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Again, Josephus is quite clear as to a THIRD TITHE. He writes:

"Beside those two tithes which I have already said you are to pay every year, the
one for the Levites, the other for the festivals, you are to bring every third year a
tithe to be distributed to those that want; to women also that are widows, and to
children that are orphans," (Josephus, Antiquities, bk. 4).

After Josephus we have the testimony of Jerome, who, like the preceding two
witnesses, lived in Palestine. He says one tithe was given to the Levites, out of which
they gave a tenth to the priests; a second tithe was applied to festival purposes, and a third
was given to the poor (Commentary on Ezekiel 45:1, 565. quoted in McClintock and
Strong, 10, 434). Evidently, Chrysostom understood this, for he preaches: "What, then,
did they (the Jews) give? A tenth of all their possessions, and another tenth, and after this
a third (tenth)," etc. (Homily 64 on Matthew 20:27).

Once more, a modern opinion regarding this question may be found in that of Dr.
Pusey, late Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, who, preaching on Ash Wednesday at
St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, is quoted as follows:

The Pharisee "paid tithes of all which he possessed: a double tithe, you will
recollect, one for God's priests, the other for the sacrifices, and yet another every
third year for the poor: 4s. 8d. in the pound he anyhow gave to God, not, as our
custom is, underrating property for the poor-rate, but a good 4s. 8d. in the pound
on the average of the three years," Pearson, Systematic Beneficence, p. 11.

In fact, I can find no authority in favour of this supposed triennial substitution of
the THIRD TITHE for the SECOND, until the twelfth century, when Maimonides says
that in the third and sixth years the SECOND TITHE was shared between the poor and
the Levites, i.e. that there was no THIRD TITHE, De Jur. Paup. 6, 4. quoted in
McClintock and Strong, 10, p. 434. But even then we have a contemporary rabbi of the
same century (Aben Ezra) who says: "This was a THIRD TITHE, and did not excuse the
SECOND TITHE." (See Gill on Deuteronomy 4:28.)

The reader can therefore judge concerning the plain statement of the law --
supported by what we have seen was thought right by the author of the book of Tobit in
perhaps the third century before Christ. He can also evaluate the record of Josephus (two
or three centuries later, and when tithe-paying was still practiced), together with the
testimony of Jerome (who lived in Palestine four centuries later, and may be presumed to
have known how his contemporaries, at least among the Samaritans, were paying their
tithes) as to whether all this is not more likely to be true than a statement such as that of
Maimonides, who, though buried in Palestine, yet flourished in Spain-- but not until a
thousand years after the Jewish nation had been dispersed.

As for the objection that a THIRD TITHE would be an excessive demand upon
income the late Sir Monier Williams, Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, referred me to
passages of Sanskrit law, especially the code of Manu. This oldest compendium of the