Rabbinic Civil Law in the Context of Ancient Legal History: A Legal Compendium to the Bavot Tractates of the Talmud Yerushalmi

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Constantin Willems, since 3/2023
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508015204

Rabbis functioned as informal and unofficial legal adjudicators alongside Roman jurists in Roman Palestine after 70 CE. Their jurisprudence included areas of civil law that Roman jurists also dealt with, such as family law, property law, includinginheritance and testaments, trade law, including market supervision and import and export business, and employment law. Rabbinic regulations and legal precedents on civil law matters are collected in the Bavot tractates of the Talmud Yerushalmi. These tractates belong to the order of Neziqin (= Damages), edited in the fourth century CE. While rabbis hoped that their fellow-Jews would approach them for legal advice, Jews could also bring their cases before Roman adjudicators, courts, and governors. There is some reason to believe that litigants chose those adjudicators whose rulingswould be most advantageous to their cases. Because of the local competition between rabbinic, Roman, and possibly also Hellenistic law, rabbis are likely to have acquired some familiarity with non-Jewish jurisdiction, even if they did not attendRoman law schools and study legal texts in Latin and Greek.As our own and other scholars previous studies have shown, rabbinic discourse on civil law issues can be understood properly only when viewed in connection with and on the background of Roman, and (le ss often) Hellenistic law. A comparative study of late antique rabbinic law within the context of Hellenistic and Roman law can reveal similarities in the form of shared values and concerns, similar solutions to legal problems, and attention to the same details but also significant and interesting differences. Both similarities and differences need to be examined on the basis of a close reading and analysis of the original Hebrew-Aramaic, Greek, and Latin texts and in the context of the political, socioeconomic, and religious-cultural conditions the respective adjudicators and editors of the legal compilations experienced. To date, no comprehensive legal study of the Talmud Yeruhalmi in the context of ancient legal history has been carried out.With this project we shall begin to fill this lacuna by focusing on the Bavot tractates of the Talmud. Focusing on each of the three Bavot for one year, we shall identify key units of rabbinic discourse on issues that are shared with Roman civil law asevidenced in Justinian's Digest and/or earlier Roman legal collections and Hellenistic papyri. The texts will be examined text-critically, translated, and presented in parallel columns before being analysed individually and compared with eachother with regard to their literary forms, meanings, editorial changes, and historical contexts.The goal is to create a Legal Compendium to the Bavot Tractates of the Talmud Yerushalmi that can serve as the basis for future comparative legal studies and lead towards the integration of rabbinic civil law into the context of ancient legalhistory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Catherine Hezser
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Matthias Armgardt, until 3/2023