Let your yes be yes: Perjury then and now

Now that the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair is off the front pages, it may be possible to comment on the moral and legal issue of perjury without arousing a host of partisan arguments. And it might be of interest to consider how perjury was defined in the ancient world of Greece and Israel and in New Testament times.

In the U.S. today perjury is usually restricted to false statements made under oath in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings. To be guilty of perjury, one must give false testimony knowingly and willfully on a matter that is material to the judicial proceeding. That is, both intentionality and materiality are essential aspects of the crime. A person who unintentionally makes a false statement under oath, whether through ignorance of the truth or through an honest mistake, is not guilty of perjury. Nor is a person guilty of perjury if he deliberately makes false statements on matters that are unrelated to the judicial proceeding; to constitute perjury, the false testimony must be germane to the case. Finally, perjury today is primarily a matter of criminal law, not civil law. Individuals suspected of committing perjury may be charged and prosecuted by the state and, if convicted, punished by the state.

Ancient Greeks and Israelites had a quite different understanding of perjury. For them, perjury was above all a religious offense, not a legal one. Stated in terms of the Decalogue, perjury was a violation of the commandment not to take the name of the Lord in vain (Exod. 20:7), not a transgression of the injunction against bearing false testimony against one's neighbor (Exod. 20:16). The former commandment was understood to apply to all times and circumstances; the latter dealt above all with judicial proceedings.