[ by Charles Cameron — surprising infrequency of capital punishment, though mandated in Sharia and Torah ]
.

I’m always struck by formal parallelisms, particularly in matters religious — so when I came across this fascinating reference to the infrequency of capital punishment by stoning in the Ottoman Empire in a book review today (upper panel):

I was immediately reminded of a similar Jewish reluctance to use capital punishment — stoning being one of the four choices — as recorded in Tractate Sanhedrin (lower panel)

And i thought the Dalai Lama (inset) might like it too…

Of course, there’s more detail and nuance to be had in each case, but the parallelism is nevertheless instructive.

Sources:

Review of Kadri in Pakistan’s Express Tribune
Jewish Virtual Library, Capital Punishment

On a personal note, highly subjective: you gotta love R. Akiva — but you gotta respect R. Simeon, too.

As usual, life is nuanced and — dare I say this? — “systems dynamic”.