The Mishna[67] specifies strangulation as the punishment for the son who purposely wounds his parent, for the false prophet, for the one who prophesies in the name of idolatry, for stealing a Jew, for adultery with a married woman, seducing a priest’s betrothed or married daughter, etc. It was the method of capital punishment preferred by the Rabbis; for R. Yoshia said that wherever the Bible does not specify the method of carrying out the capital sentence, strangulation should be adopted because it is the least severe measure. Rabbi Jonathan also said that strangulation should be adopted, even though in his judgment strangling is not an easier method of death than other methods.[68] The reason for this preference seems to be because of the four legally recognized methods of capital punishment, strangulation as it was carried out was the only one which left the body practically uninjured. The condemned man was to be sunk up to his knees in mud and then strangled by having a hard cloth which was wrapped in a soft one twisted around his neck and pulled in opposite directions until the suffocated victim died.[69] Strangulation therefore satisfied the Rabbinic desire to avoid marring the body far better than did stoning, burning or decapitation. R. Jehudah explains that the death penalty as inflicted by man should be like that inflicted by God in not injuring the human body.[70] This consideration it was, also, as we have seen, that played a large part in inducing the Rabbis to mitigate the method of burning, by reducing it to strangulation followed by an almost symbolical burning. Again, in this case, the sources do not mention any definite case in which the punishment of strangulation was actually carried out as a result of a court judgment. But it is clear that strangulation induced in the older manner of hanging was not infrequently consummated in the earlier Rabbinic period. Raguel’s daughter Sarah “thought to have hanged herself.”[71] A proverbial remark in the mouth of Rabbi Akiba (d. c. 132 C. E.), ‘if you wish to strangle yourself, hang yourself on a high tree’,[72] would indicate that hanging was a well recognised method of death. According to one source, Judas Iscariot hanged himself.[73] It is reported by Rabbi Eleazar,[74] that Simon ben Shetach (fl. 80 B. C. E.) hanged women in Ascalon. But in this case the question arises whether they were hanged alive or hanged as a reproach after they had been otherwise killed.