Disproportionate Retribution/Oral Tradition


 * Due to Values Dissonance, some stories in The Bible will seem like this to modern readers. The Atheist Experience, for example, has called the very concept of Hell "an infinite punishment for a finite crime," making it inherently disproportionate no matter how heinous your sins are. Not that Hell is exactly in the Bible.
 * The New Testament does mention destruction in an everlasting fire in several places, including Matthew (18:8-9 and 25:41), Mark (9:43-48), and 2 Thessalonians (1:8-9). It also mentions everlasting torment in Fire and Brimstone Hell for those who take the Mark of the Beast (Revelation 14:10-11). The Old Testament, on the other hand, doesn't really have the same concept of an afterlife and torment. It still contains several cases of Disproportionate Retribution such as Noah cursing Ham for seeing his nakedness (Genesis 9:22-25) and the rule that anyone who touches Mount Sinai will be killed (Exodus 19:12-13).
 * These examples are somewhat subverted or averted if you take traditional Jewish stories about the Old Testament (practically traditional fanfics) into account. In Noah’s case, for one, it is said that Ham actually sexually abused his own father.
 * After Cain murders his brother Abel, God makes the strange decision to protect Cain from retribution through the threat of retribution. "Then the LORD said to him, 'Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.' And the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him." (Genesis 4:15). Cain himself had done such, by murdering his brother for beating him in a contest.
 * A few verses later, Cain's descendant Lamech makes this arrogant claim: "I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold." (Genesis 4:23-24)
 * Though the mark of Cain was to prevent further punishment than God had already given him, which was banishment from the rest of humanity.
 * Like several vengeful passages from the Torah, this one is turned on its head by Jesus. "Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.'"
 * In the book of Judges in the Bible, the Philistines bind Samson, gouge out his eyes, and make him entertain them. (This was after he had already killed thirty Philistines in order to steal their clothes, "struck down" 1,000 Philistines who were sent to capture him, and killed members of the Philistines who were ruling over his people on other occasions.) He asks for strength, saying, "let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes." He then performs a suicide attack in which he pushes apart the pillars holding up a building with 3,000 men and women on the roof, "So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life."
 * In 2 Kings, the prophet Elisha is mocked for being bald by some local youths. Rude, sure, but God summoning two she-bears to kill (or at the very least maim) 42 of said youths might have been overreacting just a tad...
 * "Bald-head" was also a far worse insult to an Israelite at the time than it sounds to modern ears. It was practically a curse.
 * Then there's Haman, resident Evil Chancellor to the king of Persia. Mordecai refuses to bow to him. Haman attempts to perform genocide on the Jews for this insult.
 * A man gathers wood on the sabbath. This counts as work, so he's stoned to death.
 * A lot of the "sins" in the Bible, which can all be punished pretty harshly, fall under this trope. You can stone a child to death for being disobedient, or be punished for wearing mixed fabrics or planting two crops in the same field.
 * Greek Mythology loves this trope:
 * Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man. This allows mankind to create civilization, which Zeus didn't want, so he's chained to a rock for eternity. Every day, buzzards peck out his liver, which regrows every night.
 * It's a little bit more complicated than that. Zeus orders that humans make sacrifices to the Gods, but demands that they give up all the usable parts. Prometheus, upset that his creations are getting treated this way, comes up with a plan: he has the humans slaughter a cow and divide it into two bags; one contains all the meat with a layer of gristle on top, while the other contains the offal with a layer of fat on top. Zeus naturally picks the better-looking bag, meaning humans get the meat and the Gods get the garbage parts. Angrily, Zeus declares "Man shall have his steak, but he shall eat it raw!" and takes fire away from them. Prometheus sneaks into Mount Olympus and steals the fire back, which is why he got the aforementioned punishment. The disproportionate retribution comes from Zeus' ensuing punishment of humanity, which gets forgotten in most tellings.
 * Witness Apollo, who was challenged to a contest of music by a satyr named Marsyas. When it was determined by the Muses who were overseeing the competition that both were equal, Apollo, in a total dick move, decreed they play and sing at the same time. As Apollo played the lyre, this was easy to do. Marsyas could not do this as he only knew how to use the flute and could not sing at the same time. Naturally, Apollo was declared the winner. He proceeded to flay Marsyas alive for his hubris to challenge a god.
 * A woman named Arachne who fancied herself a better weaver than the goddess Athena. Athena challenged her to a competition, and it turns out Arachne was indeed the better one. This pissed off Athena sufficiently that she turned Arachne into a spider, so that she would spend the rest of her days doing nothing but weave. In other versions of the story, Athena bests Arachne using her divine powers, and turns Arachne's into a spider only after Arachne kills herself in despair.
 * Some versions of this claim that in the contest, Arachne weaved a tapestry mocking the various foolish acts and infidelities of the gods. So whether it was losing, being mocked, or being shown up AND mocked, Athena was pretty angry about the entire thing and tore down the tapestry, causing Arachne to kill herself. Afterwards, Athena turned her dead body into a spider, though whether for punishment or out of some remorse, the story varies.
 * Probably the most hard-done by of all was Medusa and her two sisters Euryale and Stheno, the gorgons. Some versions of her story have them being turned from beautiful maidens into hideous monsters by an angry Athena because Poseidon RAPED Medusa in Athena's temple.
 * Although one could argue that it was, in part, Athena's way of ensuring that Medusa could never be raped by anyone again...
 * Note that this was Ovid's version of the story; in older versions, Medusa was one of Echidna's spawn, and thus born a gorgon. Ovid's stories may have even started the trend of depicting the Olympians as Jerkass Gods.
 * Tiresias gets a variety of these, depending on the story. In one story, he's punished for hitting two copulating snakes with his stick by getting turned into a woman. He's later blinded when he contradicts Hera by saying that women enjoy sex ten times as much as men. In another version, Athena blinds him when he accidentally sees her bathing, and his legendary powers of foresight were her way of apologizing.
 * Actaeon accidentally glimpses Artemis naked, so she turns him into a stag and has his own hunting dogs rip him to pieces.
 * To be fair, the most well-known version of that story is, again, Ovid's take on it. Some versions of this story, however, make Actaeon more of an Asshole Victim, lecherously gawking at Artemis and possibly even trying to violate her. Callimachus' version goes so far as to claim Artemis was willing to cut him some slack, ordering him to leave and to not speak, warning him that he would be transformed if he spoke one word. He heard the call of his hunting party and, not taking the hint, called out to them, paying for that mistake with his life. Euripides' version claimed he also arrogantly boasted of how he was a greater hunter than she was, and we all know how the Olympian Gods just love when mortals do that...
 * The Trojan War was (ostensibly) started because Helen of Troy ran off with Paris. The Greeks commence a ten-year siege of Troy, and eventually sack the city, enslave all the women, and kill off the men. Values Dissonance factors in here, because the Greeks took the law of hospitality very seriously. Also, many of Helen's suitors swore to do just this if she should be kidnapped.
 * After Achilles kills Hector, he strings up the corpse and rides it around the city a number of times, then refuses to give it up for a proper burial. This was seen as being somewhat beyond the pail, and Achilles should have laid his retribution to rest once he'd killed Hector. It takes King Priam's stirring pleas to get Achilles to relent.
 * Lara, one of the minor Goddesses of Death in the Roman Pantheon, used to be a quite cheery and lively nymph. That, until, according to the different versions of the myth, she either warned her sister Juturna and the goddess Juno about Jupiter's plan to rape her, or told Juno about a long-standing affair between her husband Jupiter and Juturna. In both versions Jupiter saw fit literally banishing her to Hell, but just for added safety had her tongue cut out first. Just because that wasn't enough, Jupiter had Lara escorted to Hell by her son Mercury, and when Lara tried to bargain for at least her freedom, Mercury just raped her on the spot, thus giving birth to the minor gods of streets.
 * In the myth where Persephone was abducted by Hades, her despondent mother Demeter was searching the ends of the Earth looking for her, eventually arriving in the city of Attica. While most of the citizenry treated her kindly, offering her food and drink, one servant at a tavern named Ascalabus was amused by how this matronly woman was drinking like a common wino, and insulted her by saying something along the lines of, "Want me to get a whole cask? Doesn't look like our goblets are big enough." Okay, that was pretty mean and she was understandably not in a good mood, but turning the guy into a gecko (and then cursing him so that all geckos would be forever hated by the gods) seemed a little extreme...
 * And The Fair Folk were prone to brutally avenging slights so minor that their victims were often completely unaware that they had done anything wrong in the first place. In fact, this trope is the reason they're called The Fair Folk—because anyone who even suggests that someone fairer than they even exists will bring on their wrath.
 * Let's not leave out Norse Mythology. Loki's eldest son, Fenris, was chained to a big ass rock until Ragnarok because the gods forsaw that they would experience "great troubles" from his rapid growth. That's right. He was imprisoned until the end of the world for something he hadn't even done yet. He manages to get his revenge by killing Odin at Ragnarok though.
 * In several religions that believe in Karma it's said that any negative karma will come back to the offender only 7 or more times worse