instruction, ordaining, not that it should be heard once for all or twice or on several occasions, but that every week men should desert their other occupations and assemble to listen to the Law and to obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge of it; a practice which all other legislators seem to have neglected.[1]
Indeed, most men, so far from living in accordance with their own laws, hardly know what they are. Only when they have done wrong do they learn from others that they have transgressed the law. Even those of them who hold the highest and most important offices admit their ignorance; for they employ professional legal experts as assessors and leave them in charge of the administration of affairs. But, should any one of our nation be questioned about the laws, he would repeat them all more readily than his own name. The result, then, of our thorough grounding in the laws from the time when we first had any sensations whatever, is that we have them as it were engraven on our souls. A transgressor is a rarity and to elude punishment by entreaty an impossibility.—c. Ap. II. 16-18 (164-178). (62) A Future Life—for the Law-abiding
With us the death penalty is imposed for most offences, for instance, if a man commit adultery. . . . Even fraud in such matters as weights or measures, or injustice and deceit in trade, or purloining another man's property or laying hands on what one did not deposit—all such crimes have punishments attached to them which are not on the same scale as with other nations, but more severe. For example, the mere intention of doing wrong
- ↑ For the Rabbinical tradition that Moses introduced the custom of the public reading of the Law on Festivals and Sabbaths, see an art. by Dr. Büchler in the Jewish Quart. Review, V. 420 (1893).
