Oath

Traditionally, an oath (from Anglo-Saxon āþ, also a plight) is a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who object to making sacred oaths is to give an affirmation instead. Nowadays, even when there is no notion of sanctity involved, certain promises said out loud in ceremonial or juridical purpose are referred to as oaths. "To swear" is a verb used to describe the taking of an oath; to make a solemn vow.

The word comes from Anglo-Saxon āþ: "judicial swearing, solemn appeal to deity in witness of truth or a promise"; from Proto-Germanic *aiþaz; from Proto-Indo-European *oi-to-: "an oath". Common to Celtic and Germanic, possibly a loan-word from one to the other, but the history is obscure and it may be non-Indo-European, in reference to careless invocations of divinity, from the late 12th century.

The concept of oaths is deeply rooted within Judaism. It is found in Genesis 8:21, when God swears that he will "never again curse the ground because of man and never again smite every living thing". This repetition of the term never again is explained by Rashi, the pre-eminent biblical commentator, as serving as an oath, citing the Talmud Shavous 36a for this ruling.

The first personage in the biblical tradition to take an oath is held to be Eliezer, the chief servant of Abraham, when the latter requested of the former that he not take a wife for his son Isaac from the daughters of Canaan, but rather from among Abraham's own family.

The foundational text for oath making is in Numbers 30:2: "When a man voweth a vow unto the Lord, or sweareth an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth." According to the Rabbis, a neder (usually translated as "vow") refers to the object, a shâmar (usually translated as "oath") to the person. The passage distinguishes between a neder and a shvua, an important distinction between the two in Halakha: a neder changes the status of some external thing, while a shvua initiates an internal change in the one who swears the oath.

In the Roman tradition, oaths were sworn upon Iuppiter Lapis or the Jupiter Stone located in the Temple of Jupiter, Capitoline Hill. Iuppiter Lapis was held in the Roman tradition to be an Oath Stone, an aspect of Jupiter in his role as divine law-maker responsible for order and used principally for the investiture of the oathtaking of office.

According to Cyril Bailey, in "The Religion of Ancient Rome" (1907):

We have, for instance, the sacred stone (silex) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the Capitol, and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony of treaty-making. The fetial, who on that occasion represented the Roman people, at the solemn moment of the oath-taking, struck the sacrificial pig with the silex, saying as he did so, "Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger." Here no doubt the underlying notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the god, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-title specially used in this connection, Iuppiter Lapis.