About that good old Semitic practice of stoning: I once read, (somewhere or other, and not in any Holey Book) that the Jews stopped stoning for adultery in the 1st century BC. The Christian story of the woman taken in adultery is not found in any text before the 2nd century AD. So something apparently doesn't add up.
Or it might. The story is set in the Near East, among Semites. Then as now, if those guys had made up their minds to hurl rocks at a woman until she died, they'd by god do it, priests' rules be damned. Or hadith be damned.
The story as we receive it has a circumstantiality that's rather convincing. Except for the part where Jesus shames those barbarians out of their cruelty. It would take one helluva rabbi or imam to do that.
Or it might. The story is set in the Near East, among Semites. Then as now, if those guys had made up their minds to hurl rocks at a woman until she died, they'd by god do it, priests' rules be damned. Or hadith be damned.
The story as we receive it has a circumstantiality that's rather convincing. Except for the part where Jesus shames those barbarians out of their cruelty. It would take one helluva rabbi or imam to do that.