Penn and Teller: A Helping Hand

Originally Posted by Helloween

Seeing as how they'd stone an adult for stuff like Adultry, and not stealing a loaf of bread, i think it's pretty safe to say that a child with their hand in the cookie jar will get slap on the wrist, and the stones will stay on the ground.

I was always under the impression that stealing a loaf of bread was ok if you needed it to survive, but not just because you felt like some bread. Seems a cookie would fall under the 'You don't really need it' category. Therefore being a luxury item, a cookie stealer should be stoned (well, back in the day).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Minion

It's almost impossible for anyone today to really understand what their society was like. It was brutal. Stealing food might not seem like such a big deal to us, but it wasn't so easy to survive back then. Sometimes stealing someone's food at the wrong time could endanger their lives or the lives of their relatives. I can see how it would be a serious offense.

Of course it'd be serious. And that's why it would only be acceptable if it were to keep yourself/family from starving. Which precludes things like a child taking a cookie, you ain't eating that cookie as a matter of life or death.

There's nowhere I can't reach.