In post-Biblical times, we find that on March 13, 4 B. C. E., Herod burnt alive Matthias and his companions who had pulled down the golden eagle set up over the gate of the Temple.[31] But this was the act of a despotic monarch and not of a court of law. Josephus reports about himself that the Galilean mob regarded him as a traitor, and some cried out to stone the traitor and others to burn him.[32] This also would have been the act of a passionate populace in wartime, and not a legally imposed punishment. But there is one well attested instance in early Rabbinic times of an actual burning by decree of a court of law. This was reported by Rabbi Eleazar ben Zadok (fl. c. 100 C. E.), who said that as a young child he had seen the adulterous daughter of a priest bound around with vine branches and burnt.[33] His fellow Rabbis, representing the Pharisaic tradition, declared that such a course of action involving a literal burning, could have been carried out only by an unlearned court (Mishna), or, according to R. Joseph, by a Sadducean court.[34] The Book of Jubilees, which is also Sadducean in its Halacha, prescribes burning for the marriage of a Jewess with a non-Jew, for adultery and incest.[35] But the Pharisaic tradition, as is well known, mitigated the severity of the punishment by changing it into strangulation followed by a slight, almost symbolic burning of the throat and inward parts.[36] The reasons for the change of method are apparently the same as in the case of stoning, first, the desire to rob the death of its pain[37], and secondly, to avoid marring the body. This latter reason is emphasized in the statement of Rab Mathna in the Talmud[38], that the modification in the method was approved so that the breath of life should be burnt out and the body preserved, as was supposed to have been the case with the sons of Korah.[39] Rabbi Eleazar adduces the same reason, referring to the case of the sons of Aaron.[40] The Tannaitic tradition held that Nadab and Abihu met their death through two narrow tongues of flame coming forth from the holy of holies, each dividing into two and entering into the nostrils of the two men, thus burning out the breath of life and leaving their clothes and their bodies uninjured.[41] Similarly, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch says that Sennacherib’s army was burnt by God only within their bodies.[42] This statement reflects the Midrashic tradition that because Shem covered his father’s nakedness, the clothing of his Jewish descendants Nadab and Abihu, and of his non-Jewish descendants composing Sennacherib’s army, was not burnt when the fire of the Lord burnt out their lives.[43]