94 HEBREW LIFE AND CUSTOM
be held by a modem jury altogether to invalidate their
evidence ! What, however, would greatly deter peιjury in
the trial of a person found guilty would be the rule that
they first must take part in executing the death sentence.
A false witness would thereby incur blood-guiltiness.
In connexion with the sentences inflicted, especially
the lex talionis, it must be remembered that in primitive
thought the tribe or family is the unit rather than the
individual. Thus a physical injury done to a tribesman is
a weakening of the tribe, and the wrong is redeemed by a
similar weakening of the tribe a member of which did the
wrong. Deuteronomy shows a sense of individual justice 1
foreign to the older thought (which is seen, for example,
in David’s concession to the Gibeonites2), and it is further
remarkable for the humanitarian limitation of the stripes
inflicted.3
The prosecutor or claimant was called the ‘ witness
and the defendant ‘ responded ’.
There are traces of more primitive methods of settling
disputes or deciding criminal cases, but we cannot say how
late they were in force. There can, however, be little
doubt that Trial by Ordeal was once not uncommon.
Thus close to the miraculous and therefore sacred spring
(Exod. xvii. 6, 7) was a place called Massah and also
Meribah. It has been suggested by Robertson Smith that
the word Massah means a place of ordeal, and he conjec-
tured that the ordeal involved the use of ‘ holy water ’
(cf. Num. v. 17). An ordeal with holy water does indeed
survive in the law, but since Meribah (which means a
place of litigation) was in the same region, the Biblical
Kadesh Bamea being located at the modem ,Ain Kadis,
the ordeal may have been of more than one kind.5
* Deut. XXiv. 16. 1 2 Sam. xxi. 2 ff. 3 Deut. xxv. 3.
4 e.g. Deut. xix. ι6.
5 Here Professor Kennett’s MS. ends. In giving the Lecture he went on
with what he had so ingeniously led his audience to, both in subject-matter and
geographical situation, viz. the Ordeal by Fire among present-day Bedouin in
TRIAL BY ORDEAL
95
In this very region an Ordeal by Fire still survives. Mr.
Austin Kennett says :
‘ The most interesting hereditary expert in Sinai is the indi-
vidual who carries out the Trial by Ordeal. There is in Sinai
only one man—a quaint little old Arab called Sheikh Hamdan
of the Ayayda tribe—who inherited the post from his father, and
who carries out his Ordeal all over Sinai. There is a similar
expert among the Amran tribe east of Akaba, and another near
Medina in the Arabian Peninsula.’
Mr. Austin Kennett then goes on to say that he was an
actual witness to a Trial by Ordeal by special invitation
from Sheikh Hamdan. The spoon referred to,ɪ rather like
a flattened-out soup-ladle, is such as is used by the Sinai
Arabs for roasting coffee-beans.
‘ The trial by ordeal2 is employed to settle disputes in the
absence of evidence, usually only the more serious charges being
disposed of in this way. Just as the Sinai Arabs are loath to
employ the oath in their disputes, unless it has been found
impossible to come to a decision by any other means, so do they
reserve the “Bisha” (as they call the trial by ordeal) for the
more important cases only, being anxious that the solemnity of
the ordeal shall not be lost by frequent appeal in trivial cases.
The procedure is as follows :
‘When a suspect is accused of murder, theft, or any other
serious charge, after heated affirmation of the truth of the charge
on the part of the accuser and equally violent denials and
repudiation on behalf of the accused, it may be mutually agreed
that the case shall be taken to the Bisha for decision. The
accuser and accused must first agree upon a neutral third party,
whose duty it is to watch fair play between the two... . The three
then go to the sheikh of the Bisha, either in his own house or at
some pre-arranged place in the desert, the whole proceedings
the Sinaitic Peninsula, as actually witnessed by his son, Austin Kennett, when
Administrative Officer for the Egyptian Government in Sinai. I give the
description from the late Mr. Austin Kennett’s book Bedouin Justice
{pp. ɪo"] ff.), by the kind permission of the Cambridge University Press.
ɪ The actual spoon was brought to the Lecture and exhibited by
Professor Kennett. It had been presented to his son by the Sheikh.
1 pp. tog ff.