A collection of articles by leading contributors on the investigation of the law-Jewish, Greek, and Roman- in the early second century Judaean Desert documents, written in the Roman provinces of Judaea and Arabia, including the Babatha archive.

English translations of modern legal documents from the Judean Desert cast light on the Islamization of the tribal customary law in the tribal judge s precinct. This book is intended for students of Islamic law, of customary law and comparative law, legal, social and economic historians, and Arabists.

Using a division between substantive and formal law as the key element for understanding the applicable law in papyri, this study offers a new understanding of the distinct parts Roman and local law played in the legal reality of second-century Arabia.

The discovery of the Babatha archive provided scholars with unique opportunities for reconstructing the life of Jews in second-century Arabia. Although legal issues and especially the question of the relationship between Roman and local law have received attention in a number of publications, this study presents the first complete overview of the legal situation as presented in the Babatha as well as the Salome Komaise archive, using references to law in the documents' texts as the key element for understanding what law is applicable to these documents. By distinguishing between two levels in the papyri, of substantive and of formal law, a new understanding is reached of the part both Roman and local law played in legal reality.

This book is an important contribution to the current lively debate about the relationship between law and society in the Roman world. This debate, which was initiated by the work of John Crook in the 1960's, has had a profound impact upon the study of law and history and has created sharply divided opinions on the extent to which law may be said to be a product of the society that created it. This work is a modest attempt to provide a balanced assessment of the various points of view. The chapters within this book have been specifically arranged to represent the debate. It contains an introductory chapter by Alan Watson, whose views on the relationship between law and society have caused some controversy. In the remaining chapters a distinguished international group of scholars address this debate by focusing on studies of law and empire, codes and codification, death and economics, commerce and procedure. This book does not purport to provide a complete survey of Roman private law in light of Roma

The present volume presents a selection of studies by Ranon Katzoff on Jews in the ancient Roman world. Common to them is that they deal with Jews in liminal situations - confronted with non-Jewish, mainly Roman, laws, places, government, and modes of thought. In these studies - in which texts in Greek and Latin and rabbinic texts (all in translation) elucidate each other - Jews are shown to be rather loyal to their Jewish traditions, a controversial conclusion. The first two sections concern law. Section one searches the remains of popular Jewish culture for evidence on the degree to which rabbinic law really prevailed, through the study of Judaean Desert documents, mainly those of Babatha. Section two sifts through rabbinic law for traces of Roman law. Section three comprises studies of Jews in, to, and from the city of Rome, and section four a miscellany of studies on Jews confronted with non-Jewish life.

The study of the Roman Empire has changed dramatically in the last century, with significant emphasis now placed on understanding the experiences of subject populations, rather than a sole focus on the Roman imperial elites. Local experiences, and interactions between periphery and centre, are an intrinsic component in our understanding of the empire's function over and against the earlier, top-down model. But where does law fit into this new, decentralized picture of empire? This volume brings together internationally renowned scholars from both legal and historical backgrounds to study the operation of law in each region of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Egypt, from the first century BCE to the end of the third century CE. Regional specificities are explored in detail alongside the emergence of common themes and activities in a series of case studies that together reveal a new and wide-ranging picture of law in the Roman Empire, balancing the practicalities of regional variation with the ideological constructs of law and empire.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the March 7, 2008 Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies at New York University, dedicated to "The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60: The Scholarly Contributions of NYU Faculty and Alumni." These studies offer a sampling of the extensive research conducted by three generations of NYU faculty, students, and alumni, in a range of domains pertaining to the scrolls and documents discovered in the Judean Desert since 1947, including Hebrew language, religious thought, and law.

Hannah M Cotton’s collected papers focus on questions which have fascinated her for over four decades: the concrete relationships between law, language, administration and everyday life in Judaea and Nabataea in particular, and in the Roman world as a whole. Many of the papers, especially those devoted to the Judean Desert documents of the 2nd century CE have been widely cited. Others, having appeared in less accessible publications, may not have received the attention they deserve. On the whole, rather than addressing the grand narratives of world or national history, they look at the texture of life, seeking to provide tentative answers to historical questions and interpretations by paying fine attention to the details of literary and, especially, documentary evidence. Taken together they illuminate fundamental, often legal, questions concerning daily life and the exercise of Roman rule and administration in the early imperial period, and especially, their impact on life as it was lived in the province and the period where Roman and Jewish history fatefully intersected. The volume includes a complete bibliography of her publications.

"How are depictions of the ideal woman in Greco-Roman literature at variance with the descriptions of Tabitha and Lydia in Acts of the Apostles? Teresa Calpino analyzes the relationship of their stories to Greco-Roman literature and culture, and how this opens out important aspects of women in early Christianity."--Provided by publisher.