Murabbaʿat 115

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Murabbaʿat 115 (abbreviated: Mur115) is the name of an ancient papyrus from the Wadi Murabbaʿat . It is a Jewish marriage contract ( ketubba ) written in Greek .

The papyrus was discovered in 1951/1952 in Wadi Murabbaʿat (Hebrew Nahal Deragot) on the northwest bank of the Dead Sea , then Jordan . It is one of 174 ancient documents that were found there in five caves, partly by Bedouins, partly in official excavations.

The papyrus is the largest of all papyri found in Wadi Murabbaʿat. A large fragment (32 × 16 cm) contains parts of 22 lines on the front ( recto ) (the first five almost complete). On about 40 other small fragments only individual letters have been preserved, of which only a few can be added to whole words.

The papyrus is a Jewish marriage contract (ketubba), in which the dowry (200 denarii), the rights of the woman in the event of the death of the husband, the succession of children and the rights of children, especially unmarried daughters, are specified become. This marriage contract differs from the usual form in two respects: It is written in Greek, not Aramaic . The two spouses had already been married to each other, the marriage had been divorced and was re-concluded with this document, which according to Dtn 24.1-4 EU was only allowed if the wife was not married to another man in the meantime.

The document is a double certificate , that is, “that the same text was written twice one below the other on the same papyrus, in such a way that an empty space about 2-3 cm wide was left between the two texts; the upper text was then rolled up, tied with papyrus threads [...] and sealed, while the lower text was only folded up so that it could be read easily. "

On the reverse ( verso ) of such documents are the signatures of the bride and groom, the witnesses and possibly the scribe, usually written vertically on the lower part. Only the beginnings of three signatures have survived.

The bridegroom is "El (e) aios, son of Simon, from Galoda near Akrabatta, living in Baitoa / orda / o (is) near Gophna ". Galoda is the village of Jalud in what is now the West Bank , about 18 km south of Nablus . Baitoa / orda / o (is) (the exact reading is uncertain) is unknown from other sources and could not be identified. The bride is "Salome, daughter of John Galgula" or, less likely, "Salome, daughter of John, son of Galgula".

In the first line of both the upper and the lower text the dating according to the Julian calendar is preserved: “on the 14th day before the November calendar , in the 7th year of the emperor Trajanus Hadrianus Caesar Augustus , under the consuls Manius Acilius Glabrio and Bellicius Torquatus ”, ie on October 19, 124 AD. According to this, the date according to the Macedonian calendar is “ 15. Dystros ”, which, however, cannot be reconciled with the Julian dating according to any known system (the Macedonian month names were identified differently with Roman, Egyptian or Jewish months in different areas).

Line 2 shows the place where the document was issued: Baitobaissaias (Beit Bassa, possibly Chirbet Beit Bassa , 3 km northwest of Herodium , 2 km southeast of Bethlehem ).

literature

  • Pierre Benoit: 115th Contrat de remariage. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 243-254 (edition and French translation).
  • Elisabeth Koffmahn: The double documents from the Judah desert. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, pp. 126-137 (commentary and German translation).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elizabeth Koffmahn: The double certificates from the wilderness of Judah. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, pp. 10-11.
  2. ↑ Pierre Benoit: 115. Contrat de remariage. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 243-254, here p. 251.
  3. ↑ Elizabeth Koffmahn: The double certificates from the wilderness of Judah. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, p. 131.
  4. ↑ Pierre Benoit: 115. Contrat de remariage. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 243-254, here pp. 250-251.
  5. ↑ Pierre Benoit: 115. Contrat de remariage. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 243-254, here p. 251.