The Saber and Scroll
ingrained in Arabia Petraea the way it was among the peoples of other Roman provinces . While Alexander had conquered Arabia around 324 BCE , he had left that region autonomous ; hence , the Greek conquest of Arabia never lead to the Hellenization of that region . Nevertheless , since Greek was the most commonly understood language throughout the other Roman provinces , it became the language of choice for Roman legal administration in Arabia Petraea as well .
Historian Jacobine G . Oudshoorn further stated that a legal practitioner ’ s choice of language and legal forms was not necessarily related to the court or legal system that the provincials used . 8 Some documents written in Greek , on Greek forms and presented in the Roman courts , clearly reflected Jewish customs . Some also reflected Roman and Jewish influences in a single papyrus . In other words , the choice to draft legal documents in the Greek language for the Roman courts should not automatically imply that the provincial population of Arabia Petraea had abandoned their own legal traditions in favor of Roman ones .
A close inspection of some of Babatha ’ s legal affairs reveals the way people sometimes used Jewish customs and Roman laws on opposing sides of a single case . P . Yadin 21 , P . Yadin 23 , and P . Yadin 25 prove this claim . 9 P . Yadin 21 was a contract that Babatha had drawn up to settle her late husband ’ s debt — money he owed to her — by temporarily seizing his date orchards and collecting the money from the sale of the crop .
However , the orchards now legally belonged to her late husband ’ s sons from a previous marriage . Apparently , they did not repay Babatha what their late father owed to her . By temporarily seizing the orchards , Babatha was acting in accordance with an old Jewish custom of selfhelp , which sometimes allowed Jews to circumvent the court system to settle a dispute . P . Yadin 23 was a summons that her late husband ’ s sons served to Babatha , which stated the illegality of her action , but it was based on a Roman law that considered her appropriation of the orchards a violent act . With clear Jewish legal tradition in mind , in P . Yadin 25 , Babatha rejected her stepson ’ s summons , calling it a “ false charge .” 10
Prior to the Bar Kokhba revolt , Jews in Arabia Petraea appeared to interact in a relatively diplomatic fashion with their new rulers . Roman authorities had not prohibited them from using their age-old oral laws . The oral laws were a legal interpretation of the first five books of the Torah known as the Pentateuch . These books ( Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy ) are collectively known as the Law .
While the authors of the Mishnah would not complete their written book of laws until the early third century CE , Jews did continue to live by their age-old Jewish mores .
During the early years of the Roman occupation of Arabia Petraea ( 106 CE ), legal practitioners initially continued to follow Jewish tradition by writing legal documents in Aramaic and Nabatean on local juridical forms . Historian Kimberley Csajkowski attributed
84