Tractate Sanhedrin: Those Punishable By Decapitation (continued): (7) The False Witnesses against a Priest's Daughter

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(7) The False Witnesses against a Priest's Daughter.

6c. "The false witnesses against a priest's daughter, and the one who is her paramour":--all false witnesses are subject to the same death penalty (to which the accused has been made liable) except in the case of the false witnesses against the priest's daughter and her paramour (who are to be strangled). 2

T. XIV. 17. All perjurers and illicit paramours are subject to the same death penalty to which their victim has been condemned: if it was stoning they are to be stoned; if it was burning they are to be burned. In what cases does this hold good? When the same death can be inflicted: when the death penalty attached to the crime is stoning, the accused is stoned, and also the perjurers; when burning is the penalty, both accused and perjurers are burnt. But in the present case, the unjustly accused is burnt, while the perjurers are strangled.

 

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Footnotes

141:2 The law of the false witness is derived from Deut. 19. 16 ff. On the "priest's daughter," see Mishnah IX. 1. Scripture (Lev. 21. 9) is silent as to the fate of the paramour; but since it must be assumed that he is to be put to death, and none of the three Biblical methods is authorized, "strangling" must be employed. See p. 95, note 3.