DEUT1107 It should be noted that in the idolatrous societies in which Jews lived during the time of the Bible and the Talmud, non-Jews were not required to return lost objects to Jews. Even so, the Talmud records the view of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair that "in a place where a desecration of God's name might result [which would probably be the case if the idolater knew that a Jew had found his possession] it is forbidden to keep a lost article" (Bava Kamma 113b). Such views influenced later codifiers of Jewish law. Although ruling that Jews should keep lost objects of idolaters, Maimonides also teaches that a Jew who returns a lost object so as to sanctify God's name is to be praised ("Laws of Robbery and Lost Objects" 11:3). For centuries after Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe Rivkes (seventeenth century), author of the previously cited Be'er HaGolah commentary on the Shulchan Arukh, taught that Rav's permission to keep a Gentile's lost object was no longer applicable: "Rav made this remark with reference to actual idolaters ... but not to non-Jews today who accept the Creator and whose moral code includes returning lost property" (see his commentary to Choshen Mishpat 266:1). In the early twentieth century, Rabbi Baruch Ha-Levi Epstein (1860 – 1941), author of the classic work Torah Temimah, wrote that since contemporary non-Jews observe the "Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah" (see page 405n), then," without any doubt the law [regarding how to act towards them in monetary and other matters of justice] is identical in all respects to that which applies to a Jew" (commentary on [this verse], note 22).