JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

and references to roads. The distances, taken from Roman
road maps (e.g., the Peutinger Map) and stated in Roman
miles, help determine urban boundaries and the course of
highways, and they also provide information on the physical
geography of the country. Eusebius also consulted the writings
of Josephus. He reports that in his time Jews, Christians,
and pagans coexisted in the country, with a large number of
Jewish villages in his day but only four Christian ones. The
Onomasticon was also a major source of inspiration for the
*Madaba mosaic map of the Holy Land, which is dated to the
second half of the sixth century. The mosaicist in some cases
even copied Eusebius’ mistakes. While this was not in any way
a comprehensive listing of all the places in the Bible – a feat
Eusebius may very well have intended but never succeeded to
do – his work serves as an important source of information
on the country in the early fourth century.
In c. 420 the Onomasticon was translated into Latin by
Jerome who made several additions reflecting the changes
that had meanwhile occurred. Extracts from the Syriac version
appeared in 1924. Klostermann’s edition from 1904 Das
Onomastikon der biblischen Ortsnamen was until recently
the version most frequently referred to by scholars. A translation
into Hebrew was made by Ezra Zion Melamed in 1933
and published with a commentary in Tarbiz (reprinted as a
separate publication in 1966). A translation into English was
made by G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville (2003).
Bibliography: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Graeca, vols.
XIX–XXIV (complete works); R. Laqueur, Eusebius als Historiker
seiner Zeit (1929); H. Berkhof, Die Theologie des Eusebius (1939); 4
(1932/33), 78–96, 248–84; Thomsen, in: ZDPV, 26 (1903), 97ff. Add.
Bibliography: D.S. Wallace-Hadrill, Eusebius of Caesarea (1960);
R.M. Grant, Eusebius as Church Historian (1980); T.D. Barnes, Constantine
and Eusebius (1981); E.Z. Melamed, “Onomasticon,” in: Encyclopedia
Biblica (1955), 151–54; E.Z. Melamed (transl. with notes),
The Onomastikon of Eusebius (1966); D. Groh, “The Onomasticon of
Eusebius and the Rise of Christian Palestine,” in: Studia Patristica, 18
(1985), 23–31; L. Di Segni, “The ‘Onomasticon’ of Eusebius and the
Madaba Map,” in: M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata (eds.), The Madaba Map
Centenary, 1897–1997 (1999), 115–20; G.P. Grenville, R.L. Chapman,
and J.E. Taylor, Palestine in the Fourth Century. The Onomasticon by
Eusebius of Caesarea (2003).
[Michael Avi-Yonah / Shimon Gibson (2nd ed.)]
EUTHANASIA, term denoting “the action of inducing gentle
and easy death,” first used by the British moral historian
W.E.H. Lecky in 1869. Among advocates of this measure to
terminate the life of sufferers from incurable or painful disease
are many earlier philosophers, Christian as well as pagan, including
Plato in his Republic (3:405ff.) and Sir Thomas More
in his Utopia (2:7). The precise Hebrew equivalent for euthanasia,
mitah yafah (“pleasant death”), occurs several times in the
Talmud, though always in connection with the duty to reduce
to a minimum the anguish of capital criminals before their
execution (e.g., Sanh. 45a), and never in the sense of deliberately
hastening the end of persons dying from natural causes.
In the Jewish view, life being of infinite worth, any fraction
euthanasia
of it is of equally infinite value, and the relief from suffering
cannot be purchased at the cost of life itself, whatever other
concessions Jewish law may make or urge for the mitigation
of pain. Hence, “a patient on his deathbed is considered as a
living person in every respect … and it is forbidden to cause
him to die quickly … or to move him from his place (lest this
hasten his death);… and whoever closes his eyes with the onset
of death is regarded as shedding blood” (Sh. Ar., YD 339:1
and gloss). Indeed, killing any innocent person, “whether he
is healthy or about to die from natural causes,” is legally codified
as murder (Maim. Yad, Roẓe’aḥ 2:7). Some recent rabbinical
responsa, however, are inclined to sanction the cessation
of “heroic” methods to prolong a lingering life without hope
of recovery. The withdrawal of treatment under such circumstances
might be justified on the basis of the permission to remove
from a dying person an extraneous impediment, such as
“a clattering noise or salt on his tongue, delaying the departure
of his soul” (Sh. Ar., loc. cit., gloss).
The otherwise uncompromising opposition to euthanasia
no doubt springs from the life-affirming attitude of Judaism
in which, nationally as well as individually, life in misery
is to be preferred to death with glory or dignity, a sentiment
which stirred the Psalmist to exclaim gratefully: “The Lord
hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto
death” (Ps. 118:18). For the same reason, martyrdom is permitted
only in the most exceptional circumstances; to lay down
one’s life, even for the fulfillment of divine laws, when such
sacrifice is not required by law, is regarded as a mortal offense
(Maim. Yad, Yesodei ha-Torah 5:4).
[Immanuel Jakobovits]
In Nazi Germany
Euthanasia was also a euphemism used by the Nazi regime
for the murder of the disabled, a group of human beings defamed
as “life unworthy of life.” Although Adolf Hitler and
his associates talked about “mercy death” their aim was not
to shorten the lives of persons with painful terminal diseases
but to kill those they considered inferior, who could otherwise
have lived for many years.
The belief that mentally and physically disabled human
beings should be excluded from a nation’s gene pool was a
staple argument of the international eugenic movement, in
Germany known as racial hygiene, and had led to widespread
sterilization of the disabled in various countries, including the
United States. The Nazis incorporated the goals of the eugenicists
into their racial world view, and on July 14, 1933, only four
and a half months after Hitler became chancellor, the German
government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Offspring
with Hereditary Diseases, the so-called sterilization law mandating
the compulsory sterilization of the disabled. This law
led to the sterilization of three to four hundred thousand disabled
German nationals, representing about 0.5 percent of the
German population.
The attack on patients with disabilities in state hospitals
and nursing homes during the 1930s had involved sterilization
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 569