Influence of Oral Culture on Development of Form of Jewish Legal Documents
Keywords:
suspicious attitude to written documents, form of jewish documents, first person wording, date on the top, time elements, the day of the week, oral culture, oral jewish lawAbstract
This article attempts to provide an explanation as to how the Shtar (Jewish legal document) acquired its typical features: first-person wording, date indication at the head of the document with the addition of the day of the week and the year in the Shmita (sabbatical) cycle. The central assertion is that these characteristics result from a desire to adhere to the practices followed in the course of legal processes conducted orally in courts of law. That is why the wording of the Shtar in the first person and placement of the date at the top reflect the accepted format of oral human communication, and the time elements indicated on the Shtar are corresponding to those used when obtaining oral evidence from witnesses .The reason for this adherence is that in all matters concerning the development of the Oral Jewish Law, the Jews of the period in question avoided written material outside The Holy Scriptures, because of fear of written material of Christianity and the various sects that might slip into the The Holy Scriptures . This created an oral culture in Jewish circles giving rise to a suspicious attitude towards legal written documents. The oral culture in Judaism may also have been created by its lack of an ancient literary culture such as in Mesopotamia and Egypt.