Avodah Zarah, Daf Kaf Vav, Part 4
Introduction
Yesterday s sugya introduced the issue of people who are not saved from a pit, but are not pushed in. Our sugya discusses people who may even be thrown into a pit.
A warning the rhetoric of this sugya is quite violent, and advocates doing things that I believe are immoral. Our moral senses have changed and developed over the past two thousand years and I think that every religion, when they look at their sources will find rhetoric like this. I will not apologize for it, for it does not embarrass me to acknowledge that this is what some people believed. But neither would I live my life by it.
תני רבי אבהו קמיה דרבי יוחנן הגוים ורועי בהמה דקה לא מעלין ולא מורידין אבל המינין והמסורות והמשומדים מורידין ולא מעלין
R. Abahu taught in front of R. Yohanan: Idolaters and [Jewish] shepherds of small cattle need not be brought up [from a pit] though they should not be cast in, but heretics, informers, and apostates may be cast in, and need not be brought up.
There are types of people who may actively be murdered. It is hard to know exactly who these people are, especially what the difference between heretics and apostates is. There are also other versions of this list. Informers seems to be akin to what we call traitors a crime that is still considered extremely serious and for which one can be executed or jailed for an extremely long time.
אמר ליה אני שונה לכל אבדת אחיך לרבות את המשומד ואת אמרת מורידין סמי מכאן משומד
R. Yohanan said to him: I have been teaching And so shall you do with every lost thing of your brother’s (Deuteronomy 22:3) that this comes to include the apostate, and you say he may be cast down. Erase [from this list] apostates!
R. Yohanan instructs that the baraita recited in front of him be emended. R. Yohanan says that one must return a lost object to an apostate. This shows that he is your brother. How then could we say that he must be cast down into a pit? The baraita must therefore be emended.
ולישני ליה כאן במשומד אוכל נבילות לתיאבון כאן במשומד אוכל נבילות להכעיס קסבר אוכל נבילות להכעיס מין הוא
But let him resolve that the one might apply to the kind of apostate who eats carrion to satisfy his appetite, and the other to an apostate who eats carrion to provoke?
In his opinion, an apostate eating carrion meat to provoke is the same as a heretic.
The Talmud asks why we didn t resolve the contradiction between the two sources. Why did we not say that one must return a lost object to an apostate who eats carrion (meat which had not been slaughtered properly) just because he is hungry, but not to one who eats carrion meat to provoke, because he simply enjoys transgressing?
The resolution is that R. Yohanan considers one who eats carrion to provoke to be a heretic, a word already included in the baraita. Apostate must mean one who eats carrion because he is hungry. Therefore the word must be erased.