A Comparative Study of Punishments for Adultery in Semitic Religions

Abstract

Maintaining law and order is one of the primary functions of a political set up and government’s all over the world, since times immemorial, have done this by introducing a system of reward and punishment. Religions have been instrumental in providing the ethical grounds for formulation as well as enforcement of this system of reward and punishment. These notions of reward and punishment help promote harmony and peaceful coexistence. Societal harmony and peace can only be ensured if the same has already been established at the family level since the family is the very basic and primary structural unit of any society. The family originates with a man and woman agreeing to live as husband and wife for procreation and conjugal bliss. Almost the Semitic religions emphasise the need to regulate this conjugal relationship according to the parameters of justice, love, mutual respect, and adherence to the religious code that recognizes and regulates this relationship between two individuals. Faithfulness and Fair play in a sexual relationship have been categorically highlighted as inviolable canons of conduct by all the religions, especially the three Semitic religions, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Sustainable peace in a society is dependent upon strict conformity with these religious guidelines of sexual conduct. Adherents to these canons of conduct have been promised worldly and heavenly bliss and the transgressors of limits have been warned of horrible consequences in this worldly existence as well as in the life of the hereafter. Through this dissertation, the researcher aims at conducting a comparative analysis of worldly punishments meted out to adulterers in these three Semitic religions to prove that there has been a consistent continuity in all the three Semitic faiths so far as dealing with this phenomenon of adultery is concerned.