[Footnote 4: See above, p. 105.]
In the next book of the Antiquities, Josephus deals with other parts of the Mosaic Law, especially such as might appear striking to Roman readers. Thus he gives in detail the law as to the Nazarites, the Korban offering, and the red heifer, and he completes his account of the Mosaic Code by a summary description of the Jewish polity, in which he abstracts a large part of the laws of Deuteronomy together with some of the traditional amplifications.[1] Moses prefaces his farewell address with a number of moral platitudes. "Virtue is its own principal reward, and, besides, it bestows abundance of others."—"The practice of virtue towards other men will make your own lives happy," and so forth. Josephus again proclaims that he sets out the laws in the words of Moses, his only innovation being to arrange them in a regular system, "for they were left by him in writing as they were accidentally scattered." The influence of Roman law may have suggested the arranging and digesting of the Mosaic Code, as well as several of his variations from the letter of the Bible.
[Footnote 1: Ant. IV. viii.]
A few of his interpretations are noteworthy as comprising either Palestinian or Hellenistic tradition. He understands the command not to curse those in authority ([Hebrew: Elohim], Exod. 22:28) as referring to the gods worshiped in other cities, following Philo and a Hellenistic tradition based on a mistranslation of the Septuagint. A late passage in the Talmud, on the other hand, says that all abuse is forbidden save of idolatry.[1] With Philo again, he inserts into the code a law prohibiting the possession of poison on pain of death,[2] which is based on an erroneous interpretation of the law against witchcraft. Josephus follows the Hellenistic school also when he deduces from the prohibition against removing boundary stones the lesson that no infraction of the law and tradition[3] is to be permitted. Nothing is to be allowed the imitation of which might lead to the subversion of the constitution. He introduces a law about evidence, to the effect that the testimony of women should not be admitted "on account of the levity and boldness of their sex."[4] The rule has no place in the Code of the Pentateuch, but is supported in the oral law. He adopts another traditional interpretation when he limits the commands against women wearing men's habits to the donning of armor in times of war.[5] He misrepresents, on the other hand, the law of [Hebrew: shemitah] (seventh year release), stating that if a servant have a child by a bondwoman in his master's house, and if, on account of his good-will to his master, he prefers to remain a slave, he shall be set free only in the year of jubilee. The Bible says he shall be branded if he refuse the proffered liberty in the seventh year, and Philo in his interpretation has drawn a fine homily about the regard set on liberty. But Josephus may have thought that the institution would appear ridiculous to the legal minds of Romans. To accommodate the Jewish law again to the Roman standard, he moderates the lex talionis (the rule of an eye for an eye), by adding that it is applied only if he that is maimed will not accept money in compensation for his injury, a half-way position between the Sadducean doctrine, which understood the Biblical law literally, and the Pharisaic rule, which abrogated it. But in several instances he makes offenses punishable with death, which were not so according to the tradition, e.g. the insulting of parents by their children and the taking of bribes by judges.[6] Summing up the version of Deuteronomy, it may be said that Josephus, by omitting a law here, adding one there, now softening, now modifying, in some places broadening, in others narrowing the scope of the command, presents a code which lacks both the ruggedness of the Torah and the maturer humaneness of the Rabbinical Halakah, but was designed to show the reasonableness of the Jewish system according to Roman notions.
[Footnote 1: Sanhedrin, 63b.]
[Footnote 2: Comp. Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii. 815.]
[Footnote 3: Comp. Deut. 22:5, and Nazir, 59a, with Ant. IV. viii. 43.]
[Footnote 4: Shebuot, 30a.]
[Footnote 5: Comp. Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii.]
[Footnote 6: Comp. C. Ap. ii. 27. It has been suggested by Judge Mayer Sulzberger that he falsely interpreted the Hebrew [Hebrew: 'Arur] (cursed be!) to mean death punishment. Comp. J.Q.R., n.s., iii. 315.]