From the Rejection of That Generation to the Death of Moses - Flavius Josephus

or magistrates, which is a much more probable exposition than this of
Josephus, of heathen gillis, as here, and against Apion, B. II. ch. 3. sect.
31. What book of the law was thus publicly read, see the note on Antiq.
B. X. ch. 5. sect. 5, and 1 Esd. 9:8-55.
5. Whether these phylacteries, and other Jewish memorials of the law here
mentioned by Josephus, and by Muses, (besides the fringes on the
borders of their garments, Numbers 15:37,) were literally meant by God,
I much question. That they have been long observed by the Pharisees
and Rabbinical Jews is certain; however, the Karaites, who receive not
the unwritten traditions of the elders, but keep close to the written law,
with Jerome and Grotius, think they were not literally to be understood;
as Bernard and Reland here take notice. Nor indeed do I remember that,
either in the ancienter books of the Old Testament, or in the books we
call Apocrypha, there are any signs of such literal observations
appearing among the Jews, though their real or mystical signification,
i.e. the constant remembrance and observation of the laws of God by
Moses, be frequently inculcated in all the sacred writings.
6. Here, as well as elsewhere, sect. 38, of his Life, sect. 14, and of the War,
B. II. ch. 20. sect. 5, are but seven judges appointed for small cities,
instead of twenty-three in the modern Rabbins; which modern Rabbis
are always but of very little authority in comparison of our Josephus.
7. I have never observed elsewhere, that in the Jewish government women
were not admitted as legal witnesses in courts of justice. None of our
copies of the Pentateuch say a word of it. It is very probable, however,
that this was the exposition of the scribes and Pharisees, and the practice
of the Jews in the days of Josephus.
8. This penalty of "forty stripes save one," here mentioned, and sect. 23,
was five times inflicted on St. Paul himself by the Jews, 2 Corinthians
11:24
9. Josephus's plain and express interpretation of this law of Moses,
Deuteronomy 14:28, 29; 26:12, etc., that the Jews were bound every
third year to pay three tithes, that to the Levites, that for sacrifices at
64