Religious Questions #1: On Stoning

15 November 2022

Greetings,

A fellow asked me yesterday, "Is stoning allowed?". It was a joke question that I answered regardless of the intention. The short answer is no.

However, another fellow reminded me of Deuteronomy 13:6-10. I will quote 10 as follows:

Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

My answer is still "No, stoning is not allowed." Now, why is it ordered this way?

Context is very important in analyzing the verses. You can say that they can be split into a few groups:

1) The ones that don't change over time,

2) The ones that can be reformed through time (though you can not take the word "reform" as completely change, but take it as if updating the computer's operating system to fit the newest equipment of the era without changing the base at all),

3) The ones that were ordered to just particular groups of a particular time that only worked back then and wouldn't work now. For the stoning, I have seen in Deuteronomy 13:5 that Egypt is mentioned, and the context is added to make us understand that it belongs to the third group I said above.

Also, to determine if an action is allowed or not, you should check the laws. The laws forbid you from killing. If you break it, you are hurting the local harmony. Therefore, you are committing a sin. Tolerance should be upheld.

And, regarding the second group of verses I have said above, the view towards the people you regard as sinners have changed throughout the years.

Also, historically, religion was one's nationality as you could say, therefore differences in religion could also be another way of description for the enemy nation. You could say "non-Christians/Jews/Muslims" just to refer to the enemy state/group. The main factor has not been the religious differences but the religious descriptions were merely used as a differentiating factor to label people. Think of the football teams that wear different color uniforms, you'd call them reds and say "fight against the reds". In this context, you are not hostile against the color red most of the time, but simply use it to highlight the enemy.

So, religious differences back then could as well be the indicators of different factions. If one were to invite you to the other, it was not only a religious difference but a policy difference.

Again, historically, religious conversion has not been a personal thing. It would apply to anything from taxes to the government's judicial policies on you, which you can see in the example of the Early Modern Period in the Ottoman Empire very clearly.

Therefore, if you check the archives or anything, you can see a bunch of inter-religious hostility, especially in the context of the Mediterranean of the Early Modern period. It does not encompass the in-person level of religious tolerance such as hugging your non-Christian enemy as a Christian yourself. It's more governmental as it was the state policy to convert people (Pia Casa of Venice and Devşirme of Ottomans, if you will).

It could also apply to smaller groups as people were keeping the right to enslave the people of other religions when they were pirating around. Still, it's a different thing. Despite that, the "Barbary Coast" Muslims had 'mercy' on the French during the times the Ottomans were protecting them, so it's more about political power than religion itself. I believe the Torah verse hints at the same context in this situation.

The end verdict: Stoning is not allowed.

My sincere wishes,

The Archbishop of Nova Justiniana and All Cyprus, His Beatitude,

Karolos Yarakios.