The Aramaic Legal Tradition: customary law reflected in contracts and other documents

亚拉姆语的鼎盛时期从亚述帝国时期延伸到早期伊斯兰时代(当时亚拉姆语开始被阿拉伯语取代)。作为中东大部分地区的通用语言，它是商业和法律的主要语言。直到最近，唯一的阿拉姆语法律文件语料库(房地产和奴隶买卖合同、抵押文件等)来自公元前5世纪波斯统治的埃及。在这些埃及文件的基础上，Y.Muff在他的阿拉姆语法律研究中(1963年)能够将阿拉姆语法律规范和实践置于其他古代近东法律传统的背景下(埃及和美索不达米亚)。新发表的发现并没有推翻他的结论，但它们极大地扩展了数据库，以至于有必要进行全面的重新评估。它们将阿拉姆法律传统的证据从公元前7世纪延伸到公元前3世纪。这些较新的文献材料如下：(1)公元前7世纪印有阿拉姆语文本的泥板，通常作为楔形文字文献的摘要附在上面。(2)公元前4世纪撒玛利亚纸莎草纸，主要是奴隶贩卖和房地产运输。(3)公元1世纪/公元2世纪的文库文献和相关的犹太沙漠文献(两个亚类，犹太亚拉姆文献和纳巴泰亚拉姆文献：纳巴泰文献为我们提供了纳巴泰律法的第一个广泛的文件证据)。(4)公元3世纪叙利亚法律羊皮纸(一个是贩卖奴隶，其他与抵押和贷款有关)。所有以前对法律传统的研究要么忽略了后来的发展(在象牙之后)，要么在较新的文本曝光之前发表。本项目力求从体裁(例如房地产和贩卖奴隶)及其模式(例如主观语言与客观语言)、不同的保护策略(上诉等)方面分析上述语料库的个别文件。及其法律实践的背景(包括作证、盖章等的实际安排)。需要与楔形文字和某种程度上的埃及法律进行比较，并与希腊和罗马法律进行比较，以阐明这些阿拉姆语文本对近东主要法律传统的负债程度。这种比较最终侧重于试图在明确的基础上确立阿拉姆法律传统的特点。总的研究问题是，亚拉姆法是否仅仅是楔形法的次要分支，在适当的时候经历了希腊化和罗马化，或者它是否可以被理解为独立的(即使受到外部力量的影响)。

The heyday of Aramaic extended from the period of the Assyrian Empire to early Islamic times (when Aramaic began to be supplanted by Arabic). As the lingua franca of much of the Middle East it was the main language of commerce and law. Until relatively recently the only corpus of legal documents in Aramaic (real estate and slave sale contracts, mortgage documents, etc.) was from Persian-ruled Egypt of the fifth century BCE. On the basis of these Egyptian documents Y. Muffs in his Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine (1963) was able to situate the Aramaic legal formulary and praxis in the context of other ancient Near Eastern legal traditions (Egypt and Mesopotamia). Newly published discoveries have not overturned his conclusions, but they have extended the database so much that a complete re-evaluation has become necessary. They extend the evidence of the Aramaic legal tradition from the seventh century BCE to the third CE. These newer documentary materials are as follows:(1) Seventh century BCE clay tablets bearing Aramaic texts, often attached as summaries to cuneiform documents. (2) The fourth century BCE Samaria papyri, mostly slave sales and real estate conveyances. (3) The first/second century CE 'Cave of Letters' documents and related Judaean Desert texts (two sub-categories, the Jewish Aramaic legal texts and the Nabataean Aramaic legal texts: the Nabataean materials provide us with the first extensive documentary evidence of Nabataean law).(4) The third century CE Syriac legal parchments (one a slave sale, the others connected with mortgages and loans). All previous studies of the legal tradition either ignore later developments (after Elephantine) or were published before the newer texts came to light. The present project seeks to analyse the individual documents of the corpora listed above in terms of genres (real estate and slave sales, for example) and their formularies (subjective v. objective language, for example), their different protective strategies (appeals, etc.) and their contexts of legal praxis (including physical arrangements for witnessing, sealing, etc.). Comparisons with cuneiform and to some extent Egyptian law, and with Greek and Roman law are needed to elucidate the level of indebtedness of these Aramaic texts to the major legal traditions of the Near East. This comparison is ultimately focussed on an attempt to establish on a clear basis the characteristics of the Aramaic legal tradition. The overall research question is whether Aramaic law was simply a secondary offshoot from cuneiform law which in due course underwent Hellenization and Romanization, or whether it can be understood as independent (even if influenced by outside forces).