The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History by Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl Read Free Book Online Page B

this practice was to toss the victim into a tower of ashes. The tower in question had to be tall enough so the victim could be tossed into it and allowed to sink slowly into the choking ash, smothering to death in the process. Presumably there was some sort of ladder and platform allowing access to the tower and from which the death of the condemned could be viewed by the officials involved in the case, if not by the general public. During their long and turbulent history, the Hebrew tribes seem to have tried a vast variety of creative tortures. Prostitutes were routinely burned alive as were the daughters of priests found guilty of adultery. When King David (reigned 1005–965 BC) finally captured the city of Rabbah after a long and costly siege, he ordered the citizenry to be either sawn in half or buried up to their necks in the earth and have plows driven over them. Such incidents as David’s subjugation of Rabbah and tossing condemned criminals into towers of ash should not be viewed as generally accepted forms of punishment in ancient Judea. These were aberrations more akin to crimes of passion, or simple acts of sadism, than to the enforcement of the Mosaic Code.
    These few grotesque instances aside, the Hebrews considered their system of justice and punishment as enlightened as their belief in one all-powerful God. Certainly, when relations with their neighbours broke down, as they often did, the punishments inflicted on the defeated Jews by their conquerors were at least as barbaric as those the Hebrews inflicted on their own criminals; but the outcome was not always as their persecutors intended.
    When Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon invaded, and destroyed, the Hebrew Kingdom of Judea in 589 BC, he treated the Jews as a subjugated people. He did, however, raise a few of them to positions of responsibility in his government. Among those few were three men named Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. When Nebuchadnezzar built a golden idol (probably representing either Moloch or Baal) and commanded his subjects to worship it, these three civil servants refused and were subsequently hauled before the king. Their punishment for blasphemy was to be thrown into a furnace so hot that the guards assigned to stoke it were killed by the heat. According to the story, as related in the book of Daniel, an angel of the Lord saved the three Hebrews from being burnt and thereby causing Nebuchadnezzar to recognise the power of God. Only a generation later, Darius I of Persia had overrun Babylon, taken control of the displaced Hebrews and raised the prophet Daniel to a position of power in his court. When Daniel’s enemies at court spread seditious rumours against him, Darius believed the gossip and had Daniel thrown into a den of lions. The next day, Darius came to view the remains and found that Daniel had made friends with his feline companions, apparently thanks to God’s intervention. Realizing that a terrible mistake had been made, Darius released Daniel and had the man who brought the accusations against him driven into the lion’s den where, presumably, he was torn to shreds.
    If ancient Judaic heroes like King David, King Saul, Gideon and Joshuah were warriors of great renown, the greatest warrior clan ever assembled by the Hebrews was undoubtedly the Maccabees. Between 165 and 63 BC the Maccabees attempted to re-establish the Kingdom of Judea by revolting against one of the most nefarious states of the Old Testament era, the Assyrians. To give you an idea of how fierce and barbaric a people the Assyrians were, consider that only a few centuries earlier, under the rule of Ashurbanipal (reigned 669–627 BC) the Assyrian army flayed captured enemy soldiers alive, and marked its trail of conquest with pyramids of decomposing human heads. Cities conquered by Ashurbanipal were subject to having their children burned alive and the (presumably few) surviving adults being blinded, flayed alive, impaled or having their hands, feet, ears