Legal Strategies of Judaeans in Herakleopolis, Middle Egypt, according to the Archives of the Politeuma

Abstract

Scholarly analysis of ancient Jewish texts is an extreme case of non-participant research. It is "extreme" because the original participants in the literature, its producers and receivers, are separated from modern academics by several barriers. The texts were produced in languages and cultures that are dead or have changed in profound ways. Many of the communities that produced them no longer exist. Those that do have evolved so dramatically that they are, for all intents and purposes, different communities. In many cases, even the identities of those communities are disputed. Their authors, almost without exception, are unknown. Even their original performative functions are elusive.This little volume addresses one of these barriers. Put as a question: What constitutes literary (in)coherence for ancient Jewish writers and readers? Ancient texts often disappoint modern expectations. Instances of contradiction, infelicities of grammar, unnecessary repetition, and the like defy prevailing standards of textual unity. In modern scholarship, the perceived disunity of ancient Jewish texts has resulted in two principal approaches to account for them. From a historical point of view, disappointed expectations are attributed to diachronic forces. Texts are construed as stratified objects, comprised of separate documents or layers produced by different writers in different times and different places according to different interests. Features of disunity are understood as natural by-products of this process. From a literary point of view, instances of perceived disunity are often construed as problems of scholarly perception. Incoherent and ambiguous elements are construed as products of deliberate, strategic choices by erudite writers. The conclusion that such elements are accidental or problematic is viewed as hasty. Each approach adopts a distinct plausibility-structure regarding the practices of ancient text-production, which largely excludes the perspectives of the alternate approach. 1 1 Although we have cast the "historical" and "literary" as opposites, in practice, scholars