Ancient Laws Quotes

Of the ten crimes which Biblical Hebrew law punished by stoning, nine have ceased to be offenses in modern society.

Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part.

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.

If these laws [in the Bible] belonged to any other ancient culture we would approach them very differently. We need not bother to reject the code of Hammurabi. Presumably it is because Moses is still felt to make some claim on us that this project of discrediting his law is persisted in with such energy. The unscholarly character of the project may derive from the supposed familiarity of the subject.

Some of our earliest codes of ethics in the so-called Western World are little more than a rewriting of the Ten Commandments. Eastern legal constructions likewise arise out of the earliest spiritual traditions and understandings.

If a priest has given his daughter – to a man who had a concubine, it is not to be taken that he has given his daughter to a married man.

It's like there's a pulsating, hidden world, governed by ancient laws and principles, underlying everything around us - from the movements of electrical charges to the motions of the planets - and most people are completely unaware of it. To me, that's a shame.

Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.

The Law of Moses became the font and spring of constitutional government.

Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity.

The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes . . . of universal application-laws essential to the existence of men in society, and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.

Our ancient laws expressly declare that those who are but delegates themselves shall not delegate to others powers which require judgment and integrity in their exercise.