[Avodah] Apikores?

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, December 20, 2007 2:20 pm, R Zev Sero wrote:
: What it says is that there were too many murderers, not that there was
: too many executions. (And it says nothing about corporal punishment.)

Opening Shabbos 15a...

R' Yitzchaq bar Avdimei says it was to avoid dinei kenasos. This is
questioned and clarified -- it was to avoid dinei nefashos. Dinei
nefashos includes misas beis din as well as malkos, not just judging
retzichah.

Now the question is why they avoided corporal punishment. Was it
because they couldn't politically, or because they weren't willing to
mete it out in such quantity?

Well, as you also seem to recall, Chazal say "misherabu". (I'm looking
for that quote, but keep on turning up Sotah 9:9 about the end of egla
arufah, not galus.)

That was where I deduced causality -- too many murderers lead to doing
away with trying to kill them. In line with achas lesheva/shiv'im
shanah. I'm not sure why being politically unable to mete out capital
punishment would justify removing other powers of Sanhedrin. Frankly,
until you spelled out that that's how you're reading Chazal, it didn't
cross my mind as a possibility. So I'm shifting my complaint from
being bothered by using historical data rather than a maamar chazal to
simply finding your reading of chazal implausible.

Notice the move was probably simultaneous with the breakdown in
halachic process that required a bas qol to tell us halakhah keBH.
Definitely the same generation. It's difficult to see how something
that traumatic would be voluntarily accepted rather than not meting
out oneshim because they were anusim.


SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
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