Thou
shall not suffer a witch to live. (Exodus 22:18).
This,
the most concise - and deadly - of all the
anti-witchcraft texts in the Bible (see also Leviticus
20:27, Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Galatians 5:19-20), is
arguably the Bible's bloodiest verse.
Mark
Twain commented:
During many ages there
were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded
that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore
the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and
indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters,
thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy
work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day
during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured,
hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of
witches, and washed the Christian world clean with
their foul blood.
On
the last of the American slaughters:
At Salem, the parson
clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity
had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the
cruelties it had persuaded them to do. (Mark Twain,
quoted in The Great Quotations,
compiled by George Seldes).
According
to Joachim Kahl, in The Misery of
Christianity, the last witches
were burnt in Switzerland in 1782 and drowned at the
witches' ordeal near Danzig (now Poland) in 1836.
