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A Study in Jewish Legal Reasoning in Hellenistic Egypt
Author:
Resolving Disputes challenges the consensus that the petitions to the leaders of “the πολίτευμα of the Jews in Herakleopolis” (P.Polit.Iud. 8.4-5) prove that while the Ptolemies granted Jews limited self-governance according to their ancestral traditions, the petitioners nonetheless relied almost exclusively on Ptolemaic Greek law to make their agreements and settle their arguments. Reading the appeals in their proper juridical context, this study shows how these Jewish petitioners in fact made sophisticated use of their ancestral norms, drawing from them principles that complemented and contradicted prevailing Greek law. The Jews appealing to the leaders of the πολίτευμα in Herakleopolis embraced Torah.
A Study in Jewish Legal Reasoning in Hellenistic Egypt
Author:
Resolving Disputes challenges the consensus that the petitions to the leaders of “the πολίτευμα of the Jews in Herakleopolis” (P.Polit.Iud. 8.4-5) prove that while the Ptolemies granted Jews limited self-governance according to their ancestral traditions, the petitioners nonetheless relied almost exclusively on Ptolemaic Greek law to make their agreements and settle their arguments. Reading the appeals in their proper juridical context, this study shows how these Jewish petitioners in fact made sophisticated use of their ancestral norms, drawing from them principles that complemented and contradicted prevailing Greek law. The Jews appealing to the leaders of the πολίτευμα in Herakleopolis embraced Torah.
Author:
Abstract
Reexamination of the varieties of manuscripts testifying to Aramaic Levi suggests already that they reflect not a single, relatively consistent work as many have long thought, but a work that existed in diverse recensions, including more than one among the numerous manuscripts at Qumran. Examination of 4Q213b, line 1 and 4Q213a 3–4, 3a suggests even more, that the forms of the work found among the Dead Sea Scrolls were the result of a Qumran compositional strategy of deploying, revising, and supplementing existing texts and traditions in ways consistent with the interests of the community. This suggests not only that the Dead Sea Scrolls include "sectarian works" that we have not yet acknowledged as such; it also warns us against assuming that we can ever know the scope and nature of works only partially preserved at Qumran by comparing them with similar or even supposedly identical works attested outside of the Qumran Scrolls.
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Abstract
CPJ 1.23, a second-century BCE contract between two Jews for an interest-free loan secured with a house, briefly stirred interest for the possibility that it shows Jews observing their law in the Hellenistic diaspora. Most regard that as unlikely though, and the text has since languished in obscurity among scholars of Hellenistic Judaism. This article reexamines the text in its proper juridical context—in comparison with other loan contracts from Greco-Roman Egypt—to show that it uses the form for a hypothecated loan to arrange the sale of a house which gives the seller the opportunity to reclaim it within a year of sale according to Leviticus 25:29–30. The article also places this reading of CPJ 1.23 alongside other evidence for Jews using their ancestral norms in handling property matters in Hellenistic Egypt to outline a hypothesis regarding the purpose of this tendency in Ptolemaic-era Jewish legal reasoning.