(4) No court, among the ancient Hebrews, could consist of a single judge. Three was the number of the lowest court; three-and-twenty, of the next highest; and seventy-one, of the Great Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. A single intelligence acting judicially would have been regarded as a usurpation of divine prerogative. The basis of this peculiar Hebrew notion is a single sentence from the Pirke Aboth, iv. 8: "Be not a sole judge, for there is no sole judge but One."[122] CHAPTER IV HEBREW CRIMINAL LAW--WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE _Competency.--The qualifications of a competent witness, under Hebrew law, were almost identical with those of a qualified judge, mentioned in a previous chapter. Self-evidently, all persons who were not incompetent, were competent._ _Incompetency.--The following persons were incompetent to be witnesses: Gentiles, women,[123] minors, slaves,[124] idiots and lunatics, deaf mutes, blind men, gamblers, usurers, illiterate or immodest persons, persons who had been convicted of irreligion or immorality, relatives by affinity or consanguinity, and all persons directly interested in the case._ The witness must have been a Hebrew, though the Talmud mentions cases in which certain facts were allowed to stand proved upon statements "made innocently" by a Gentile; that is, not as a witness in court. Women were not permitted to be witnesses ordinarily, because of the "levity and boldness of the sex."[125] In capital cases, they were not allowed to testify against the accused, because the law required the witnesses to become the executioners of the condemned man, and it was not deemed proper to impose this solemn and awful duty upon the weaker sex. Puberty or adolescence marked the age which qualified a person to be a witness in criminal cases; that is, the thirteenth year must have been passed. Immoral and irreligious persons were incompetent to testify. Such men were termed "wicked" in reference to the law as laid down in Exodus xxiii. 1: "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness." Under the stigma of the immoral and irreligious came dicers, usurers, pigeon fliers, and those who traded in the fruits of the Sabbatical year. Maimonides also mentions as incompetent "men who showed lack of self-respect by eating on the street, walking about naked at their work, or living openly on the charity of Gentiles."[126] Publicans--tax-gatherers--were usually classed with heathens and sinners as being among the immoral and irreligious. This class of persons were suspected by the Jews, not only because they were regarded as the official representatives of the Roman oppressors of Judea, but also because extortion and cruelty were frequently practiced by them. Theocritus being asked which was the most cruel of all beasts, replied: "Among the beasts of the wilderness, the bear and the lion are the most cruel, but among the beasts of the city, the Publican and the Parasite."[127]