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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt:...respects. 1. There is no ancient religion which of itself is so sternly opposed to misconduct in these relations and yet so free from unnatural limitations of their due rights as Jahveisin. What importance it attached to their purity, and how it sought to protect real marriage as the primary basis for all true life in common among human beings, is at once shown by its stringent laws on the subject. The universal prohibition of adultery was deemed of sufficient moment to be received among the Ten Commandments, and to be placed here in immediate conjunction with the one protecting life, as though chastity were a good equal to life itself.5 This same law is repeated in the oldest legal compilations with similar, but still more definite 1 Ex. xxi. 7. Dn, see p. 75 sqq. P. 185. 'Dent. xxiv. 16; Jer. xxxi 30; 3 Josh. vii. 24; 2 Kings ix. 26 (Hist. Ezek. xviii. 20: comp. 2 Kings xiv. 6;iv. 74 sq.); comp. similar cases among the but even the sons of Korah were not Romans even in the times of the emperors, exterminated, according to Num. xxvi. 11:Tacitus, Ann. v. 9. This severity is comp. xvi. explained, if such cases were regarded, as Comp. above p. 168 sqq. MAN AND WIFE. 191 expressions, and the legal penalty here was death, not only for the adulteress, but also for the adulterer.1 The mode of execution, as was almost understood of itself from what will be explained below, was stoning in the assembled community. Simple prostitution, which did not involve adultery on either side, was not punished with loss of life; but just as little was it regarded with indifference,2 and neither the man nor the 219 woman escaped with impunity. If, however, the guilty one were the daughter of a priest, then the bodily punishment must be the severest possible,3 just as was the case...