The subject of bioethics covers a wide array of practices, ranging from long-familiar questions involving termination of life at different stages of the life cycle to genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, organ harvesting, cloning (human or animal), and extended prolongation of the human life span. These have in common their origin in the possibilities opened by rapidly evolving technologies and the fact that, although each raises distinct moral questions, for many they all trigger a certain wariness, indeed, a hostility, that transcends their particularities. That negative response is in some way bound up with a religious orientation to the world, in some cases in a more general way than in others, that leads to widely varying end points.

This chapter focuses almost entirely on core issues involving the moral status of medical or quasimedical interventions in end-of-life (including newborn life) situations as that status is affected by norms grounded in Scripture and articulated in the Jewish and Christian traditions over the centuries.

THE EXECUTION OF RABBI CHANINA BEN TERADYON TALMUD BAVLI (THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD)

Tractate Abodah Zarah (foreign worship) (5th C./Schottenstein ed., 2001)

When R. [Rabbi] Yose ben Kisma became ill, R. Chanina ben [the son of] Teradyon went to visit him. R. Yose said to R. Chanina: “Chanina, my brother! Do you not know that from heaven they have imposed as rulers over us this evil Roman nation, which has destroyed God's house (the Temple complex), burned His sanctuary (the Holy of Holies), killed His pious ones and caused His nobles to perish, and this foreign ruler still exists?[…]”