Babatha's Orchard

[The book] should be read and studied by all students of the Second Revolt and the Bar Kokhba materials, and may it inspire many other such close analyses of the surviving written evidence. * Michael Owen Wise, Dead Sea Discoveries * In summary, Esler's study represents true and meaningful progress in our understanding of the long-neglected Nabataean documents from the Babatha archive; this volume confirms that, far from being an already exploited source, the archive still has much to say about the economic, social and cultural history of the apparently marginal territory between southern Judaea and northern Arabia, in a period some decades removed from the Bar Kochba uprising. * Dorota Hartman, Annali, Sezione Orientale * It is truly a masterful feat to transform crumbling agricultural receipts into such a vibrant tale. Esler takes the names of sellers, buyers, and guarantors and transforms them into characters from the past. ... Most notably, Esler writes with a refreshing ease accompanying an evocative methodology. * Krista N. Dalton, Religion * Esler's book has the twists and turns of a detective story, but its biggest surprise is the people into whose world we have been permitted to peer. Women, at least the upper-middle-class Jewish and Nabatean women of Babatha's circle, turn out to have been major financial players in this world. They bought and sold property, financed ventures from which they stood to gain, and even protected their interests at the risk of legal and marital conflict when things did not go according to plan. Babatha's resourceful foresight, together with Philip Esler's lawyerly scholarship, have granted us a glimpse into a fascinating social world that defies our preconceptions and calls out for further study. * Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Jewish Review of Books * Babatha's Orchard is an extraordinary accomplishment. The book has as its focus four legal documents that deal with the sale of an orchard, about as dry as situation as can be imagined, but Philip F. Esler recreates the social and personal circumstances with great imagination and scholarly insight. It is like seeing a tattered black and white photograph turned into a film of the highest quality: what is two dimensional and in poor condition is transformed into a multidimensional narration with many nuances. His book is an inspiring model for scholars, and educated laypeople will find this book an enchanting entryway into a lost world. * Pamela Barmash, Reading Religion *