Classical rabbinic law grew up in the shadow of the Roman empire, and must be understood in relationship to its legal legacy. Yet few, especially in the anglophone world, have mastered both corpuses—the remarkable Boaz Cohen was one; an undisputed pioneer, he built bridges between the legal cultures of these great civilizations. The essays collected here are a treasure of insight and erudition for all students of rabbinics, provincial Roman history, and comparative law. For the classicist seeking to understand rabbinic writings or the scholar of Jewish law searching the Roman legal traditions, the barriers to access are high—disciplinary, linguistic, and cultural. The studies that make up Jewish and Roman Law, here reissued, offer an accessible gateway to the complex labyrinth of legal sources for a new generation of classicists and rabbinicists, a rigorous if humbling training ground, and vital conceptual foundation from which to assess cultural contact, sympathy, and divergence. This two-volume set of essays by Boaz Cohen, late professor of law at the Jewish Theological Seminary and one of the leading talmudic scholars of his generation, was first published in 1966. The essays are accompanied here by a new introduction by Natalie B. Dohrmann of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Volume 1
Table of Contents (v)
Introduction to This Edition by Natalie B. Dohrmann (vii)
Biography: Boaz Cohen (1899–1968) (vii)
Contents (viii)
Methodology (x)
Cohen and the Study of the Rabbis (xiii)
Conclusions (xv)
Preface (xix)
Introduction (xxi)
A. General Part
I. The Relationship of Jewish to Roman Law (1)
II. Letter and Spirit in Jewish and Roman Law (31)
III. Letter and Spirit in the New Testament (58)
IV. Law and Ethics (65)
B. Law of Persons
V. Law of Persons (122)
VI. Civil Bondage 159
VII. Peculium (179)
VIII. Betrothal (279)
IX. Dowry (348)
X. Divorce (377)
Volume 2
C. Law of Things
XI. Contrectatio (409)
XII. Antichresis (433)
XIII. Possession (457)
XIV. Specificatio (472)
XV. Traditio Clavium (538)
XVI. Ususfructus (557)
XVII. Causation (578)
XVIII. Acceptilatio in Jewish Law (610)
XIX. “Juedisches Hehlerrecht” in Jewish Law (615)
D. Law of Actions
XX. Self-Help (624)
XXI. Arbitration (651)
XXII. The Testimonial Oath (710)
XXIII. Testimonial Compulsion (734)
Addenda (755)
Corrigenda
Postscript
General Index (805)
Index of Passages (831)
Index of Latin Terms (882)
Index of Greek Terms (887)
Index of Hebrew and Aramaic Terms (889)
Index of Hebrew and Aramaic Terms in Transliteration (893)
Index of Arabic Terms
Index of Oriental Terms
Hebrew Section:
1 (On The Minor) לדיני הקטן במשפט העברי והרומאי
2 (On Derelictio) הפקר ויאוש במשפט העברי והרומאי