PISTIS: A Greek and Roman Bill of Trust in Palestine

• In Event: Cultural Comparison with Roman and Sasanian Contexts

Abstract

The Greek legal term PISTIS refers to various forms of trusts, loans, securities, credits, guarantees, and means of inheritance. One of its uses in Greek Egyptian papyri was interpreted as referring to title-transfer security, a legal institution which is based on an older Greek legal institution and compared to the Roman title-transfer security. However, it was recently claimed that in these papyri PISTIS refers to fictitious ownership, rather than title-transfer security.
A transliteration of the word PISTIS is attested in tannaitic and amoraic sources, as well as the concept title transfer securities. Focusing on the tannaitic sources, this will be used as a test-case for two purposes: First, by focusing on a single legal instrument – PISTIS – I seek to highlight a methodological point: the importance of rabbinic literature for the study of Greek and Latin legal history in the eastern Roman Empire. Indeed, questions arising from rabbinic sources are often addressed using Greek and Latin sources. In this case I reverse the direction and expand the scope of evidence used in the study of Greek legal traditions and Roman law with rabbinic sources. Second, just as tannaitic sources shed light on a question arising from the papyri, so will the comparison to the Greek papyri and Roman legal literature offer a new interpretation for two paragraphs in the Tosefta which mention the PISTIS.
The results of this paper are threefold. First, the tannaitic sources add another attestation of the use of the term PISTIS as fictitious ownership, which was unknown so far, thus expanding the evidence of use of this legal instrument from Egypt to Greco-Roman Palestine. Second, it adds an attestation in Greek as title-transfer security, which was known so far only from Roman sources. By that, it supports the conclusion that title-transfer securities did not disappear from the Roman east. Rather, the Roman version of this law was in use and may have been used continually until its appearance in Byzantine sources. Third, the study adds to the interpretation of the term PISTIS in the tannaitic sources and helps distinguishing between the different uses of this term.

Author

• Yifat Monnickendam, Tel Aviv University