Babatha’s Final Days: New Light from Papyrus Starcky

Updated by: 
Shlomo Brand
Research notes: 
SB/not checked/15/01/2023
Reference type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
Esler, Philip
year: 
2022
Full title: 

Babatha’s Final Days: New Light from Papyrus Starcky

Journal / Book Title || Series Title: 
Journal of Biblical Literature
Volume: 
141
Issue / Series Volume: 
3
Abbreviated Series Name: 
JBL
Pages: 
491-512
Work type: 
Essay/Monograph
Abstract: 

Babatha, a Judean woman from the early second century CE, hid a satchel of thirty-five legal papyri in a cave in Wadi Ḥever on the Dead Sea around 135 CE. This article argues that she brought two other papyri, in Nabatean Aramaic, into the cave (P.XḤev/Se Nab 1, also called “P.Starcky,” and P.XḤev/Se Nab 2), but culled her documents, hiding most in the satchel, while discarding these two. Initially, P.Starcky is analyzed as a title document relating to a date orchard in her hometown of Maoza in Arabia that passed by patrilineal succession to Judah, Babatha’s second husband. I then explain the relevance of P.Starcky to Babatha in relation to her seizing that orchard after Judah’s death, in spite of the claim of his orphaned nephews to the property. The nephews’ close connection with an elite woman of Roman citizenship explains why, at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt, it was Babatha and not the nephews who carried P.Starcky into the cave. I argue further that Babatha also brought P.XḤev/Se Nab 2 into the cave but discarded it as irrelevant to her legal situation.

Primary Texts: Judean Desert Documents: 
Scroll / Document: 
XHev/Se Nab. 1 / 5/6Hev 36
Scroll / Document: 
XHev/Se Nab. 2
URL: 
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/138/article/867014
Label: 
30/01/2023
Record number: 
110 766