Editing Christianity and Judaism (section)

===Capital punishment===
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2009}}
{{Further|Religion and capital punishment}}
Although the [[List of capital crimes in the bible|Hebrew Bible has many references to capital punishment]], the Jewish sages used their authority to make it nearly impossible for a [[Sanhedrin|Jewish court]] to impose a death sentence. Even when such a sentence might have been imposed, the [[Cities of Refuge]] and other sanctuaries, were at hand for those [[manslaughter|unintentionally guilty]] of capital offences. It was said in the Talmud about the death penalty in Judaism, that if a court killed more than one person in seventy years, it was a barbarous (or "bloody") court and should be condemned as such.

Christianity usually reserved the death penalty for [[Christian heresy|heresy]], the denial of the orthodox view of God's view, and [[witchcraft]] or similar non-Christian practices. For example, in Spain, unrepentant Jews were exiled, and it was only those [[Crypto-Judaism|crypto-Jews]] who had accepted baptism under pressure but retained Jewish customs in private, who were punished in this way. It is presently acknowledged by most of Christianity that these uses of capital punishment were deeply immoral.