From one passage[124] it would seem that in later Rabbinic times, (c. 350 C. E.), when the penalty of death for murder could no longer be imposed by the Jewish court, it was recommended that the death sentence be commuted into one of blinding the murderer. When it was reported that Bar Chama had committed a murder, the Exilarch bade Rab Abba (or Acha) bar Jacob investigate the case. If it proved that Bar Chama was guilty, his eyes should be put out.[125] But this passage stands alone, and does not allow us to draw any conclusion as to a general practise. Moreover the expression “to put out his eyes” may possibly be figurative, meaning imposing a fine or taking away authority.[126] We see, therefore, that the necessity of adhering to the express commands of the Torah prohibited the Rabbis from commuting a death sentence into scourging, imprisonment, blinding or any other kind of mutilation, exile, enslavement, a fine or any other punishment. The exact words of the Torah had to be upheld. Therefore, while rigidly maintaining the Biblical principle of capital punishment, the Rabbis availed themselves of their right to modify the _method_ of executing the death sentence. If they upheld the death penalty, there was nothing to prevent their mitigating the severity of its application in every way possible. We have already seen how stoning was modified in practise to precipitation, and burning modified to strangulation followed by a nominal burning. Our consideration showed that these changes in method apparently came about in order to secure the easiest and most humane methods of death, (since according to the golden rule even the condemned criminal is one’s brother), and in order to spare the body, so far as possible, all mutilation or disfigurement. The general principle governing the lightening of the methods of death was that wherever the Torah does not specify which method of death is to be employed, the easiest and most humane method is to be used.[127] Legal Restrictions But the most thoroughgoing modification of the system of capital punishment was not brought about through change in the methods of imposing the death penalty, but through surrounding the accused with so many legal safeguards that it became virtually impossible ever to impose a death sentence. The law limited the right of trying capital cases to the high tribunal of twenty-three, not even the king having the right to put to death other than through the Sanhedrin.[128] According to Rabbinical tradition, one very large class of capital cases was taken out of the jurisdiction of any human court, namely those in which the Bible stipulates _Kareth_ or Excision as the punishment. This ruling at one stroke absolved the Rabbinical courts from the obligation of imposing the death sentence in a large number of cases.