RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 69sabbatical year intervenes. The Pentateuchal prohibition of interest is thus
evaded in a way that would certainly have displeased the rabbis^49 but can at
leastbe reconciledwith thebiblical prohibition.It is,however, remotelypossi-
ble that the payment of fines on interest-free loans simply conformed with
local custom, practiced also by pagans; a similar arrangement is stipulated in
P. Yadin17—a contractmade betweenJews, admittedly,but foundin acorpus
in which biblical law is never acknowledged.^50 Less ambiguous is the condi-
tion that follows, for here the biblical cancellation of debts in the sabbatical
year is explicitly mentioned, but its force is equally explicitly repudiated.
Though this repudiation has no connection with the rabbinicprozbollegisla-
tion, we must suppose that the parties or the scribe or the legal authorities
behind the scribe had, like the sage who introduced theprozbol, some inter-
pretive mechanism, not necessarily of great sophistication, for abrogating the
rules of the sabbatical year.^51 Perhaps it presupposes that the pentateuchal
cancellation of debts is afavorto the debtor and so may be renounced by
him—a theory of the laws ofshemittahsubsequently rejected by the rabbis,
but an entirely plausible approach to the biblical legislation.
The Babatha ArchiveThe implications of the Babatha archive, the most substantial ancient collec-
tion of legal documents produced by and/or for Jews, are very different. The
documents so far published were written, in Greek, in the village of Maoza,
(1992): 276–85, argue on the basis of the phrasemeshalem lereba‘inin P. Murab. 19, a divorce
document, that’apra‘unak behumashhere (as well as a similar phrase which appears in one of
the extremely fragmentary Abior cave documents) means “I will pay in five installments”; how
this is to be reconciled with the phrase’s fairly certain function in P. Murab. 18 as the apodosis
of a penalty clause they do not explain. J. Naveh,On Sherd and Papyrus(Jerusalem: Magnes,
1992), p. 84 n. 6, regards the readingapra’unak behumashas speculative.
(^49) See M. Bava Metzi’ah 5:2: it is forbidden under the laws oftarbit(usury) to sell a field on
the condition that a 20 percent fine (the Mishnah’s figure is presumablyexempli gratia, but
interesting nonetheless) be added to the price if payment is delayed until after the harvest; the
principle behind the case is identical to that of P. Murab. 18.
(^50) Still, other documents in the archive make it clear that it was customary, at least among
some people in Babatha’s circle, to charge and pay interest. The failure to charge it is thus very
likely, though not absolutely certain, to reflect a desire to conform with the requirements of
Jewish law.
(^51) See P. Murab. 18, 55–56C.E., from Siwaya (?)—probably a Judaean village (Naveh,On
Sherd and Papyrus, 84, reads “Suba,” which he identifies as a village near Kesalon); the other
party is from Kesalon, in the heart of Judaea, eighteen kilometers west of Jerusalem. The editors
claim that the contract conforms with theprozboldecree described in the Mishnah (Shevi’it
10:3ff.) and attributed to Hillel the Elder (fl. c. 10B.C.E.), but this is wishful thinking. The
Mishnaicprozboldocument is issued to the creditor, not the debtor, and only for loans secured
by real estate. R. Yaron, “The Murabba’at Documents,”JJS11 (1960): 158, also claims P. Murab.
18 contains aprozbolclause, while (puzzlingly) acknowledging that it does not conform with the
Mishnah’s requirements and differs also fromprozbolclauses attested in medieval documents.