’ BABATHA S ORCHARD ’ Babatha s Orchard The Yadin Papyri and an Ancient Jewish Family Tale Retold PHILIP F. ESLER 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©PhilipF.Esler2017 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2017 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016945505 ISBN 978–0–19–876716–9 PrintedinGreatBritainby ClaysLtd,StIvesplc LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. For Patricia, Dominic, Thomas, and Sinéad Acknowledgements In2013,priortomytakingupthePortlandChairinNewTestament Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, I started work on two newresearchprojects.OnewasEthiopic1stEnochandtheotherwas theBabathaarchiveoflegalpapyrifrom94to132CE.Thisbookarises from my realization of the extraordinary and remarkably neglected riches to be found in the Babatha archive. I well remember my increasing excitement in those early months in 2013 as I worked throughitsthirty-fivepapyrionebyone.Previouslytheyhadmainly attracted research on their legal dimensions. I was extremely taken, however, by the extent to which they allowed direct access to the socialworldofNabateaandJudea,includingtheeventsinoneDead Sea town in 99 CE. This was the period in which some of the New Testament texts, such as the Gospel of Matthew, would have been appearing.Asanerstwhilelawyer,Ifoundmyselfcontinuallycaught up in the usual drama of opportunity for, or threat to, named individualsthatrequiredlegalinterventionintheformofcommercial agreements or documents for legal proceedings. Such documents weredraftedbyhighlycompetentlawyers;‘scribes’,tousetheirown designation. A number of people have aided me in the process that led to the completion of this book. Tom Perridge, Senior Commissioning Edi- torwithresponsibilityforreligionatOxfordUniversityPress(OUP) inOxford,initiallyencouragedmetosubmitamanuscripttoOUPon this subject during a conversation at the International SBL Confer- enceinViennainJuly2014.WhenIdidsubmitadraftmanuscriptin February2015,heveryexpeditiouslysecuredthreeanonymousreview- erstoconsiderit.Thosereviewswereextremelyhelpfulinalertingme torelevantmaterialandinassistingmetodeveloptheargumentand I am greatly indebted to their authors. More recently, Karen Raith, AssistantCommissioningEditor,withresponsibilityforreligionand theologyatOUP,hasbeenveryefficientinassistingoncertainaspects of the project, especially by arranging for high-quality reproduction of the excellent photographs that accompanied the original publica- tion of the papyri in 2002. I am grateful to Matthew Humphrys from OUP who expertly shepherded the manuscript through the viii Acknowledgements productionphase,andtoNicolaSangsterforhercarefulproof-read- ing.Permissiontoreproducethosephotos(fromY.Yadin[2002]The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Heb- rew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri [Plates]. Judean Desert Studies. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Institute of Archae- ology, Hebrew University and the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum), and the Aramaic text of P. Yadin 4 was kindly provided bytheIsraelAntiquitiesAuthority(courtesyofHillelGeva). During the course of writing the manuscript, I profited on many occasions fromrelevant publicationssuggested(and oftenprovided) to me by Professor Hannah Cotton. Professor Cotton also arranged formyparticipationattwoconferencesfocusingonlawintheancient Mediterranean, in Oxford in May 2015 and in Saarbrücken in September 2015 (which she co-organized with Professor Tiziana Chiusi). I am very grateful to Professor Cotton for this assistance. IamalsogratefulforDrAdaYardeni’sadvicetomethatinseekingto decipherthecursivehandwritingfoundintheNabateanlegalpapyri it is essential to complete accurate drawings of them. Observing exactly how the scribe has drawn the letters in a word or words makes one highly sensitive to the letter forms and to the order in whichtheywereappliedtothepapyrus.ProfessorJohnKloppenborg and Dr Giovanni Bazzana offered advice on a number of matters to do with papyrology and ancient contexts. Dr Mahdi (Abdelaziz) Alzoubi and Dr Kimberley Czajkowski provided me with copies of their doctoral theses, from which I learned much. My son Dominic, freshly returned from ethnographic fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka forhisanthropologydoctorateatUniversityCollegeLondon,rightly insistedontheimportanceof‘beingthere’inethnographyandalerted me to relevant literature. Finally, I delivered papers touching on aspectsofthisvolumeattheSaarbrückenconference,andtograduate seminarsintheUniversityofDurhamandKingsCollegeLondonin early 2016 and gratefully acknowledge feedback I received on those occasions. Noneof thescholars mentioned here, however, bears any responsibilityfortheviewsIexpressinthisbook. My friends at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, especially Professors Gordon McConville, Andrew Lincoln, and Melissa Raphael and Drs Pekka Pitkanen, Adrian Long, and Dee Carter, welcomed me here in September 2013, were encouraging as I worked on this book, and have provided a useful sounding-board for some ofthe viewsexpressed init. I have beenfully supported by Acknowledgements ix Professor Shelley Saguaro and her successor Dr David Webster in their role as Head of the School of Humanities. Library staff at the university have been extremely helpful in assisting me generally and in tracking down some of the bibliographic items (especially Anne- liese Cooke and Jane Shirfield in the library at Francis Close Hall CampusandDeborahJones-DavisandKateReainrelationtointer- library loans). My daughter Sinéad read the entirety of the final manuscript, correcting typographical errors and suggesting numer- ous stylistic improvements. My wife Patricia and son Thomas read several sections of the manuscript, alerting me to various errors and infelicities. Finally, over the past few years Patricia, and Dominic, Thomas, andSinéad,havebeenatowerofstrength(andafountoftolerance) from early 2013 when this project began and to date, a time when theywereandarebusilypursuingtheirownlives.Asasmalltokenof mythanksandappreciation,Idedicatethisbooktothem. PhilipF.Esler TheUniversityofGloucestershire Cheltenham October2016