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Law and order were Rome’s vehicles for displaying its imperial authority and supremacy over non-Roman subjects. However, Rome did not fill a legal vacuum; rather, it competed with established legal practices among communities in the Greek East. These communities took pride in their legal traditions, as they were being absorbed into the Roman legal order. This reality of entangled legalities served provincials as a major arena for negotiating Roman power and demarcating their own local identities.
Despite scholarly interest in the plurality of laws under Rome, this project proposes an innovative cross-disciplinary study of these local legal cultures as an expression of provincial agency and self-determination. While previous studies were limited to the scattered remains of legal activities in the Greek East on papyri or on inscriptions, it is the premise of this project that by integrating the body of Jewish jurisprudence we may gain access into provincial perceptions of their legal cultures. Early rabbinic literature (1st-3rd centuries CE), is the only comprehensive source of local law-making under Rome and is therefore an appropriate framework for studying provincial legalisms in all of their forms.
By applying a multi-dimensional comparative analysis of key legal fields, from legal papyrology through the study of Roman Law in the Provinces to the study of Rabbinic law, Local Law under Rome seeks to provides a structured method for proceeding towards a new understanding of subordinate legal discourse, including the following features: Contextualizing local legal systems against the backdrop of Roman legal administration and local traditions; Discerning patterns of integration across different legal traditions, and finally characterizing provincial legalism, as means for cultural and political distinction in circumstances of law without power.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101125620)