Chapter 1: The first stone

Jesus throwing the first stone (Based on The Martyrdom of St. Stephen by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld)

 (John 8:3-7)

One day, the religious teachers and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught committing adultery and made her stand centre stage. “Teacher, we found this woman in the very act of adultery,” they told him. “Moses in the Law commanded us to stone such people to death. So what do you say?”

But Jesus just bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. Since they went on demanding an answer, he stood up and told them:

“Let your innocent one cast the first stone onto her.”“Let each of you take a stone from the ground, not too big that it will kill immediately, but not too small so that is not a stone”⁶.

In the Christian republic of Afghanistan, devout Updated Evangelists are punishing a young woman (Rokhshana, 19) for adultery (2015).

And the Pharisees and his disciples complied, and they took the adulterer to the place of worship and placed her in the middle of an open place, and Jesus said:

“Now throw your stones to undo this evil”, and having heard these words, those around him started casting their stones.

The man who had partaken in the fornication stood by and on hearing the screams of his beloved one, rushed to her side and tried to shield her body, but there were too many believers trying to please their Lord and soon the two adulterers succumbed next to one another⁵.

And when they were both covered with stones and sure to be dead, Jesus blessed the people around him, and then he retired with his disciples, who were pleased to have performed this holy act.

 

Sometimes, fundamentalists only flog adulterers, lucky them! (from: 2015 punishment of adulturess in Afghanistan).

 

Comments:

The relaxed attitude of Jesus (in the real gospel) towards the unfaithful woman stands in stark contrast to the punishment in Islamic law. The Quran does not prescribe stoning as a punishment for any crime (but mentions lashing as punishment for adultery). However, numerous Hadiths contain stoning as a punishment for adultery^2 3 4 .

As for empirical evidence: Saudi Arabia executed four people by stoning during the 1980s. Iran placed a moratorium on rajm (stoning) in 2002 but still allows individual judges to pass the sentence. By the way: the story about the man shielding his mistress is no invention of mine: this is straight from the Hadiths (Sahih Bukhari 6:60:79⁵ ).