Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts from Nahal Hever and Other Sites, with an Appendix Containing Alleged Qumran Texts (The Seiyal Collection II)

Abstract

This volume in the series contains first and second century documents in Aramaic and Greek said to come from Nahal Se'elim and now generally held to be from Nahal Hever (the provenance of the Babatha Archive and the Bar Kokhba documents). The transitional stage of the Aramaic language is documented here for the first time. The Greek language and script closely resembles that of the Greek papyri from Egypt. The legal documents in the archive of Salome Komaise daughter of Levi from Mahoza (a village in the Roman province of Arabia) and similar documents from Judaea published here, like those of the Babatha archive, constitute the best and most authentic evidence for certain legal and social aspects of the life of Jews at the time. The evidence of assimilation of non-hellenized Jews to their environment contrasts with and complements that contained in contemporary and later rabbinic sources.