II. Conclusions

It seems inevitable that the use of Greek in legal documents of the Judaean Desert should somehow be related to the advent of the Romans in the area. Where the early documents in the archives are in Aramaic, the later ones are all in Greek.

Nevertheless, it is precisely the fact that copies were completely in Greek but the original documents apparently not, which raises the ques­tion of what the use of language meant in a legal context. Was it merely an administrative measure aimed at uniformity, or was there more at issue?

It seems logical to agree with Cotton that Greek would be the medium for legal documents that had to be used in a Roman court context: Ara­maic documents would be less accessible and consequently less prac­tical. However, against Cotton's ensuing assumption that Greek made documents valid in a Roman court context, Bagnall emphasized the continuing use of the local languages, suggesting that Aramaic contin­ued to play a part as a language for legal documents. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder what the fate was of the Aramaic documents drawn up after the conquest: if those were meant for Roman courts as well, this invalidates Cotton's argument that Greek was used to make documents valid in a Roman court context.

In this light it is important to assess the possibility of the existence of local courts. Isaac already commented on the lack of evidence in the archives not only of the existence of local courts, but also of Jewish insti­tutions in general. Cotton assumed that there were local courts, perhaps of local arbitration, for which the Aramaic documents were meant.

However, there is no ground in the documentary evidence for assum­ing that documents in Aramaic were not valid in a Roman court context, neither does it necessarily follow that parties in drawing up an Aramaic deed excluded the possibility of going to a Roman court. Indeed, in P.Yadin 21-22, a Greek contract meant for Roman jurisdiction, Babatha bases her right to sell the object concerned on rights derived from an Aramaic marriage contract. It is hard to envisage that this would be possible if there was indeed a separation of local and Roman jurisdic­tion over deeds drawn up in Aramaic or Greek respectively and Ara­maic deeds could not be adduced in a Roman court context.^[241] Likewise, Babatha turns to the Roman governor in her conflict with her deceased husband's first wife, most likely basing her claims (and in any case her position) on her Aramaic marriage deed. Again, this would be difficult if not impossible if Aramaic deeds were subjected (exclusively) to local jurisdiction (arbitration).

It seems more likely that a gradual change to Greek occurred to facili­tate the use of the documents in a Roman court context, without ever excluding the use of Aramaic in legal documents completely. As Bagnall observed, there is no reason to believe that the Romans discouraged the use of it. This means that, contrary to Cotton's repeated observations to that point, Greek was not used to make contracts valid in a Roman court context (implying documents in Aramaic would be invalid): Aramaic was obviously valid as a legal language. In this respect it is noteworthy that the original deeds of a census declaration and of a loan that were kept by the authorities c.q. the Roman other party included subscrip­tions in Aramaic, while the Jewish parties were presented with com­pletely Greek copies.

Furthermore, Cotton's reference to the situation in Egypt cannot sup­port her argument: although it is true that the use of Greek there should be related to the Roman conquest and the subsequent obligatory reg­istration of legal acts with the authorities, this registration has a com­pletely different effect on the languages used for legal documents than what we find in the Judaean Desert material. As DePauw has shown in an article on the situation in Egypt, there the Roman conquest caused the language of the documents prior written in Demotic to change, but only where the subscriptions to a document were concerned: those had to be written in Greek, regardless of the language of the main text of the document. This suggests that the subscriptions were regarded as the essential part of the document that for obligatory registration with the authorities had to be written in the lingua franca

DePauw's conclusions for Roman Egypt obviously do not fit the Judaean Desert material. The situation there is the exact opposite: the main text is written in Greek while subscriptions remain to be written in Aramaic. This shows that conclusions to the legal validity of a lan­guage cannot be drawn at face value: exactly those parts of the docu­ments that could be considered to be essential for its validity are not written in Greek, but in the local language. This proves that Aramaic continued to play a part as a legally valid language not only in a judicial but also in an administrative context. Consequently, neither the Roman court context nor the possibility of registration with the authorities can be used as conclusive arguments to explain for the change in language used in the documents.

Even if a direct and determinative relationship between language and court/jurisdiction cannot be accepted, it needs to be asked whether there was a relationship between language used and law deemed appli­cable to the acts. To put it differently: would a division between Aramaic and Greek documents be acceptable on the basis of language as indica­tion of the applicable law?

For bilingual family archives from Hellenistic Egypt, Pestman argued that choice of language directly determined choice of law: Demotic doc­uments draw on Egyptian law, while Greek ones draw on Greek Hel­lenistic law. According to Pestman family-related documents, mainly marriage and divorce documents, were usually drawn up in Demotic, because of the favourable position of the woman under Egyptian law. What these documents seem to bear out is that people could make a conscious choice to use one of the two available languages, not only to make the document usable in a certain context, but also to put it in a particular legal framework.

This raises the question for the Judaean Desert material of whether such a conscious choice can be considered to have played a part there as well, and whether this means that the language of a document deter­mines something about the applicable law. In that case a division between Aramaic and Greek documents would still be relevant, not so much as in determining the jurisdiction to which the document is subjected, but the law that is deemed applicable to it.

Isaac stated that the marriage contract of P.Yadin 18 was put in a framework of Greek law because under this law the position of the woman was more favourable. This seems to amount to the same situ­ation as in the Egyptian material. However, Isaac drew his conclusion apparently not solely from the fact that the document was written in Greek but also from an internal reference to Greek law. If that reference had not been there, his conclusion might not have been the same.

Wasserstein argued to the same document that it was a ‘safeguard for the pecuniary interests of the bride, enforceable in a non Jewish secular court,' assuming that another, Aramaic, deed had been drawn up that would not have been enforceable in a non-Jewish secular court.

It seems inevitable to let go of any a priori divisions between Greek and Aramaic documents within the archive, any assumptions as to the (in)validity of Aramaic in Roman courts and any assumptions about direct links between language and court and language and law, as sug­gested by the situation in Egypt. Since the situation in Egypt with regard to languages used in legal documents clearly deviates from that in the Judaean Desert material, as shown in the case of the subscriptions, cau­tion is wanted in easily accepting similarities at other points.^[242] Rather, before any conclusions can be drawn as to the exact nature of the change from Aramaic to Greek and its legal implications, the relationship between language and law requires closer scrutiny, contrasting the exter­nal evidence, the language of a document, with the internal evidence, the direct references to law present in that document.