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

Rabbis who lived in Roman Palestine in late antiquity (3rd-4th c. C.E.) functioned as informal legal advisors who developed a comprehensive body of civil law for their fellow-Jews in the context of Roman imperialism and Hellenistic and Roman jurisprudence. 

Their legal regulations (halakhah) are compiled in the Talmud Yerushalmi, which was edited around 400 C.E. By focusing on the so-called Bavot-tractates of the Talmud, which deal with various aspects of civil law – e.g., delicts, property law, contracts, labour law – we plan to systematically examine interfaces between rabbinic and other, non-Jewish forms of ancient jurisprudence, especially Roman and (as far as available) Hellenistic law. The main goal is to integrate rabbinic law, which developed in the Middle East and is based on local legal traditions, into ancient legal history that is traditionally concerned with western legal traditions only.

We plan to create a pioneering Legal Compendium to the Bavot Tractates of the Talmud Yerushalmi, which will constitute an essential tool for all future legal researchers, whether scholars of rabbinic literature, ancient Judaism, or ancient legal history. While the impact of Roman civil law on later European law is well known, ancient rabbinic texts provide a unique source for investigating the creation of an alternative body of law that both imitated and significantly differed from the Roman model. 

Based on biblical law and developed in a Graeco-Roman cultural context, rabbinic civil law can serve as a precedent for the interaction between local indigenous and imperial legal traditions and practices. Since rabbinic law continued to be studied and applied in Jewish communities throughout the Middle Ages and early Modernity, our study will contribute to the exploration of the legal cultures of political minorities in their ancestral homeland and the Diaspora. 

Methodologically, the project follows a highly integrated interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, combining text- and literary-critical analysis with social, political, and legal history.