Punishment: Its Method and Purpose 51

legally executed.” It was also used to justify Hillel 's prosbul, in other words to justify a quasi-legislative act of social reform. The system of fines was expanded to cover numerous situations; they were often fixed by law so that equity was assured. There was some disagreement whether fines earlier imposed only by a bet din could be continued, but there was consensus on the power of the court to fine for any matter not covered by biblical law.

The death penalty and the methods of execution were dis­cussed in detail. Four methods of execution were used: stoning, burning, strangulation, and decapitation.’ Each of these methods of execution was arranged in such a way that the convicted indi­viduals physical appearance would not change. The thought behind this was that of making the execution resemble a normal death as much as possible with the body of the criminal left unmutilated.*! This was considered an extension of the com­mandment to love your neighbor as yourself and assured a humane death.®? These two considerations continue the biblical thought of having the court act as an agent of the Divine and fol­lowing that pattern as much as possible.

Stoning, the penalty for eighteen Biblically mentioned crimes, was changed so that the criminal was pushed from a height onto stones, rather than having stones thrown at him. The general pub­lic was also effectively excluded and only the witnesses took part. Burning, for adultery and incest, was preceded by strangu­lation. Decapitation, prescribed principally for murder, followed the Roman practice.* Strangulation was used for all crimes in which no other death penalty was specified; it was considered the most humane method of execution.* Safeguards against wrongful €xecution were carefully put into place. Following stoning the corpse could be hanged for public display until nightfall if the crime was blasphemy or idolatry.# As these executions were Painful, a drug potion including frankincense was given to them.*

Although theoretically the death penalty was not to be extended beyond the instances mentioned in the Torah , in prac­tice this was not 50.5 Some efforts were made to limit the use of the death penalty. It seems that during portions of the late mish­Naic period it disappeared entirely or was so infrequent that it no longer played a role, so one authority stated that a court which gave the death sentence once in seven years was a bad court, While Eliezer b. Azaria increased that to once in seventy years. R. Tarfon and R. Akiba would not impose the death penalty at all.