on the internet that resembles the nazarite designation among ancient pagans.
There is discussion regarding allegations that Jesus and his brother James were nazarites. Christians deny this, indicating that they did not refuse wine, did not have long hair, and they did enter the Temple. Part of the confusion over this is that they were Nazarenes, i.e. from Nazareth, a term that in translation sounds similar to nazarite.
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