Translations:Does Joseph's intent to divorce Mary show that the death penalty for adultery was not mandatory?/35/en
From Theonomy Wiki
So, if statement number 1 is true in the case of Joseph, then statement number 2 cannot logically follow from the Joseph and Mary case. If Joseph refused to prosecute (as the scripture in Matthew implies), then we don't know what penalty he would have asked for, because he was never in a position to ask for a penalty from a judge. For all we know, if he had decided to prosecute (we'll see why he didn't in a moment), he might very well have supported the death penalty. Of course, in the real world, the angel intervened, even before the divorce. But would anyone suggest that Joseph would have been "unjust" to support the death penalty for adultery? Even Philip Kayser believes that the death penalty for adultery is "just."[1]
- ↑ "To argue against applying the death penalty to Biblical crimes is to question God’s wisdom and justice, to denigrate His Word and to leave us without any objective standard by which we can oppose tyranny." (Kayser, Is the Death Penalty Just?, p. 27)
