Rechtsgeschichte
Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen
Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski
JEWISH LAW AND HELLENISIC LEGAL PRACTICE IN THE LIGHT OF GREEK PAPYRI FROM EGYPT
Université de Paris I ‑ Sorbonne
1. Sources and Literature
Papyrus is an Egyptian plant of the family of sedges, or Cyperaceae (Cyperus Papyrus), with a tall triangular stem and a feathery crown. Formed into scrolls or sheets, it was the principal substance conveying the written word during Antiquity. Consequently, 'papyrology' is the science devoted to the study of these texts. By scholarly consensus, however, the term 'papyrology' is restricted to texts written in Greek and (more rarely) Latin, while the study of papyri written in Egyptian remains a branch of 'Egyptology'.[1] Documents in Aramaic and Hebrew must be left to specialists in Semitic languages[2].
The story of papyrology begins on Egyptian soil just over 100 years ago. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a great harvest of documents written on papyrus was reaped on the desert borders of the Nile valley and in the oasis of the Faiyum, heralding the emergence of a new scientific discipline. Subsequent excavations and purchases have incessantly augmented the impressive inventory of ancient texts written on papyrus and discovered in Egypt. When it brought to light long‑lost works of Greek literature, such as Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, papyrology made the headlines. But its principal focus has been the discovery of the tens of thousands of documentary texts, documents in the literal sense: legal rules and regulations, contracts, wills, fiscal receipts, accounts, correspondence both administrative and private, etc.
This documentation is of capital importance for Jewish legal and social history. Aramaic documents discovered on the island of Elephantine, near Aswan (ancient Syene), afford us a glimpse into the life of a Judaean military colony in the fifth century B.C.E., when Egypt was a province of the Persian empire.[3] Since the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great (332/331 B.C.E.), numerous Greek papyri dealing with the Jews and Jewish affairs have afforded us fresh insights into the world of the Diaspora in Egypt under the Ptolemies, and later under Roman domination.[4] They furnish unparalleled material for the study of Jewish legal practice during the Graeco-Roman period.[5]
Greek papyri and ostraca from Egypt concerning Jews and Judaism have been collected in the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (= CPJud.).[6] We do not possess a comprehensive study of Jewish legal practice in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt based on the now‑available papyrological evidence, but we do have general manuals on that body of law.[7] They pay but little attention to the Jews and their legal problems. The present chapter appears as a first attempt in this field.
2. Personal Status
The author of the Letter of Aristeas (§§12‑14), followed by Josephus,[8] informs us that Ptolemy I deported 100,000 Jews from Judaea to Egypt, between 320 and 301 B.C.E. Our knowledge of the first Jewish settlements in Egypt favors the opposing tradition attributed to Hecataeus of Abdera, according to which the Jews followed the king voluntarily.[9] Whichever is correct, Jewish slaves doubtless existed in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. A document dating from Diocletian's reign relates how a Jewish maid and her two (or three) children were redeemed from slavery by the Jewish community of Oxyrhynchus, in conformity with the principles of talmudic law.[10]
The causes of enslavement varied; however, slavery for debts must be excluded. Victor Tcherikover supposed that he had found an example of such enslavement for debt in a Ptolemaic testament dated 238/237 B.C.E., in which a Jewish debtor, Apollonios alias Jonathas, was mentioned alongside the slaves of the testator.[11] But since enslavement for private debts was illegal in Ptolemaic Egypt, this may be doubted.[12] In any case, voluntary immigration and not captivity was by far the principal source of the Jewish settlement in the Ptolemaic kingdom, as it was for other Greek‑speaking immigrants.
The Greeks who came to Egypt after the Macedonian conquest retained their original mainland citizenship. Some of them acquired new citizenship in the cities founded by Alexander and Ptolemy I, Alexandria and Ptolemais. An Athenian who had settled in Krokodilopolis remained 'Athenian' (Athenaios), as did his descendants, since citizenship was hereditary. His great‑grandson would certainly have serious difficulties in being recognized as a fellow‑citizen of the 'true' Athenians in Athens. But in Egypt, this reference to a civic homeland was a vital matter for the iminigrants' descendants: it guaranteed their belonging to the community of Hellenes.
The status of 'Hellene' was recognized as extending to a mass of individuals stemming from the North and Northwest regions, as well as those from lands such as Macedonia or Thrace, once considered as barbaric but which were now included in the expanding cultural sphere of the Greek universe. By extension, Asiatics and Semites from the countries Alexander had conquered were also considered 'Hellenes', provided they spoke Greek and served the royal dynasty. The community of 'Hellenes' guaranteed to each of its members a status reconciling the maintenance of his own national identity with his incorporation into the dominant group. This state of affairs suited the Jews perfectly.
Some scholars have imagined that the Jews in Egypt were divided into distinct autonomous bodies called politeumata.[13] But the term politeuma (πολίτευμα), as applied to the Jewish diaspora in Egypt, is attested only in a literary text dealing with Alexandrian Jews, the Letter of Aristeas, where it does not have a precise technical meaning. No mention of a Jewish politeuma in the chora (the countryside, in opposition to Alexandria) occurs in Ptolemaic documents published so far. There is, indeed, reference to politikoi nomoi ('civic laws') in a royal regulation quoted by a Jewish litigant at Krokodilopolis,[14] but this is not sufficient evidence for the existence of a Jewish politeuma in that town: the regulation was issued for all Greek‑speaking immigrants, not for the Jews alone. The same applies to the poetical use of the terms politai, 'fellow‑citizens', polis, 'city', and politarches, 'ruler of a city', in the epigraphical material from the necropolis of Tell el‑Yehoudieh; these texts hardly support the supposition that the Jewish settlement in Leontopolis was 'organized as a politeuma'.[15] The concept of Jewish politeumata as independent political units must be regarded as a 'historiographical legend'.[16]
lf the Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt enjoyed a kind of 'civic status', it was not because they were organized in 'civic communities'; the deciding factor was their inclusion in the community of Hellenes, a 'civic body', as opposed to the native population. From the Greek viewpoint, the ethnic designation Ioudaios opened the portals of this community to the Jews, as other 'foreign' ethnic designations did for all those who adhered to Greek culture by adopting its tongue and its social customs, and who could give proof of a respectable origin outside Egypt, regarded as 'Greek'. In the third century B.C.E., in Trikomia (Faiyum), a village having a considerable Jewish population, a number of persons ‑ most of whom, if not all, are Jewish ‑ are listed as 'Hellenes living in the house of Maron'.[17] We can draw a parallel between this document and the complaint of the Macedonian Ptolemaios, son of Glaukias, concerning an outrage which has been committed on him 'although he was a Hellene' (παρὰ τὸ ˝Ελληνά με ειναι).[18] To be a Ioudaios in Ptolemaic Egypt was not very different from being a Makedon. As distinguished from the native Egyptians, both were 'Hellenes'.
A considerable part of the Jewish population lived in Alexandria. Traditionally, this settlement is supposed to have begun during Alexander's lifetime;[19] by the beginning of the Roman period the Jews are thought to have represented roughly a third of the inhabitants of Alexandria: 180,000 Jews for a population of 500,000-600,000.[20] According to the author of the Letter of Aristeas (§ 310) they had their 'elders', presbyteroi (presbuteroi), and their 'leaders' (hgoumenoi tou plhqouV); at the end of the Ptolemaic period and at the beginning of the Roman domination an ethnarch administered Jewish affairs in Alexandria.[21] However, like so many other inhabitants of that great cosmopolitan city, the Jews were not Alexandrian citizens, barring a few exceptional cases, as rare as those of Alexandrian Jews who were granted the Roman citizenship (such as that of the alabarch Alexander, brother of the philosopher Philo, and his sons, Marcus Julius Alexander and Tiberius Julius Alexander, who became procurator of Judaea and prefect of Egypt[22]). Since they were not 'Alexandrians' ('Αλεξανδεις) citizens stricto sensu, they were 'Jews of Alexandria' ('Ιουδαιοι οι̉ α̉πὸ 'Αλεξανδείας).[23]
In this respect, the Jewish settlement in Alexandria did not differ from those we encounter in the chora: Jews of this or that town (α̉πό) or residing in such and such a place (ε̉ν).[24] They had their representatives, called presbyteroi (πρεσβύτεροι), the 'elders', or even archontes (αρχοντες) the 'rulers'.[25] The first mention of a Jewish community as such, termed synagoge (συναγωγή), 'assembly', dates from the reign of Diocletian, in the late third century C.E.[26]
The heightened self‑awareness of the Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt under the influence of the Septuagint did not change the legal situation.[27] Neither 'citizens' nor 'autonomous aliens', the Jews were just one of the various elements composing the society of Greek‑speaking conquerors. Nothing but his religion distinguished a Jew from his Graeco‑Macedonian neighbours. He was a fully‑fledged member of the dominant group of 'Hellenes', the equal of any other Greek‑speaking immigrant. His personal status determined his legal behaviour in everyday matters: adhering to Greek culture, the Jew adopted Hellenistic legal customs.
The community of 'Hellenes' did not survive the Roman conquest of Egypt (30 B.C.E.). The new organization of Egyptian society under Roman rule was unfavourable to the Jews: they were not included in the orders of provincial notables created by the Imperial Government with the aim of 'saving' the Greek elements, on whom it depended to staff the local administration.[28] However, this detorioration of their status did not change the behaviour of the Jews as far as private law was concerned. In this respect, the papyrological evidence of early Roman Egypt supplements that of the Ptolemaic period.
3. The Torah
At the end of the fourth century B.C,E., the Jews who returned to Egypt in the wake of the Macedonian conquest took with them their most treasured possession: the Torah of Moses in the form that Ezra had established a century earlier. We can lend credence to the words of Hecataeus of Abdera, when, in a 'revised version' elaborated in Judaco‑Egyptian circles and quoted by Josephus, he relates the arrival in Egypt, towards 300 B.C.E., of a Jewish 'high priest' (archiereus, a member of the sacerdotal aristocracy) Ezekias, bringing a scroll of the Torah for public reading.[29] It was customary at the time to read the Torah aloud on Sabbath days, or on one of the Jewish festivals. Ezekias read from the Hebrew text, but the problem of a Greek translation was soon to arise.
Who decided to translate the Torah into Greek, and why? Two opposing doctrines are currently professed. A Jewish legend (later adopted by the Christians) first recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates [30] attributed the initiative for the translation to King Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who commissioned the translation for the Library of Alexandria.[31] This thesis coincides with rabbinical tradition, which considered the translation to have been intended for the King Ptolemy ('Talmai').[32] In modern times, Elias Bickerman was among the scholars accepting this thesis of a royal initiative.[33]
A second opinion, defended by Paul Kahle and more recently by Arnaldo Momigliano,[34] places the translation of the Torah within the perspective of synagogal practice. The Jewish immigrants adopted the Greek language so rapidly and so completely that they no longer understood Hebrew, and were in dire need of a version of the Scriptures they could understand. Just as an Aramaic translation, the targum, was to accompany the reading of the Torah in Jerusalem and in Judaea, a Greek translation was used in Alexandria and throughout Egypt. The future Septuagint was, at first, a kind of Greek targum, which existed in different variants. Towards the end of the second century B.C.E., a decision was made to provide a unified text. According to Kahle, it was this 'revised version', later to become the official text of the Christian Church, that the Letter of Aristeas was supposed to promote.
To choose between the thesis of a royal cominission for the Library of Alexandria, and the thesis of a Greek targum designed uniquely to fulfill the needs of the Jewish diaspora would amount to placing us needlessly on the horns of a dilemma. The mere fact that the Jewish subjects of King Ptolemy no longer understood the language in which their national Law was couched probably was the least of the King's worries. But the Jews accounted for a considerable percentage of the Ptolemaic kingdom's population, in Egypt as well as in Judaea (which was an integral part of the realm throughout the third century B.C.E.). Assimilated to the reigning minority with regard to their language and social status, they were set apart by their religion, which referred to a Law reputedly of divine inspiration. Guaranteeing the respect of this Law could only prove advantageous to the régime. However, for its effective application, the royal judges and officials needed a Greek translation. The practical concerns of the monarchy were convergent with the religious needs of the Jews of Egypt.
In this respect, it is highly instructive to confront the Greek Torah with what we know of the Ptolemaic régime's attitude toward the national traditions of the native Egyptian population. The ancient Egyptians did not find it necessary to possess a corpus of written law. The first collection of Egyptian legal rules was apparently made only during the Persian domination, on the initiative of Darius I (522‑486 B.C.E.). Its substance might have survived the Macedonian conquest in the Egyptian priestly CaseBook[35]. The latter is known by several demotic papyri from the Ptolemaic period. The most important of these is a long text discovered in Tuna elGebel during the 1938‑1939 season of excavations, but published only in 1975 under a misleading title: The Demotic Legal Code of Hermopolis West; other fragments from the late Ptolemaic period have recently come to light among the papyri of the collections in Florence and in Copenhagen.[36]
The Case‑Book was a collection of practical prescriptions devised to assist native judges and notaries in their daily routine, by furnishing models for the drafting of documents and legal decisions, and suggestions for the solution of difficult cases. It was kept in existence by the Egyptian priests, guardians of their national law, as a 'holy book' in local variants which might differ from one religious center to another. In the first half of the third century B.C.E., under the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, it was translated from the original demotic into Greek (P. Oxy. XLVI 3285). The Greek version preserved by that document corresponds only partially to the Hermopolis text.[37] The translation was based on another variant of the compendium, its 'official version', which did not, come down to us. It made the rules of Egyptian law, noted down by the priests in their 'holy books', accessible to the Greek‑speaking agents of the royal administration.
The parallel between the two 'holy books' translated into Greek under the first Ptolemies ‑ the Egyptian priestly Case‑Book and the Torah of Moses ‑ helps us to determine the conditions under which the Torah could continue to play its fundamental role amongst the Jewish Diaspora in Egypt. We cannot follow Tcherikover's supposition that the right 'to live according to their ancestral laws' had been granted to the Jews of Egypt by the Ptolemies in the same form as it was to the Jews of Jerusalem and Judaea by the Seleucids.[38] In Egypt, the confirmation of the Jewish Law did not take the form of a 'charter', nor could it refer to the Temple, as had been the case with the Torah of Ezra, confirmed as a royal law for the Jews of the realm after the retum from captivity in Babylon. It was achieved by the bias of a translation guaranteed by the authority of the Ptolemaic monarchy. Its purpose was to serve the administration of justice within the framework of a system established to protect the laws and customs of the kingdom's inhabitants.
4. Courts and Procedure
The confirmation of the Torah did not lead to the establishment of autonomous Jewish jurisdictions. The existence of Jewish tribunals in Alexandria is highly questionable. Philo's book De Specialibus Legibus reflects his own interpretation of the Biblical laws rather than the actual jurisprudence of Jewish courts.[39] The competence of the ethnarch in the judicial domain was limited to a kind of arbitration;[40] the same applies to the Alexandrian beth‑din mentioned in rabbinical sources.[41] Papyrological documents show the Jews in Egypt bringing their claims and business affairs before the regular instances of State justice. This fact can be easily explained in the pluralistic context of the Ptolemaic organisation of the courts.
Ptolemaic Egypt offers the legal historian a particularly interesting example of legal pluralism.[42] As we have seen, Egyptian local law, which the Greeks called nomoi tes choras (νόμοι της χώρας), the 'law of the land', was still in force for the indigenous population. The immigrants had imported their own legal traditions: the Greek nomoi. In the cities ‑ Alexandria, Naucratis, Ptolemais ‑ these took the traditional form of written legislation, often influenced by the reigning monarch. In the chora, they spread as a substantially homogeneous customary law, the 'common law' of the Greeks. Over and against the Greek and Egyptian nomoi, the will of the Ptolemaic sovereign was expressed in royal regulations, diagrammata (διαγράμματα), and orders, prostagmata (προστάγματα).
Faced with the problems created by the existence of legal rules of unequal weight and of various provenance, the Ptolemies did not strive to unify the content of these various legal sources. Another solution was found: the kingdom was blanketed by a double network of jurisdictions, each one authorized to deal with the cases falling within its specific nationally-determined competence: the dicasteries in the cities and in the chora for the Greek‑speaking immigrants, and the courts of laocritae ('people's judges'), staffed by Egyptian priests, for cases involving the indigenous population; the king reserved the right of intervention in any and all litigation, either directly or indirectly, through the chrematistae, royal judges.[43]
How did the Law of Moses fit into this picture? A lawsuit involving Jewish litigants, Dositheos and Herakleia daughter of Diosdotos, affords us our first glimpse of the system in action.[44] The case was to be judged in 226 B.C.E., in the dicastery of Krokodilopolis (Faiyum). All the judges were Greek. Dositheos had accused Herakleia of insulting him in public and ripping his coat, causing him 200 drachmas' worth of damages. At the last minute, however, he lost his nerve and failed to appear before the court. Herakleia did not desist but, appearing in her own defence, produced, inter alia, an extract from a royal regutation, a diagramma, concerning the rules of law to be applied by the local dicasteries to Greek‑speaking litigants. According to this regulation, priority lay with royal legislation, represented by the diagrammata. But the king, well aware of the limits of his legislation (which was restricted to administrative and fiscal matters), had decided in the diagramma that, in the absence of an available disposition of the royal law, the judges should resort to 'civic laws', politikoi nomoi (πολιτικοὶ νόμοι); if these were insufficient to guide them to a decision, they had to follow the 'most equitable view', gnome dikaiotate (γνώμη διαιοτάτη). Any Hellene could require the judges of the dicasteries to try him according to 'civic laws'. As a 'Hellene', a Jew could invoke the royal diagramma bearing this authorization. There was thus a close link between royal justice and the law applicable to Jews. But what exactly was this link?
To answer this question, we must be sure that we understand the exact meaning of all the terrns of the regulation. The diagrammata, an expression par excellence of the king's will, create no major difficulties. Neither does the 'rnost equitable view', gnome dikaiotate, a well‑known traditional Greek notion responding to the problem of gaps in the law. The term 'civic laws', nomoi politikoi, is more obscure. According to Hans Julius Wolff, it designated the 'national laws' of the litigants. If these latter were of common origin ‑ citizens of the same city or their descendants or, as in the present case, rnembers of the same ethnic group ‑ Wolff believed that the king, in the absence of the appropriate royal legislation, had authorized the judges to apply the laws of the litigants' homeland.[45]
A curious problem arises here, since one never hears of an Athenian law, for example, being applied in Egypt to plaintiffs of Athenian origin. This is why Wolff's hypothesis should be interpreted cum grano salis: the regulation should be taken more as an intention than a reality. The Alexandrian lawmakers may well have envisaged the possibility of applying the litigants' national law as a subsidiary law, to fill the gaps of the royal legislation. But that project was not carried out, and the term 'civic laws' came to designate the actual legal practice of the Greek‑speaking immigrants; this practice was civic', since it was based on the traditions of Greek cities, as opposed to the village world of the native population. In other words, the term became synonymous with Greek 'common law', the legal koine.
The intentions of the legislator had, nonetheless, important practical consequences. Whether the 'civic laws' stemmed from the litigants' national legislation (as the legislators had intended) or from the documents actually employed in practice (everyday reality), the legal traditions of the Greek-speaking population became the official legal corpus for the dicasteries, liable to enforcement by the courts. Egyptian law (nomoi tes choras), for its part, became the legal corpus for the courts of the laocritae, applicable to native litigants. The two groups of nomoi, corresponding to the two groups of the population, had been raised to the status of 'laws of the court', leges fori, for their respective tribunals.[46] One might speak of a 'judicial legalisation' of legal rules which did not originate in the royal legislative activity.
For the Jews, this decision had still another meaning. When they immigrated to Egypt, the Greek‑speaking colonists did not import their ancestral laws. The Jews did: they are the one exception of whom we surely have knowledge. In accordance with the royal diagramma, the Torah of Moses, 'the Books of the Law of the Jews' (του νόμου των 'Ιουδαίων βιβλία) as the Letter of Aristeas (§30) calls it, was a politikos nomos, applicable to Jewish litigants by the royal justice. In other words, the Septuagint became a 'civic law' for the Jews of Egypt.
This conclusion is supported by a Ptolemaic papyrus containing the complaint of a certain Helladote, daughter of Philonides, married to a Jew named Jonathas.[47] Helladote is referring to her marriage concluded 'in accordance with the civic law of the Jews', (κατὰ τὸυ νόμον πολιτικὸν των 'Іουδαίων).[48] Ihe politikoi nomoi could be invoked before the dicasteries as well as before royal officials who examined the complaints (enteuxeis), formally addressed to the king. The 'civic law of the Jews' (νόμος πολιτικὸς των 'Іουδαίων) is nothing else than the Torah of Moses, in the Greek version established in Alexandria half a century before the date of this document.
5. Family Law
A. Status of Women
During the proceedings before the dicastery in Krokodilopolis, described above, the Jewess Herakleia was accompanied by her legal guardian, Aristides son of Proteas, an Athenian born in Egypt. Herakleia was following a Greek custom. So were other Jewish women whom we meet in papyrological documents from the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods assisted by their guardians (kyrioi) in judicial and legal activities; this evidence is corroborated by Philo, in contradiction to talmudic law, which did not require women over the age of 12 to employ guardians.[49] We can subscribe to Tcherikover's conclusion that the life of a Jewish woman in Hellenistic Egypt 'was far more like that of her Greek neighbour than that of her sister in Palestine'.[50]
Fiscal documents from Apollinopolis Magna (modern Edfu) show that Jewish fathers in Egypt exercised their rights and duties in family life in a manner which corresponded both to Jewish tradition and local custom. The father was fiscally responsible for the members of his family.[51] Another fiscal document shows that Jewish girls in Egypt were betrothed and married at a very early age, in accordance with a usage common to Jews and Greeks. A young woman aged 20 had two children, one of therm being five years old: she had been married at the age of 14 years, if not earlier; this was also the case of two other young women, both aged 22, who each had children four years old.[52] The paucity of children attested by these documents might lead to the remark that the biblical exhortation of Gen. 1:28, 'Be fruitful and multiply', was not perfectly followed by Egyptian Jews; it does not justify the conclusion that they had adopted the Greek custom of exposing new‑born children.[53]
B. Marriage
A Jewish ketubbah (marriage contract) in a papyrus from the Cologne University collection was published in 1986.[54] Written in Antinoopolis on 15 November 417 C.E., this is the only dated Jewish document of this period. It records the marriage of Samuel, son of Sampati (Sampathaios), and Metra, daughter of Eleazar and Esther, an Alexandrian family. The Aramaic text is strewn with Greek words in Hebrew transliteration, including items of the trousseau and the consular date: an important testimony to the confinuing use of Greek by Jews in Byzantine Egypt.
Nothing similar to the Cologne ketubbah has been found in the papyri from the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods prior to the revolt of 115‑117 C.E. The late Edoardo Volterra suggested that the wording of Helladote's complaint, against a man 'holding her as a wife (εχειν με γυναικα) according to the civic law of the Jews', might reproduce the traditional formula of the ketubbah declaring the marriage 'conform to the Law of Moses and Israel', kedat Moshe ve Yisrael. Since the Ptolemaic judge would not have been able to understand the expression Law of Moses', νόμος Μοϋσέως in Greek, Helladote preferred to speak of the 'civic law of the Jews', νόμος πολιτικὸς των 'Ιουδαίων.[55] She invoked the Torah, although the marriage formula is not to be found in the biblical text.
Volterra's hypothesis could be reinforced by the variant of the formula in which Israel is replaced by 'Jews', Yehudaei - an exact counterpart of the Greek 'of the Jews' (των 'Ιουδαίων) in Helladote's complaint; that variant is attested in documents found in the Dead Sea region[56] as well as in Palestinian marriage and divorce acts from the Cairo Geniza;[57] according to the Talmud, it was also employed by Alexandrian Jews.[58] This convergence does not inform us what exactly was the form of Helladote's marriage contract; the verb a‑ovip(i(peaOut, 'to draw up a contract' in her complaint refers to a Greek rather than to a Jewish document, although syngraphe would be a reasonable translation of ketubbah.[59] A contemporary document concerning a Jewish family in the Faiyum clearly mentions a Greek 'deed of cohabitation', syngraphe synoikisiou (συνγραφὴ συνοικισίου).[60] In all likelihood, the syngraphe was the usual form of concluding marriage among Hellenized Jews in Egypt. At the beginning of the Roman period, the synchoresis (συνχώρησις) 'judicial compromise', was used by Alexandrian Jews. This does not exclude recourse to traditional Jewish forms, a duality which is attested by the Babatha 'archive' for the provincial practice in Erets Israel under the Roman Principate.[61] Parallel recourse to both Jewish and Greek forms is not directly attested.
C. Intermarriage
A mixed marriage between a Jew and an Egyptian woman (or between an Egyptian and a Jewish woman[62]) was not totally unthinkable, but very difficult to imagine in the light of the documentary material now available. Marriages between 'Hellenes', under which heading the Jews fell, and native Egyptians were a very rare occurrence in Hellenistic Egypt. Not that they were forbidden by law, as were mixed marriages in Athens at the epoch of the orators, but because a kind of 'cultural agamy' rendered them impracticable. Exceptionally, in certain circles and at certain times, the barriers were lifted.[63]
The problem the Jews of Egypt had to solve was not the avoidance ‑ or the acceptance ‑ of famity alliances with Egyptian notables; they had to find a way to reconcile their friendship with their Greek comrades‑in‑arms and their desire to preserve their proper identity, which mixed marriages could jeopardize. During the third century B.C.E., intermarriage between Jews and Greeks did not create special difficulties from the legal point of view: a pagan woman who married a Jew was integrated into her husband's group. Helladote daughter of Philonides, to judge from her name and patronymic, was Greek. She was accepted into the community of her husband at the moment when she became the spouse of the Jew Jonathas.
In the second century B.C.E., after the process of conversion to Judaism had been 'invented', the question became more serious.[64] No clear answer seems yet to have been given, either in practice or in theory: compare Philo's vigour in defending the prohibition of mixed marriages with his apology for matrimonial ecumenism, which he simultaneously recommended.[65] The novel Joseph and Asenath sets forth a simple and optimistic solution of the problem: conversion to Judaism of the Greek woman who wished to espouse a Jew.[66] Modern Rabbinic Judaism was to reject it. But as early as the Pirke de‑Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 38, Asenath is not the daughter of a heathen priest, as she was in the novel: she is the child of Jacob's daughter Dinah, who had been ravished by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite. In that version, Joseph marries his own niece, who is Jewish because born of a Jewish mother: between Alexandria and the Midrash, the Mishnah had instituted the strict rule that the child's status followed that of the rnother.[67] The Alexandrian solution became inadequate because of the high priority placed on lineage in the classical rabbinic period.
D. Divorce
The Jewish law of divorce was applied in the case of Helladote, the unhappy wife of the Jew Jonathas: Jonathas had repudiated his spouse in the traditional manner sanctioned by Deut. 24:1.[68] The Jewish institution was in flagrant contradiction to current Greek matrimonial custom: in the marriage contracts preserved in the papyri, the husband promised formally not to repudiate, literally not to 'throw out' (μὴ ε̉κβάλλειν) his wife.[69] Now Helladote had well and truly been 'throwh out'. This discrepancy between Jewish law and Greek practice was the cause of Helladote's outrage and the prime motive for her complaint.[70] Unfortunately, we ignore its outcome. The last line of the document indicates that Helladote requested the retum of her dowry; we may suppose that the case has been decided in her favour.
Two hundred years later, in 13 B.C.E., Apollonia, daughter of Sambathion and Eirene, and Hermogenes, son of Hermogenes, a Jewish couple from Alexandria, put an end to their union by mutual cpnsent in the shape of a judicial compromise' (synchoresis), in defiance of the biblical ruling.[71] The Jewishness of the couple has been questioned, but it is proved by the names of the parties. Sambathion is one of the Greek forms of Shabtai, a Jewish name related to the sabbatical rest. Since the first century C.E. it was borrowed by non‑Jews, but this could not be the ease of Apollonia's father, a man who was born about the mid‑first century B.C.E. (he had a married daughter in 17 B.C.E.).[72] Eirene, 'the Peaceful', is a good semantical equivalent to Salome. Apollonia, paradoxically enough, is a quite suitable name for an Alexandrian Jewess; another Apollonia, almost certainly Jewish[73], and several Jews named Apollonios appear in papyrological and epigraphical sources from Egypt.[74]
As to Apollonia's husband, Hermogenes, scholars regarded him as a Greek, or a Jew granted Alexandrian citizenship. But the reading of the word which was supposed to indicate his deme ('Αρχηγέτης or 'Αρχηγέτειος) or his tribe ('Aρχιστράτειος) is very uncertain.[75] The restoration α̉ρχηγ(ου) would make more sense; archegos (α̉ρχηγός) is a term employed by the Septuagint, Josephus, Philo, and epigraphical evidence for Jewish 'leaders'.[76] Hermogenes might have exercised official functions in the Jewish community of Alexandria, e.g. as the head of a synagogue, archegos being in this case an equivalent to archisynagogos (α̉ρχισυνάγωγος) or archiprostates (α̉ρχιπροστάτης), terms attested by a contemporary Alexandrian inscription.[77]
Under these circumstances, this Alexandrian synchoresis remains an important witness to the 'egalitarian divorce' in use among Hellenized Jews of the diaspora in the Second Temple period, alongside the bill of divorce (get) provided for in biblical law and rabbinical doctrine. These two methods of divorce are attested in Jewish practice of that period: one subscribed to the unilateral repudiation of the wife by the husband, while the other recognized reciprocity in this domain. The principle according to which the wife could initiate divorce proceedings had already been adopted by the Jews in Elephantine.[78] Greek influence obviously abetted the egalitarian tendency by affording it a favourable social climate. Spurred, doubtless, by a desire to accentuate the difference between Jews and non‑Jews, rabbinical Judaism was to have the last word, eventually imposing unilateral repudiation as the sole accepted procedure.[79] Egalitarian pressure persisted for a long while, however, as is attested by clauses in marriage contracts in which the wife could initiate divorce proceedings with the court's assistance.[80]
6. Contracts
In the province of commercial transactions the Greek environment must have exercised a stronger influence on Jewish legal practice than in family life. The prohibition of loans with interest will serve as a touchstone.
The Jews of Egypt could not yet have known of the tahnudic doctrine, condemning not only interest itself, ribbit, but any form of enrichment resembling interest, 'the dust of interest', avaq deribbit; but they must have been aware of the biblical interdiction, thrice repeated in the Torah (Ex. 22:24; Lev. 25:35‑37 and Deut. 23:20‑21).[81] Hellenistic
practice did not require them to distance themselves from the straight and
narrow path: the free loan was well established in Greek tradition.
Two contracts from the second century B.C.E., involving Jews from the Faiyum, afford us some insight into the manner in which everyday practice gave concrete expression to this situation. The first specified the conditions under which Apollonios son of Protogenes lent two talents 3,000 drachmas of copper money without interest (atoka) for one year to Sostratos son of Neoptolemos, on the security of a house belonging to him.[82] The second contract records a transfer of credit between Jewish soldiers, Judas son of Josephos and Agathokles son of Ptolemaios; Judas is accredited with a sum of 12,500 drachmas, in the form of a one‑year loan bearing a 24% interest rate, the legal norm.[83]
At first glance, it seems that Apollonios and Sostratos followed the precepts of the Torah: 'unto thy brother thou shalt lend without interest' (Deut. 23:21). Contrariwise, Judas and Agathokles, as well as their coreligionists who served as witnesses, appear to be transgressors. But can we be sure that the law of ribbit did apply in the Hellenistic economy? During that remote epoch when agriculture was the principal activity and source of revenue for the Jews, loans were essentially consumers' loans and interest would have been unthinkable; with the beginnings of commerce, interest could no longer be condemned out of hand. 'Mis position was defended by John Calvin and Charles Dumoulin, a distinguished French jurisconsult in the sixteenth century, and shared by some traditional Jewish commentators.[84]
The controversy may well have its roots in the Graeco‑Roman period. Our document could mirror the opinion holding that necessary investment could legitimately produce interest. Since the question was still open to debate, Egyptian Jews were perhaps persuaded, in all good faith, of the legitimacy of their operations, which the Talmud was only to condernn some centuries hence. Evidence from the Faiyum of the second century B.C.E. would thus attest a peculiar halakhah, proper to the Hellenistic precursors of Calvin and Dumoulin.
How, then, are we to interpret the terrns of the first contract, recording a loan without interest? In the majority of instances, a loan granted 'without interest', atokon, was not a truly free loan, but a loan with built‑in interest: the debtor had to reimburse more than he received. Another twist was the obligation to mortgage one's property as a guarantee, the creditor knowing full well, from the outset, that the debtor would be unable to repay the loan. This sort of operation, technically 'free of interest', actually concealed an iron‑bound buying‑and‑selling deal, enabling the creditor to acquire property or real estate at prices well below the market level.[85] We have no serious reason to insinuate that Apollonios wanted to swindle his 'brother' Sostratos, lending him money for the sole purpose of buying his house at a bargain price one year later. But in the light of such usages, hypotheses concerning the 'disinterestedness' of the Jews and its possible influence on their pagan neighbours must be abandoned.[86] In the final analysis, Greek influence dominated Jewish practice.
7. Conclusions
From the viewpoint of legal history, there is no contradiction between the desire of the Egyptian Jews 'to follow old national and religious traditions' and their ambition 'to participate vigorously in all aspects of Hellenistic life'.[87] The influence of Greek models in social life as well as in everyday legal practice is indisputable. But it did not inevitably lead to apostasy. Renegades like Dositheos son of Drymilos or Tiberius Julius Alexander were rather exceptional.[88] Adherence to Greek culture was compatible with the maintenance of Jewish identity. To paraphrase the author of the Third Book of Maccabees, the great majority of Jews in Egypt 'remained faithful to the religion of their fathers'. Whatever the degree of the Jews' acculturation, including the use of Hellenistic law, there were never any signs of Judaeo‑pagan syncretism.
Fidelity to Jewish law is demonstrable in family life. Occasionally, we can observe a kind of convergence between Jewish tradition and Hellenistic custom. Sometimes, an apparent deviation was in fact a manifestation of the pluralistic character of Jewish law itself during the Second Temple period. The hypothesis of a halakhah proper to the Jewish diaspora in Egypt could also be envisaged.
In the majority of cases, however, the choice of language and of formulae appears decisive. Language is the vehicle of law. Jews who drew up Greek contracts followed Greek law. From Alexander the Great to the revolt of 115‑117 C.E., the Jews in Egypt applied, by anticipation and in a manner that modern orthodox Judaism might deem excessively liberal, the wellknown principle which the Babylonian Amora Mar Samuel was to enunciate in the third century C.E.: dina demalkhuta dina, 'the law of the governing State is law'.
8. Selective Bibliography
Papyrology:
Pestman, P.W., The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990; 2nd ed., 1994).
Oates J.F., Bagnall R.S., Willis W.H. and Worp K.A., Checklist of Editions of Greek and Latin Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992, 4th ed.).
The Jewish Diaspora in Egypt:
Mélèze Modrzejewski, J., The Jews of Egypt from Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, trld. R. Cornman (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1995).
Greek documents frorn Egypt conceraing the Jews:
Tcherikover V., Fuks A. and Stern M., Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (Jerusalem and Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1957-1964, 3 vols.);
Horbury W. and Noy, D., Jewish Inscriptions from Graeco‑Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Legal history of Graeco‑Roman Egypt:
Taubenschlag, R., The Law of Greco‑Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C.‑640 A.D. (New York: Herald Square Press, 1944; 2nd cd., Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnicto Naukowe, 1955; repr. Milano. Cisalpino‑La Goliardica, 1972).
Wolff, H.J., Das Justizwesen der Ptolemäer (Munich: Beck, 1962, 2nd ed. 1971).
Mélèze Modrzejewski, J., Droit imperial et traditions locales dans l'Égypte romaine (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990).
Mélèze Modrzejewski, J., Statut personnel et liens de famille dans les droits de l'Antiquité (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993).
Notes
1 On papyri and papyrology see E.G. Turner, Greek Papyri. An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, 2nd cd. 1980); P.W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1990; 2nd cd., 1994).
2 A catalogue of papyri and parchments in Hebrew script (ktav 'ivri) found in Egypt has been published by C. Sirat, Les papyrus en caractères hébraïques trouvés en Égypte (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1985); it contains about one hundred and fifty fragments of books and documents from the 2nd to the 10th cents. C.E., most of them being subsequent to the Arab conquest.
3 A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the 51h Century D.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923); E.G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). For an overview, see ch.2, section 2A, above. See now D. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, 1. Letters, 2. Contracts, 3. Literature, Accounts, Lists (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Department of the History of Jewish People, 1986‑1993); vol. 4 (forthcoming) is devoted to Ostraca. See also a previous study of B. Porten, Archives from Elephantine. The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). On the legal problems presented by these texts, see R. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961); Y. Muffs, Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1969; 2nd cd. New York: Ktav, 1973).
4 For a more detailed study, see my book Les Juifs d'Égypte de Ramsis II à Hadrien (Paris: Armand Colin, 1991/1992). In the present chapter I refer to the updated English version of this work, The Jews of Egypt from Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian. transl. by R. Cornman (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 5755/1995).
5 This chapter concentrates on Jewish legal history as reflected in Greek papyri from Egypt. As for documentary papyri and parchments found in the caves of the Dead Sea region, see, e.g., N. Lewis, 'The World of P. Yadin', Bulletin of the American Society for Papyrology 28 (1991), 35‑41; H. Cotton, 'The Guardianship of Jesus Son of Babatha. Roman and Local Law in the Province of Arabia', Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993), 94‑108; B. Isaac, 'The Babatha Archive. A Review Article', Israel Exploration Journal 42 (1992), 62‑75; and ch.6 section 3Bii below.
6 V. Tcherikover, A. Fuks, M. Stern, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (Jerusalem and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957‑1964, 3 vols.) (= CPJud.). A new volume of the Corpus, containing material published since 1964 with addenda and corrigenda to volumes I‑III, is now being elaborated under the responsibility of Professor I.F. Fikhman (Jerusalem). A special section of the CPJud. (vol. III, Appendix I), based on the 2nd vol. of J.‑B, Frey's Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum (Vatican, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1952) (= CIJ), is devoted to 'The Jewish Inscriptions from Egypt'; a new collection is now available in W. Horbury and D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions from Graeco‑Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992) (= Horbury and Noy). Biblical papyri are listed in J. van Haelst, Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1976). New sources and bibliography are reported in the present author's continuing surveys, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 1961 onwards; Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, 1976‑1978, for the years 1962‑1972, and Archiv 19851988, for 1972‑1982; Studia et Documenta Historiae et luris 1975‑1983, for the years 1970‑1982, continued in Journal of Juristic Papyrology, since 1990. Greek and Latin literary texts concerning Jews and Judaism are to be found in Th. Reinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs and romains relatifs au Judaïsme (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1895, repr. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1983), and M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1976‑1984, 3 vols.) (= Stern).
7 See especially the treatise of R. Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco‑Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C.‑640 A.D. (New York: Herald Square Press, 1944; 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnicto Naukowe, 1955); E. Seidl, Ptolemäische Rechtsgeschichte (Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin, 1962, 2nd ed.). See also the unfortunately interrupted work of H.J. Wolff, Das Recht der griechischen Papyri Aegyptens in der Zeit der Ptolemäer und des Prinzipats. Only one volume, the second of a projected trilogy, appeared: Organisation und Kontrolle des Privaten Rechtsverkehrs (Munich: Beck, 1978: Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, Rechtsgeschichte des Altertums).
8 Josephus, Ant. xii.12‑33. See also the tradition preserved by Agatharchides of Cnidus and reproduced by Josephus: C. Apion. 1, 208‑211; Ant. xii.5‑6. On its historicity, see the discussion of I. Biezunska‑Malowist, L'esclavage dans l'Égypte gréco‑romaine, 1. Période ptolémaïque (Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich (Polish Academy of Sciences), 1974), 19ff. The principal document concerning this problem is a prostagma of Ptolemy II Philadelphus dated 260 B.C.E., PER 24552 = C.Ord.Ptol. 21‑22.
9 Josephus, C. Apion. 1, 183‑204 (Stern no. 12).
10 P. Oxy. IX 1205 = CPJud. III 473 (291 c.F.). The duty to redeem Jewish slaves was prescribed to Jews by talmudic authorities: M. Gittin 4:9; Y. Gittin 45d‑46a; B. Gittin 46a.
11 P. Petrie III 7 (P. Petrie² I 14) = CPJud. I 126. Tcherikover's hypothesis, supra n.6, at 229f., is followed by A. Kasher, The Jews, quoted infra, n.13, at 69f.
12 A better solution would be to consider that what has been bequeathed in this testament was not the debtor himself, but a claim from creditor to debtor. The notary who had drawn up the testament confused debt and debtor. The hypothesis of personal service for paying off the debt, in conformity with both Jewish law and Greek usage, could explain Jonathas' relationship to the testator; the notary made no allusion to the service contract.
13 So especially A. Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1985).
14 CP Jud. I 19, 1. 44; infra, n.44.
15 Kasher, supra n.13, at 108‑109, referring to CIJ II no. 1489 = Horbury and Noy, no. 114 (1st cent. B.C.E.) and CPJud. III, Append. I, no. 1530a = Horbury and Noy, no. 39 (mid‑2nd cent. B.C.E.‑early 2nd cent. C.E.).
16 C. Zuckerman, 'Hellenistie politeumata and the Jews. A Reconsideration', Scripta Classica Israelica 8‑9 (1985‑1988), 1989, 171‑185. An unedited Ptolemaic papyrus in Cologne is supposed to mention Jewish politeumata. It would prove that the Jews in Egypt, like other immigrants, could possess politeumata, but not that they were 'citizens of their politeumata'; the politeuma, a kind of military‑religious club, was not in the position of producing citizens in the formal sense of the term.
17 CPR XIII 4, col. VII, 109. See W. Clarysse, 'Jews in Trikomia', Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrology, Copenhagen, August 1992 (Copenhagen: Tusculanum Press, 1994), 193‑203.
18 P. Par. 36 = UPZ I 7, 13‑14, and P. Lond. I 44 (p. 33) = UPZ I 8, 14 (161 B.C.E.).
19 Josephus, Bell. Iud. 2, 487, C. Apion. 2, 25 and 42.
20 D. Delia, 'The Population of Roman Alexandria', Transactions of the American Philological Association 118, (1988), 275‑292.
21 Strabo cited by Josephus, Ant. 14, 117. The powers of the ethnarch should not be overestimated, as they are by Tcherikover, 'Prolegomena' to CP Jud., supra n.6, at 10.
22 See further my Jews of Egypt, supra n.4, at 185ff.
23 This is the term a certain Helenos, son of Tryphon, used to identify himself, when the rank of citizen he claimed to have directly inherited from his father had been put into question: CP Jud. II 151. See my Jews of Egypt, supra n.4, at 164f., and D. Delia, Alexandrian Citizenship During the Roman Principate (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 26f.
24 This applies e.g. to 'the Jews of Xenephyris' (οι̉ α̉πὸ Χενεφύρεως 'Iουδαιοι); 'the Jews living in Nitriai' (οι̉ ε̉ν Νιτρίαις 'Iουδαιοι); 'in Athri bis' (οι̉ ε̉ν 'Ατρίβει 'Iουδαιοι); or 'in Krokodilopolis' (οι̉ ε̉ν Κροκοδίλως πόλει 'Iουδαιοι). See CIJ II nos. 1441, 1442 (both 140‑116 B.C.E.) and 1443 (2nd or Ist Cent. B.C.E.) = Horbury and Noy, nos. 24, 25 and 27.
25 A recently published papyrus from the 2nd cent. B.C.E., P. Monac. III 49, mentions Jewish presbyteroi in Tebetnoi and Jewish archontes in Herakleopolis. Archontes may here designate the heads of the local synagogue: this is the meaning of this term in the only other document in which it appears, P. Lond. III 1177, p.181 = CPJud. II 432 (113 C.E.) 1. 57. On this whole question see the commentary of the editor, D. Hagedorn, at 9ff.
26 P. Oxy. IX 1205 = CPJud. III 473 (291 C.E.).
27 See S. Honigman, 'The Birtb of a Diaspora: The Emergence of a Jewish SelfDefinition in Ptolemaic Egypt in the Light of Onomastics', in Diasporas in Antiquity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 93‑127.
28 See my Jews of Egypt, supra n.4, at 163.
29 (Ps.‑)Hecataeus quoted by Josephus, C. Apion. I, 185‑189 (Stern no. 12); C.R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, L Historians (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 277‑335, esp. at 306f.
30 And by the philosopher Aristobulus: see R.J.H. Schutt, 'Letter of Aristeas', in J.H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983‑1985), II, 7‑34; AY. Collins, 'Aristobulus', ibid., 831-842.
31 Coupling him, rather awkwardly, with the Athenian statesman, Demetrius of Phalerum, counsellor to Ptolemy I Soter. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1, 22, 143, testifies to this ambiguity: he follows a tradition which hesitated between Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Historical context appears to favour the son, rather than the father.
32 Rabbinical sour ces and discussion in G. Veltri, Eine Tora für den König Talmai. Untersuchungen zum Übersetzungsverständnis in der jüdisch‑hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1994).
33 E.J. Bickerman, 'The Septuagint as a Translation' (1959), reprinted in his Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), I, 167-200.
34 P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), 132‑179; 2nd ed., 1959, 209ff.; A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom. The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 91ff.
35 For more details see my study '«Livres sacrés» et justice lagide', in Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia Juridica 21 (Symbolae C. Kunderewicz) (Lodz: Wydawictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego [Lodz University Press], 1986), 11‑44.
36 G. Mattha and G.R. Hughes, The Demotic Legal Code of Hermopolis West (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1975). See now K. Donker van Heel, The Legal Manual of Hermopolis [P. Matthal]. Text and Translation (Leiden: Leiden Papyrological Institute, 1990, Publication no.11), combining the edition of Mattha and Hughes with corrections proposed by P.W. Pestman and some unpublished intetpretations of the late M. Malinine. Other fragments: E. Bresciani, 'Frammenti di un «prontuario legale» demotico da Tebtuni nell'Istituto Papirologico G. Vitelli', Egitto e Vicino Oriente 4 (1981), 201‑215; M. Chauveau, 'P. Carlsberg 301: Le manuel juridique de Tebtunis', in The Cartsberg Papyri 1.Demotic Texts from the Collection (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1991), 103‑129.
37 See P.W. Pestman, 'Le manuel de droit égyptien de Hermoupolis: les passages transmis en démotique et en grec', Textes et études de papyrologie grecque, démotique ei copte (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 116‑143.
38 V. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society of America and Magnes Press, 1959), 300‑301 (and p.506, notes 11‑12); 'Prolegomena', CP Jud. I, p.7. On
68 See section 4 above, at n.47.
69 See 'La structure juridique du mariage grec' (1981 and 1983), in my Statut personnel et liens de famille, supra n.63, at no. V.
70 A document of 232 B.C.E. concerning a Jewish family in Samaria (Faiyum), CPR XVIII 9 (quoted supra, n.60), records the restitution of the dowry (pherne) in simple amount, and not with the usual penalty of 50%; the Greek model seems to have been adapted to Jewish rules.
71 BGU IV 1102 = CP Jud. II 144. See, inter alia, R. Yaron, 'CPJud. 144 et Alia', lura 13 (1962), 170‑175; A.M. Rabello, Divorce of Jews in the Roman Empire', The Jewish Law Annual 4 (1981), 79‑102, esp. 97f.
72 V. Tcherikover, Prolegomena', CP Jud. I, supra n.6, at 94f.; cf. CP Jud. III, All (Prosopography), p.189, and Section XIII ('The Sambathions', 43‑87).
73 P. Tebt. III 882 = Jud. I 28 (155 or 144 B.C.E.), 1. 28.
74 CIJ II, No. 1425 = Horbury and Noy, No. 4 (3rd cent. B.C.E.): Apollo(nios), Apollo(doros) or Apoll(odotos). Another Apollonios, transcribed (without vav), is to be found in the Aramaic accounts of 'Abihi, a Jewish merchant in Egypt towards the turn of the 4th/3rd century: B. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook 3, C 3.28 (Cowley, no. 81); one wonders however whether he was a Jew, and not one of the Greek clients of 'Abihi. A certain Apollonios son of Philippos, indubitably Jewish (Ioudaios), is to be found in CPR XVIII 7, a recently published lease contract concluded in Samaria (Faiyum) in 232 B.c.E. Apollonios son of Dositheos, in Edfu (CP Jud. I 70‑72; 114 B.C.E.), and Ap(ollonios?) son Sollaios or Salarnis (CP Jud. I 67 and 68; 139 B.C.E.), might be regarded as Jews. See also supra, § II, P. Petrie III 7 = P. Petrie² I 14, and infra, § VI, P. Tebt. III 817 = CP Jud. I 23.
75 D. Delia, Alexandrian Citizenship, supra n.23, at 59‑60.
76 The sources are collected by B.J. Brooten, Women Leaders in ihe Ancient Synagogue (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 35‑39. αρχηγετου (Schubart, the first editor, confirmed by G. Poethke) must be interpreted not as a demotic, but as a title, α̉ρχηγέτης being a substitute αρχηγός: op.cit.. 39.
77 Horbury and Noy, no. 18 and pl. VII (Alexandria, 3 C.E.). On archisynagogoi see now T. Rajak and D. Noy, 'Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in the Greco‑Jewish Synagogue', Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993), 75‑93.
78 Yaron, Introduction, supra n.3, at 53f.; cf. my Jews of Egypt, supra n.4, at 35f.
79 See now Irwin H. Haut, Divorce in Jewish Law and Life (New York: SepherHermon Press, 1983).
80 Details in Falk, Introduction, supra n.58, at Vol.II, 307f.
81 For the details see A. Weingort, Intérêt et crédit dans le droit talmudique (Paris: L.G.D.J., 1979).
82 P. Tebt. III 817 = CPJud. I 23. (Krokodilopolis, November 182 B.C.F.).
83 P. Tebt. III 818 = CPJud. I 24 (Trikomia, April 174 B.C.E.).
84 Weingort, supra n.81, admits to have been initially seduced by these rationalistic arguments, which contended that Moses would not have prohibited interest 'had he known that it could be profitable'. Further investigation led him to the conviction that the Sages of the Talmud were already aware of this reasoning, and had rejected it, maintaining the interdiction under all circumstances.
85 P.W. Pestman, 'Loans Bearing no Interest?', Journal of Juristic Papyrology 16/17 (1971), 7‑29.
86 See especially the discussion between V. Tcherikover and M. Heichelheim, 'Jewish Religious Influence in the Adler Papyri?', Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942), 25‑45. r
87 Tcherikover, 'Prolegomena', CPJud. I, supra n.6, at 36.
88 See my Jews of Egypt, supra, n.4, at 56ff. and 185ff.