murder

76:2.5The boys were re­spec­tively eigh­teen and twenty years of age when the ten­sion be­tween them was fi­nally re­solved, one day, when Abel’s taunts so in­fu­ri­ated his bel­li­cose brother that Cain turned upon him in wrath and slew him.

89:5.91. It some­times be­came a com­mu­nal cer­e­mony, the as­sump­tion of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity for in­flict­ing the death penalty upon a fel­low tribesman. The blood guilt ceases to be a crime when par­tic­i­pated in by all, by so­ci­ety. The last of can­ni­bal­ism in Asia was this eat­ing of ex­e­cuted crim­i­nals.

66:7.124. You shall not kill men, women, or chil­dren.

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

74:7.20The moral law of Eden was lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia. But the Adamites taught many ad­di­tional rea­sons for these com­mands; for in­stance, re­gard­ing the in­junc­tion against mur­der, the in­dwelling of the Thought Ad­juster was pre­sented as an ad­di­tional rea­son for not de­stroy­ing hu­man life. They taught that “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the im­age of God made he man.”

93:4.104. You shall not kill.

94:8.101. You shall not kill.

131:2.12“Says God, the cre­ator of heaven and earth: ‘Great peace have they who love my law. My com­mand­ments are: You shall love me with all your heart; you shall have no gods be­fore me; you shall not take my name in vain; re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; honor your fa­ther and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not com­mit adul­tery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false wit­ness; you shall not covet.’

162:2.1The first af­ter­noon that Je­sus taught in the tem­ple, a con­sid­er­able com­pany sat lis­ten­ing to his words de­pict­ing the lib­erty of the new gospel and the joy of those who be­lieve the good news, when a cu­ri­ous lis­tener in­ter­rupted him to ask: “Teacher, how is it you can quote the Scrip­tures and teach the peo­ple so flu­ently when I am told that you are un­taught in the learn­ing of the rab­bis?” Je­sus replied: “No man has taught me the truths which I de­clare to you. And this teach­ing is not mine but His who sent me. If any man re­ally de­sires to do my Fa­ther’s will, he shall cer­tainly know about my teach­ing, whether it be God’s or whether I speak for my­self. He who speaks for him­self seeks his own glory, but when I de­clare the words of the Fa­ther, I thereby seek the glory of him who sent me. But be­fore you try to en­ter into the new light, should you not rather fol­low the light you al­ready have? Moses gave you the law, yet how many of you hon­estly seek to ful­fill its de­mands? Moses in this law en­joins you, say­ing, ‘You shall not kill’; not­with­stand­ing this com­mand some of you seek to kill the Son of Man.”

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

72:10.2These peo­ple are pass­ing out of the neg­a­tive into the pos­i­tive era of law. Re­cently they have gone so far as to at­tempt the pre­ven­tion of crime by sen­tenc­ing those who are be­lieved to be po­ten­tial mur­der­ers and ma­jor crim­i­nals to life ser­vice in the de­ten­tion colonies. If such con­victs sub­se­quently demon­strate that they have be­come more nor­mal, they may be ei­ther paroled or par­doned. The homi­cide rate on this con­ti­nent is only one per cent of that among the other na­tions.

70:10.3Prim­i­tive man as­signed all phe­nom­ena to a per­son. In case of death the sav­age asked, not what killed him, but who? Ac­ci­den­tal mur­der was not there­fore rec­og­nized, and in the pun­ish­ment of crime the mo­tive of the crim­i­nal was wholly dis­re­garded; judg­ment was ren­dered in ac­cor­dance with the in­jury done.

70:10.11One of the ear­li­est for­mu­la­tions of ad­vanced tribal law had to do with the tak­ing over of the blood feud as a tribal af­fair. But strange to re­late, even then a man could kill his wife with­out pun­ish­ment pro­vided he had fully paid for her. The Es­ki­mos of to­day, how­ever, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for mur­der, to be de­creed and ad­min­is­tered by the fam­ily wronged.

70:10.12An­other ad­vance was the im­po­si­tion of fines for taboo vi­o­la­tions, the pro­vi­sion of penal­ties. These fines con­sti­tuted the first pub­lic rev­enue. The prac­tice of pay­ing “blood money” also came into vogue as a sub­sti­tute for blood vengeance. Such dam­ages were usu­ally paid in women or cat­tle; it was a long time be­fore ac­tual fines, mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, were as­sessed as pun­ish­ment for crime. And since the idea of pun­ish­ment was es­sen­tially com­pen­sa­tion, ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing hu­man life, even­tu­ally came to have a price which could be paid as dam­ages. The He­brews were the first to abol­ish the prac­tice of pay­ing blood money. Moses taught that they should “take no sat­is­fac­tion for the life of a mur­derer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death.”