Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Kerry Hull on Shiblon's Stoning and Mistreatment

  

Shiblon’s Stoning and Mistreatment

 

After stressing the Core Covenant, Alma comments Shiblon for patiently bearing his captivity and torture in the form of stoning while serving among the Zoramites (see Alma 38:3-5). In the Old Testament, stoning (saqal in Hebrew) was a common yet horrific form of judicial execution for adultery (see Deuteronomy 22:21), necromancy (see Leviticus 20:27), blasphemy (see 24:16), murder (see v. 17), idolatry (see Deuteronomy 17:2-5), Sabbath violation (see Numbers 15:35-36), and other offenses. Its purpose was overtly the death of the accused; for example, with adultery: “Ye shall stone them with stones that they die” (Deuteronomy 22:24; compare Leviticus 20:2, 27; Numbers 15:35). However, in Shiblon’s case, he survives the stoning, possibly suggesting this mention of “stoning” has a different connotation. In fact, the Book of Mormon refers to stones being used in a variety of ways, such as in warfare with slings (Alma 2;12; 3:5; 17;36). It is also possible that “stoning” in the Book of Mormon had a broader meaning including torture that did not necessarily lead to death, perhaps akin to the Mesoamerican practice of handheld stones, [20] stone cudgels, and other related objects used in hand-to-hand-combat [21] or an “impromptu weapon[s]” [22] (compare 57:14). Note that when Ammon and some of his brethren went to the land of Nephi to teach the Lamanites they were “cast out, and mocked, and spit upon, and smote upon [their] cheeks” and “stoned, and taken and bound with strong cords, and cast into prison,” plainly indicating stoning was part of their mistreatment before being imprisoned, not a method of intended death (26:29). [23]

 

I suggest Shiblon suffered pelting with stones as a form of punishment without the intention to kill him, such as in the ancient Greco-Roman world, where pummeling with stones was sometimes used as a way of showing dissatisfaction or anger, even in some cases coming from audience members at a performance. [24] Shiblon suffered from his stoning episode, and Alma extols his courage for bearing it and other abuses “with patience,” but then gently reminds Shiblon, lest he fail to recognize it, “and now thou knowest that the Lord did deliver thee” (Ama 38:4; emphasis added). (Kerry M. Hull, “The Core Covenant: An Everlasting Decree,” in Book of Mormon Insights: Letting God Prevail in Your Life, ed. Kenneth L. Alford, Krystal V. L. Pierce, and Mary Jane Woodger [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023], 218-19)

 

Notes for the Above:

 

[20] Indeed, the Maya hieroglyph for “strike, hit” (read jatz’) depicts a hand holding a stone. See Marc Zender, “Glyph for ‘Handspan’ and ‘Strike’ in Classic Maya Ballgame Texts,” PARI Journal 4, no. 4 (2004): 1-9.

 

[21] See Heather S. Orr, “Stone Balls and Masked Men: Ballgame as Combat Ritual, DainzĂș, Oaxaca,” Ancient America (Washington, DC: Center for Ancient American Studies, 2003): 5:73-103. See also Zach Zorich, “Fighting with Jaguars, Bleeding for Rain,” Archaeology 61, no. 6 (2008): 51.

 

[22] Karl Taube and Marc Zender, “American Gladiators: Ritual Boxing in Ancient Mesoamerica,” in Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, ed. Heather S. Orr and Rez Koontz (Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2009), 197.

 

[23] Yet in other cases, such as with Zenock (see Alma 33:15-17) and the brother of Nephi (see 3 Nephi 7:19), stoning is expressly said to have led to death.

 

[24] The ancient Greek statesman and orator Demosthenes noted that the orator Aeschines was driven “from the stage with hisses and cat-calls, and came near to pelting him with stones when he took the stage” during a theatrical performance (On False Assembly 19.337). See Rosivach, “Execution by Stoning in Athens,” 232n2. See also Arthur Stanley Pease, “Notes on Stoning among the Greeks and Romans,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 38 (1907): 10.