This part of the study investigates general issues related with the question to law behind the documents.

Starting from the language issue that has dominated scholarship so far^[167] it takes the discussion two steps beyond and also looks at references to law in the papyri and consequently at a possible pattern in these references and its meaning for our understand­ing of law behind the documents.

Chapter 1 deals with the language issue, starting from conclusions drawn in previous scholarship and raising questions as to these con­clusions, foremost to the role of Aramaic as a legal language after the conquest. Conclusions as to the invalidity of Aramaic as a legal language within a context of Roman jurisdiction have pervaded recent scholar­ship, without a due amount of critical reflection as to the tenability of such conclusions.^[168] Three lines of argument will be followed to show that Aramaic was valid as a legal language:

- examining the exact role of Aramaic as shown in these specific documents;

- examining the role of Greek versus an indigenous language in gen­eral, by comparing the situation in the Judaean Desert material with that in documents from Roman Egypt;

- examining the juridical consequences of denying validity of Ara­maic deeds in the context of Greek deeds that refer to these Aramaic deeds.

All three lines of argument lead to the same conclusion, namely that Aramaic was valid as a legal language within the context of Roman juris­diction and consequently, that the transfer to use of Greek for legal acts cannot be attributed to a need to make documents valid within a Roman judicial and/or administrative context. This means that divisions based on language, juxtaposing Aramaic documents as subjected to local jurisdiction and local law and Greek documents as subjected to Roman jurisdiction and (influence of) Roman law, cannot be maintained to explain for the legal context of the papyri.

Consequently, the language issue should not dominate interpreta­tions of the legal situation as much as it has done so far and the legal background of these papyri should be examined from another angle: that of internal evidence as to the applicable law.

Chapter 2 will investigate the internal evidence to the applicable law in a number of both Aramaic and Greek papyri, to see whether the docu­ments contain clear references to the applicable law; if so, how these ref­erences to the applicable law are made, and whether there is a change in the way references are made at the transition from Nabataean Kingdom to Roman province.

It will appear that the documents frequently refer explicitly to the applicable law, but in different ways before and after the conquest. These references to the applicable law in the documents are often in contrast to the indication of the applicable law based on the language of the documents: for example, in P.Yadin 6 the language of the docu­ment suggests a Nabataean legal background, while the references to law in the document point at a Jewish context. This underscores the conclusion drawn in Chapter 1 that the role of language as indication of applicable law should not be overestimated. Furthermore, a divergence can be observed between direct references to law and indications of the applicable law such as the presence of guardians of women or the occur­rence of the stipulatio. Where direct references to law can be found to connect with indigenous law, the indications of the applicable law just mentioned connect with Roman law. An explanation is wanted for this divergence, especially in the light of the change occurring in the way direct references to law are made before and after the Roman conquest.

Consequently, Chapter 3 will discuss the change in the references to law with the legal background of Nabataean kingdom versus Roman prov­ince of Arabia in mind. It will be shown that the transition to Roman rule required a new way of determining the applicable law for docu­ments, causing the references to law to change. It is also with this transi­tion to Roman rule that the documents begin to display a combination of references to law and indications of the applicable law, which seem to have a different legal orientation.

To reconcile the seemingly contradictory evidence provided by refer­ences to law and indications of law, a new approach will be proposed to understand the relationship between local and Roman law in the docu­ments: instead of making groups of papyri and linking those groups to laws this approach distinguishes between two levels within each papy­rus. Not only does this two-level approach fit better with the evidence to the applicable law as found in the archives, but it can also be understood as part of a conscious and consistent way of dealing with several possi­bly applicable laws, occurring at the time of the transition of Nabataean kingdom to Roman province of Arabia. Such a consistent way of dealing with conflict of law can shed further light on the relationship between laws in a context of sole Roman jurisdiction.