VII. Oaths of contemjwrary and later Nations. — The stringent nature of the IJoman military oath, and the penalties attached to infraction of it, are alluded to, more or less certainly, in several places in the N. T., e. g. Matt, viii, 9 ; Actsxii, 19; xvi, 27; xxvii, 42 ; see also Dionys. Hal. xi, 43, and Aul. Gell. xvi, 4. See Sacrament.
The most solemn Mohammedan oath is made on the open Koran. Mohammed himself used the form, " By the setting of the stars" (Chardin, Voy. vi, 87 ; Sale's Koran, Ivi, p. 437).
Bedouin Arabs use various sorts of adjuration, one of which somewhat resembles the oath " by the Temple." The person takes hold of the middle tent-pole, and swears by the life of the tent and its owners (Burck- hardt, A'o/fA- on Bed. i, 127 sq. ; see also another case mentioned by Burckhardt, Syria, p. 398).
The Christian practice in the matter of oaths was founded in great measure on the Jewish. Thus the oath on the Gospels was an imitation of the Jewish practice of placing tiie hands on the book of the Law (P. Fagius, on Onkel. ad Exod. xxiii, 1 ; Justinian, Nov. c. viii, Epil. ; Matt. Paris, Hist. p. 91fi). Our Lord's pro- hibition of swearing was clearly always understood by the Christian Church as directed against profane and careless swearing, not against the serious judicial form (Bingham, A ntiq. Eccl. xvi, 7, §4,5; Aug. Ep. 157, c. v, 40) ; and thus we find the fourth Council of Carthage (c. (il) reproving clerical persons for swearing by created objects. See Profanity.
Vin. Literature. — The Mishna, Tractate Shebuoth.; Maimonides, Jad ha-Chezoka, Bilchoth Shebuoth, iii, 1 sq. ; Lightfoot, Behrew and Talmudical Exercitations on Matt. V, 33 ; Frankel, Die Eidesleistting der Juden in theolof/ischer i/nd historischer Beziehung (2d ed. Bres- lau, 1847) ; by the same author, Der r/erichtUche Be- weis nach Mosaisch-tidmudiscliem Rechte (Berlin, 1846), p. 304 sq. ; Saalschiitz, Das Mosaische Recht (Berlin, 1853), p. 608 sq. ; Ewald, Die Alterihiimer des Volkes Israel (Gottingen, 1854), p. 15 sq. See Perjury.
OATH (Anglo - Saxon, ath) may be defined (see above) as an expressed or implied solemn invocation of a superior power, admitted to be acquainted with all the secrets of our hearts, with our inward thoughts as well as our outward actions, to witness the truth of what we assert, and to inflict vengeance upon us if we assert what is not true, or promise what we do not mean to perform. Almost all nations, whether savage or civilized, whether enjoying the light of revelation or led only by the light of reason, knowing the importance of truth, and willing to obtain a barrier against false- hood, have had recourse to oaths, by which they have endeavored to make men fearful of uttering lies, under the dread of an avenging Deity. The antiquity of oaths seems almost coeval with man's existence. The absence of the practice in any people is one of the clearest proofs of a want of conception of the existence of God. Indeed, it is a noticeable fact that in the ear- liest state of civilization the belief of the special inter- ference of the Deity in the affairs of men was a prevail- ing and all but universal idea. Man, it was thought, by certain mystic forms and hallowed ceremonies, could compel the interference of the Divinity either to establish innocence or to detect guilt. Hence came or-
deals and trials by battles and by lot ; hence the belief that by the eating of bread or by the drinking of water, by walking barefoot over burning ploughshares, by thrusting the hand amid poisonous serpents, or throw- ing the accused, bound hand and foot, into water, amid prayers and the imposing forms of antique superstition, God would manifest the truth by a miraculous viola- tion of the laws of nature. So extensively diffused was this idea, that it was alike believed by the polished Athenian on the banks of the Ilissus, the stern Israel- ite amid the hills of Judiea, the African dwelling mider the burning heat of the torrid zone, and the Scandina- vian worshipper of Thor or Odin amid the fastnesses of the North. All nations, barbarous or just emerging from barbarism, have resorted to the Divinity for the decision of disputed questions with somewhat similar ceremonies, and undoubtedly with like success. Part and parcel with ordeals, whether of bread or of water, of poisons or of ploughshares, whether of Grecian, Jew- ish, Hindii, or Scandinavian form and origin, based upon the same principle, involving the same leading idea, is the oath by which divine vengeance is impre- cated upon falsehood, and by the use of which cere- mony, if it be effective, the Deitj' is, specially and finr that cause, bound to inflict the requisite and appropri- ate punishment in case of its violation. As the anal- ogies traceable amid the radical words of different lan- guages all point to a common origin — a primal lan- guage— so the innumerable resemblances tliscernible amid the elemental forms of jurisprudence among na- tions diverse in their local habitations, with varying customs and sympathies and languages, would equally seem to indicate a common source, from which at some point of time, now uncertain or lost in the darkness of a remote antiquity, they originally sprang. (For an inquiry into the origin of oaths, and an acute disquisi- tion on oaths generally, see Heineccius, Exercit. xviii, De Lubricitate, etc.)