BTW, I am not sure Christians really understand the Biblical view on adultery, both in the Old and New Testaments. Adultery as a crime, could only be committed by the woman. Think of "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and John 8:7. In those stories, the adulterer is always a woman. Same in old English common law. Men really couldn't commit a sex crime in ancient and old times. And adultery, they told us in HS, was really just a property crime and paternity issue. And the punishment, death by stoning, has never changed (my 2001 atheist college teacher pointed out). In English common law, now, a man could be charged rape. And rape was one of the original eight felonies (all also usually punishable by death), the Law Dictionary by Steven Gifis says. But on another message board, they told me rape was also more a property crime, than a sex crime anyways. Now in Matthew 5:27-30 Jesus says that a man can commit adultery in his heart of course. But as I said above, the civil authorities would never punish him for that. And I think the Hebrew word for that is usually translated as "fornication", not adultery. Now sodomy or gay sex would seem to be a sex crime that a man could be punished for. By being burned alive in medieval Europe at one time, in fact, and in the Bible too. But that was only an Ecclesiastical, or church, offense in England until Henry VIII made it a felony in 1533. Along with witchcraft in 1541 (which he also declared a form of treason). Ecclesiastical offenses are considered forbidden by the establishment clause in the US. And they include blasphemy. I was also reading recently that although the first obscenity and pornography statues were passed in the UK and US, in 1857 and 1873, our founding fathers would have okayed them for some reason. But George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would just consider them a church offense too. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state. But he also supported old church offenses like sodomy and adultery. But he took the unusually moderate position back then, that they should just be punished with dismemberment and mutilation. It's not clear why he did this. He was a Deist, but he never denied it to anyone who asked if he was a Christian. (He also attended a small Episcopal church when he became president, I just read online.) He probably was trying to walk a cautious middle ground with religion and theology. And he probably appeared to have different beliefs, depending on which audience he was talking to. (His home state of Virginia also required Sunday church attendance, until it passed the Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786.)
You might cite some sources for these claims. What were those "online sources" that you mention? And before telling Christians we don't understand the Bible, you might read that book again. In the Old Testament. the "go to" source is Leviticus 20:10: "If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. It's pretty clear that's not a reference to fornication. Then there's that other part of the Bible important to Christians, the New Testament, and what Jesus said on the subject: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). And as Jimmie Carter told us, Jesus went farther and said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. (Matthew 5: 27-28). You argue that in practice these injunctions weren't enforced against men by the civil authorities, but that's extraneous to the question of what the Bible says. You dismiss sex offenses as just "church offenses". But what offenses are we talking about when you lecture us on the Bible? Church offenses! Jefferson wasn't in the Bible, and his lifestyle was full of paradoxes. He was happily married to his third cousin, Martha Wayles Skelton who died in 1782. His affair with his slave Sally Hemmings, who may have been his wife's half-sister, thanks to Martha's father's sexual appetites, seems to have begun in the 1787-89, after his wife's death, so it wasn't adultery in the usual sense. News of this got out in 1802, when the journalist James Callendendar, blew the whistle, and claimed he had fathered several children by his slave. That didn't keep him from being elected President in 1803--a man's sexual relations with his slaves apparently not being considered that scandalous at the time, or the journalist's claims not being considered credible. What though does this have to do with the Bible?
I got my information from more than one source. But I know the man never or rarely got punished for adultery. That is what the novel "The Scarlet Letter" is all about. All the men in her town were fooling around, and she was the one who got punished for it. I know the Law Dictionary by Steven Gifis says the woman is the one who has to be married for a charge of adultery. I also know the Law Dictionary (which I got in 1995) lists the original eight felonies. None of them are vice crimes. I don't have the book with me now. But they are things like murder, a couple of forms of theft, and "rescue of a felon", whatever that is. I was just reading online crimes like adultery were always ecclesiastical offences. The British parliament made them secular crimes May 10, 1650. But it was the religious "Rump Parliament" that was in power now. I was also surprised to just recently learn that obscenity would have been considered just another ecclesiastical offence in Washington and Jefferson's time. Yet the "liberal" Warren court said true obscenity was not protected by the first amendment in the 1973 Miller case (by just one vote, I read some time ago). Here is something I just read now: "Adultery in English law was not a criminal offence in secular law from the later twelfth century until the seventeenth century. It was punishable under ecclesiastical law from the twelfth century until jurisdiction over adultery by ecclesiastical courts in England and Wales was abolished in England and Wales (and some British territories of the British Empire) by the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857." Adultery laws - Wikipedia
I'd suggest then that your thread title and opening sentence are misleading, since what your really seem to be interested in is what the civil authorities did with male adulterers. It has nothing to do with knowing our Bible.
Jefferson also famously said in 1814 "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law". According to the Law Dictionary by Steven H. Gifis "The original common law felonies were felonious homicide, mayhem, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, prison breach, and rescue of a felon." The English philosopher and scientist Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651 about the necessity for a strong, absolute government to maintain order in society because due to their naturally self-interested nature, people must surrender some of their freedoms to this sovereign through a social contract to ensure peace and security. So Thomas Hobbes believed the primary purpose of government was to maintain order and peace.
Yeah. Hobbes had a pretty grim outlook on life. And therefore was willing to surrender not some but all freedoms to an absolute monarch or dictator. This he said was what any rational person (i.e., one concerned primarily about self-preservation) would do in a State of nature before government was invented. That's the gist of his book Leviathan based on "social contract' theory.The alternative was to remain in a "State of Nature", in which there was "a war of all against all" and life was be "nasty, brutish and short." He was writing at a time of turmoil. He was born prematurely as a result of his mother's panic over the approaching Spanish Armada. And he grew up to live in the midst of the English Civil War (1642-51). Understandably, avoiding social discord was his primary concern. U.S. history was more influenced by a later contract theorist, John Locke, who wrote during the Glorious Revolution, when William and Mary returned to England and ushered in a more stable and prosperous period. In Locke's State of Nature, humans were concerned not only with protecting their lives but with liberty and property, as well. They formed government to overcome the "inconveniences" of living without it, but insisted that they retained their natural rights. Americans are familiar with this, since Jefferson virtually plagiarized Locke's theory--except for substituting the "pursuit of happiness" for property. The Framers of our Constitution took care of that, with the phrase 'life. liberty and property" in the protections of the Fifth Amendment due process clause. So why do we care what those English dudes of long ago, or Jefferson and our Founding Fathers thought so long ago? Or do we? "War of all against al". "Nasty, brutish and short." That sounds awful. But it could never happen here! Right? And we now have a strong government to protect us, so not to worry. Right?
