166 | CHAPTER 6
The exegetical process is measured compared to the energ y burst required
for prophecy and the production of scripture. But it is through exegesis that
prophecy and scripture become socialized and consumable—and indeed his-
toricized. This is why the First Millennium is so important, though several of
its characteristic strands—Greek philosophy, Alexandrian philological
scholarship,^8 Judaism, the Avesta—originated earlier. And it is in the every-
day socialization of ideas and scholarly techniques, in the repercussions for
example of scriptural exegesis on financial dealings or the marriage bed, that
we come fully to appreciate the role of ideas in non-elite history as well.
We begin with another tradition rooted in pre- First Millennium, non-
monotheistic Antiquity, namely Roman law, which from the first to third
centuries CE produced an abundance of commentaries, and then a codifica-
tion under Justinian. After that we turn to the three monotheisms: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.
Roman law
Of the three towering textual monuments produced during the First Millen-
nium, two are scriptures—the New Testament and the Qurʾān—while the
third is Justinian’s Corpus of civil law (Corpus iuris civilis).
The vain titles of the victories of Justinian [wrote Gibbon] are crum-
bled into dust: but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair and
everlasting monument.... [T]he public reason of the Romans has
been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of
Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedi-
ence of independent nations,^9though sadly not the attention of those who define a “declining” late Antiq-
uity exclusively in terms of political and military events and economic
cycles.
Roman law^10 began accumulating from the earliest code, the Twelve Ta-
bles drawn up by a special commission in 451–50 BCE without a hint—so
far as we know—of Sinaitic theatricality, though with comparable conse-
quence. Although rendered increasingly obsolete by the development of a
more cosmopolitan society and the accretion of later laws, the Twelve Tables
8 P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972) 1.447–79.
9 Gibbon 44: 2.778. His final judgment was more nuanced: see the “Introduction” to Womersley’s
edition, lxxxi–lxxxiii.
10 F. Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte (Munich 1988–2006)—even in its unfinished state, the
second volume, here relevant, is a mighty resource. For materials online, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/history2
/volterra/resource.htm.