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Hie Talmud. 



what time of the day? (6) What hour? (7) What place? Then they 

 were asked, " Did you know the murdered man and the murderer, and 

 did you warn the latter before he perpetrated the deed? " If to any of 

 these questions the witness answered negatively, or simply said, " I 

 don't know," his evidence was rejected. Not everybody was accepted 

 as a witness. Relatives could not be witnesses either for or against 

 (Sanh. iii, 3). Gamblers, usurers, those who bet on the flight of 

 pigeons, and those who dealt in the produce of the seventh year (which, 

 as you know from the Bible, was a year of rest to the land and whatever 

 it produced spontaneously belonged to all who took possession of it) 

 were not admitted as witnesses in any court. Judgment could never 

 be rendered on the day the examination of the witnesses closed; it had 

 to be postponed to the next day. In the meanwhile the judges met 

 either in their houses or in the open court, and deliberated, sometimes 

 during the whole night. While these deliberations lasted, they had 

 to abstain as much as possible from eating and drinking. The next 

 day the judges convened and each had to give his opinion separately, 

 beginning with the youngest and least reputed, that he be not influ- 

 enced by the opinion of his superior in either age or learning. He 

 who condemned the accused could change his vote before the final de- 

 cision was rendered to an acquittal, but he who acquitted could never 

 change his vote again. In civil cases a simple majority of the judges 

 either acquitted or condemned; in criminal cases a majority of one 

 against the accused set him free; for condemnation a majority of at 

 least two was required. Very seldom it must have occurred that a man 

 was put to death, for the Mishnah (Macoth 1, 10) says: "A court which, 

 within the space of seven years, has condemned to death more than one 

 man, is called a murderous one." And R. Tarphon and R. Akeba, 

 two of the most reputed teachers of the second century (when the Ro. 

 man government had assumed the judicial power and administered 

 justice or injustice as the case might have been), said: "If we had been 

 members of a court, judging over life and death, no man would ever 

 have been executed, for we would have asked the witnesses ques- 

 tions until their testimony was invalidated. " This, however, does 

 not imply that they were willing to let loose upon society the worst 

 evil-doers, for the law provides that a murderer who could not be 

 convicted on account of the insufficiency or weakness of the evidence, 

 was to be kept in close confinement and fed on bread and water until 

 he died. 



And now let me give you a few specimens of the Hagadah. First, the 

 story of Alexander and the king of India (Jer.B.Metsia 88 c. Ber R. Par. 



