פפירוס צאלים 13 ושאלת יכולתן של נשים לגרש את בעליהן בהלכה היהודית הקדומה

The publication of Papyrus Hever (Se'elim) 13 has raised once again the question of whether women could divorce their husbands according to ancient Jewish halakha. The editors of the text, Ada Yardeni and the late Prof. Jonas C. Greenfield, have suggested that it be seen as a receipt for the Ketubbah payment (shovar). Other scholars, however, have argued that it is in fact a bill of divorce given by the woman to her husband, or at least that it testifies to the existence of such a writ. The present paper addresses the historical significance of these suggestions and their plausibility. It is argued that since divorce in Jewish law has far reaching implications, both on the woman herself and on her future offspring, it is obvious that those Jews who followed the regular halakha (known to us both from Josephus, Ant. 15:259-260, and from rabbinic literature), according to which only the man could divorce, would consider divorce by women (if such ever existed) as invalid. Such a woman would be regarded by those Jews as still married, and children born to her in a future marriage would be regarded as mamzerim, who are unable to marry within Jewish society. Consequently, Jews who adhered to normative halakha would not marry with families in which women had ever divorced their husbands, and thus a deep social rupture would have threatened the Jewish society of the era. The sources at our disposal do not reveal any knowledge of such a dangerous situation, nor the existence of such a practice of women divorcing their husbands. Had the suggestion to view P. Se'elim 13 as a writ of divorce given by the wife to her husband (or testimony to the existence of such a practice) been correct, one would expect to find an expression of such a custom and its dangerous social consequences in our sources. The fact that no such expression is to be found raises doubts as to whether it ever really existed. It seems therefore that a ־ priori one should be cautious in using this text as proof for the existence of such a practice in Jewish society of the period. In order to accept the hypothesis that women could divorce their husbands, strong and conclusive evidence is needed. Had such evidence been adduced one would not have argued against the historical conclusion to be drawn from it. However, while the text of P. Se'elim 13 can indeed be interpreted in different ways, according to which it might reflect the fact that a woman had divorced her husband, neither of these interpretations is conclusive, and other readings are possible as well. One such reading is offered here, according to which the 'divorce clause' in this text is in fact a quotation of a bill of divorce which the husband had previously given to his wife.