How Mesopotamian Scribes Learned to Write Legal Documents: A Study of the Sumerian Model Contracts in the Babylonian Collection at Yale University - Hardcover

Bodine, Walter R.

9780773435377: How Mesopotamian Scribes Learned to Write Legal Documents: A Study of the Sumerian Model Contracts in the Babylonian Collection at Yale University

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773435379 ISBN 13: 9780773435377

Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, 2014

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This is a remarkable and important work that provides insight into social and economic activities provided to us in the cuneiform records of ancient periods revealing how these activities were negotiated and regulated by laws and contracts, through records of the Sumerian model contracts from the Mesopotamian scribal school curriculum. It is an essential reference work for any student of ancient Mesopotamian history and comparative law. In the Mesopotamian school, scribal students were prepared to assume many responsibilities. Among them was the writing of functional contracts (i.e., those used in actual legal proceedings) and other legal documents. A large number of these functional documents have been preserved and published. Student scribes learned to write them by preparing practice examples. These include model contracts, model court cases, model letters, and models of public announcements. That phase of scribal training represents the closest Mesopotamia ever came to developing a law school. An introduction to this work overviews the book and discusses the effort made in it to discover the provenience and period of composition of the documents, the importance of personal names and the need of attention to paleography for this investigation, and the use, and the use of functional contracts in the process of restoring lost and obscure readings. A survey of past study discusses work done, explains the usage of terms, relates the model contracts to other school documents, and locates them at the intermediate level of Mesopotamian scribal education. The texts are set forth in transliteration and a literal translation, which are arranged side by side in order to make clear the author's understanding of the documents.

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Review

"Dr. Bodine has judiciously confined his attention to one group of model contracts, namely those of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University...In each case, he has photographed and hand-copied the texts, restored missing or broken cuneiform signs on the basis of parallels among functional contracts of comparable import, provided an up-to-date survey of the entire genre of model contracts, and exhaustively studied the legal implications of their various types." (Dr. William W. Hallo, Yale University) "Walter Bodine has written a model book of its kind - a thorough edition and discussion of six tablets, about two dozen texts, of the type that is known as model contracts...The texts are all Sumerian and written for the most part in the Old Babylonian period. They not only open a window on how law can facilitate life; these tablets show with abundant clarity how scribes were educated in writing law, by copying and assimilating the work of the masters." (Dr. Edward Greenstein, Bar-Ilan University)

About the Author

Dr. Walter R. Bodine received his Ph.D. with majors in Biblical Hebrew and Hebrew Bible Studies from Harvard University. He taught New Testament Greek at Crichton College; has served as an Associate Professor of Semitics and Old Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, worked as a Research Affiliate in the Babylonian Collection at Yale University and currently serves as Pastor Emeritus, International Church at Yale.

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