Your report claims that the Magna Carta was the first document to put in writing that the king is not above the law (Harvard’s unofficial copy of Magna Carta is actually an original, experts say, 15 May). I was struck that millennia before, another iconic document commanded the exact principle. Deuteronomy 17:18-20 proclaims: “When he is sitting upon his royal throne, he shall write a copy of this law upon a scroll from the one that is in the custody of the Levitical priests.
“It shall remain with him and he shall read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to fear the LORD, his God, and to observe carefully all the words of this law and these statutes, so that he does not exalt himself over his kindred or turn aside from this commandment to the right or to the left, and so that he and his descendants may reign long in Israel.”
Though the Magna Carta is a landmark work of jurisprudence, in this regard its authors drew from the most foundational of all documents.
Rabbi Ian Silverman
Margate, New Jersey, US
