Stand aside Sharia – here comes biblical law

Killing witches, adulterers and homosexuals are all legal requirements in the Christian holy book, and now the Scottish Bible Society (SBS – Patron: The Queen) is sending Bibles to Scottish courts telling them that they should take biblical law into account when dispensing justice. The SBS describes its campaign as “a push to increase engagement with the Bible in view of its formative influence on Scotland’s legal tradition”.

In parallel with distribution to the High Court, Court of Session and sheriff courts, SBS will also distribute Bibles to the Faculty of Advocates Library, the Crown Office, the country-wide offices of the Procurator Fiscal Service and local faculty libraries.

SBS chief executive Elaine Duncan said the aim was “to ensure that judges in the Court of Session and each of the sheriff courts had ready access to a copy of the Bible not only as a reference book which remained relevant to many aspects of substantive law, but also as the source of the principles of justice, integrity and mercy which underpinned the court system in Scotland.”

The Bibles will be accompanied by an explanatory booklet outlining the significance of the Bible to the law of Scotland and giving examples of Bible texts relevant to aspects of law and practice.

Unfortunately, the booklet omits the references to biblical law that would be considered barbaric to modern minds.

Leviticus 20:10

“And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”. [A lot of women going to the stoning pit, I’m afraid.]

Deuteronomy 25:11

“If two Israelite men get into a fight and the wife of one tries to rescue her husband by grabbing the testicles of the other man, you must cut off her hand. Show her no pity.” [An example of justice and mercy in action.]

Deuteronomy 6:13

“You must fear the Lord your God and serve him. When you take an oath, you must use only his name.” [So no affirming in court then? So no atheists permitted to testify?]

Exodus 22:18

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” [So does that make it OK for the pastors in London’s Pentecostal churches to kill any children they accuse of being witches?]

Romans 13:1

“Every person must be subject to the governing authorities, for no authority exists except by God's permission. The existing authorities have been established by God,”

[Presumably that would apply to Hitler’s Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Stalin’s Russia.]

At the launch of the campaign, Lord Mackay of Clashfern — a former Lord Chancellor and Lord Advocate — as Honorary President of SBS, presented inscribed Bibles to the Lord President, Lord Hamilton, and the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill at a ceremony in Edinburgh’s prestigious Signet Library.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: “The SBS makes no concessions to the progress of legal thought over the past two millennia. Furthermore, given the Bible’s many contradictions and barbarities, trying to use it as a guide will lead modern judges and advocates up all kinds of weird and wonderful byways. For instance, how would the Scottish seafood industry fare if the biblical ban on shellfish were to be enforced? On the other hand, there might be a revival of the Shetland woolly jumper industry if there was a ban on garments made of two kinds of material – as required in the Bible.

“Hopefully the Scottish legal establishment is aware that the Enlightenment has occurred and justice is indeed dispensed with mercy unconstrained.”