As such, it’s illogical to conclude that when someone seriously damages another on purpose we should let him off easy with a fine, but if he did it by accident we should be more stringent and do to him as he did. Importantly, in the verses that come just before “an eye for an eye,” the Torah is discussing cases of deliberate assault and doesn't legislate an exact retribution it mandates a monetary fine. In this case we are first taught that damaging another's animal requires a monetary fine - so too, in the case of damaging another person, a fine must be paid.īible scholar Benno Jacob noted that "an eye for an eye" is stated in a context of injuries that are caused by accident (like knocking a hot latte into someone’s lap). There is an exegetical concept in Jewish law that when one verse is proximate to another that the law in the preceding verse applies to the one following (or vice versa). Here are four ways by which we can know with certainty that Lex Talionis is referring to a monetary compensation: These nuances frequently inform legal decisions and as such are indispensable tools of analysis that are unfortunately lost in any translation. The second is that there is a great deal of subtlety and nuance in the original Hebrew (as there is in any source language). These inferences are objective, meaning that the individual can't just gloss over the text and conclude "this is what it means to me." There must be a precedent for the conclusions that are drawn and it must fit within the framework of the Torah's internal logic. The first is that the Torah comes with its own "decoder ring" – a discreet series of logical inferences that scholars use to interpret the material. There are two important foundational concepts to bear in mind for this examination. With the help of the musings of Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo, I hope to show that the notion of an "eye for an eye" never did (and in fact could not possibly ever have) meant that we actually take someone's eye, tooth, etc., out as retribution. Lex Talionis doesn’t actually mean taking someone's eye, tooth, etc., out as retribution. Many people mistakenly believe that this is a primitive kind of justice from the supposedly angry God of the “Old Testament” that would, in time, be replaced by a more enlightened and tolerant view. Though it sounds more like the name of a cartoon villain, Lex Talionis (the Law of Retribution) is the Latin name for the Jewish concept of an "eye for an eye" – the notion that the perpetrator of a crime should receive the exact punishment that he inflicted on another. It’s unfortunate how it misrepresents the Jewish tradition and maligns Judaism's brand of morality. It's hard to blame him as this mistaken notion is common coin in the world at large and I doubt that he had a lot of spare time for Talmudic discourse. While Gandhi may have been a great social leader and an important historical figure, his knowledge of Jewish thought, as judged by the quotation above, seems to have been limited. ![]() "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Mahatmas Gandhi
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