Endnote 31 – Babatha’s Story

The contract (P. Yadin 10) has been published with commentary in Yadin, Greenfield and Yardeni, “Babatha’s Ketubba.” Just a few phrases and a brief description of the contract are given in the original publication by Yadin, “Expedition D,” IEJ 12 (1962), pp. 244–245. Later Mishnaic law bears some similarities to these early-second-century C.E. marriage contracts, showing both the variety and continuity of Jewish practices. For example, “according to the law of Moses and the Jews” in Babatha’s documents later became “according to the law of Moses and Israel” in Ketubot 26. Hayim Lapin (“Early Rabbinic Civil Law and the Literature of the Second Temple Period,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 2 [1995], p. 171, n. 67) suggests that the Greek equivalent of the Aramaic “according to the law of Moses and the Jews” is in lines 7 and 39 of the Greek marriage contract (P. Yadin 18). There the father, Judah son of Elazar, gives his daughter Shelamzion to Judah Cimber “for the partnership of marriage according to the laws (nomous).” Even if Lapin is correct, “the laws” governing the marriage are amorphous enough or accepted and understood well enough not to require specification.