Dying to Die: Bioethical Interpretations

Abstract

Just as deriving sociopolitical norms regarding martyrdom from the Chananya chronicles is difficult at best, so too is the task of extracting bioethical norms from those sources. Still, contemporary bioethicists invariably turn to this story when they expound upon the dilemmas surrounding euthanasia. Not only do they look to Chananya’s death for guidance, but they also frame their ultimate conclusions regarding euthanasia based on how they read the story of his dying. In this way Chananya’s dying and death become the exemplars par excellence, the models after which and against which subsequent end-of-life care is and should be shaped and measured. In the view of many scholars, contemporary medical care at the end of life should comport to how a Jewish bioethicist reads this story.

It is precisely by reason of this entanglement, as much as by being open-ended on both sides, that life histories differ from literary ones, whether the latter belong to historiography or to fiction. Can one then still speak of the narrative unity of life? ¹