David Daube

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| name = David Daube

| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FBA}}

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| image = David Daube.jpg

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| caption = Portrait by Walter Stoneman, 1957

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| birth_date = {{birth date|1909|02|08|df=y}}

| birth_place = Freiburg, Germany

| death_date = {{death date and age|1999|02|24|1909|02|08|df=y}}

| death_place = Berkeley, California, US

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| nationality = British

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| title = Professor-in-Residence at UC Berkeley School of Law

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| spouse = {{ubl|{{marriage|Herta Babette (Affseesser)|1936|1964|end=div}}|{{marriage|Helen Smelser (Margolis)|1986}}}}

| children = 3

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| discipline = Ancient and Biblical Law

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| education = {{ubl|{{ill|v=ib|Berthold-Gymnasium, Freiburg|de|Berthold-Gymnasium Freiburg}}|University of Freiburg|University of Göttingen|University of Cambridge}}

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| workplaces = {{ubl|University of Oxford|University of California, Berkeley}}

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| influences = Otto Lenel

| influenced = E. P. Sanders{{cite web |last=Sanders |first=E. P. |year=2004 |title=Comparing Judaism and Christianity: An Academic Autobiography |url=http://www.duke.edu/religion/home/EP/Intel%20autobiog%20rev.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040617054306/http://www.duke.edu/religion/home/EP/Intel%20autobiog%20rev.pdf |page=26 |archive-date=June 17, 2004 |access-date=October 16, 2018}}

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David Daube {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FBA}} (8 February 1909, in Freiburg, Germany – 24 February 1999, in Berkeley, California) was the twentieth century's preeminent scholar of ancient law.{{cite news|last1= Pace|first1= Eric|title=David Daube, 90, an Authority On Talmudic and Roman Law |work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/08/us/david-daube-90-an-authority-on-talmudic-and-roman-law.html|date=March 8, 1999 |access-date=May 22, 2017}}{{cite news|last1= Rodger|first1=Alan Eric|title=Obituary: Professor David Daube |work=The Independent |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-professor-david-daube-1078397.html|date=5 March 1999 |access-date=May 22, 2017}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/daube/independent.html|title=Independent (London) March 5th 1999|website=www.law.berkeley.edu}} He combined a familiarity with many legal systems, particularly Roman law and biblical law, with an expertise in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian literature, and used literary, religious, and legal texts to illuminate each other and, among other things, to "transform the position of Roman law"Lord (Alan) Rodger, "David Daube (1909–1999)" in Jurists Uprooted (Oxford, 2004), p. 240. and to launch a "revolution"{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/daube/nytimes.html|title=New York Times – March 8th 1999|website=www.law.berkeley.edu}} or "near revolution"{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/daube/davies.html|title=David Daube Tribute – W.D. Davies|website=www.law.berkeley.edu}} in New Testament studies.

Life

File:Goethe35-Stolpersteine-Daube.jpg

He was the son of Jacob Daube, of Freiburg (whose family probably migrated generations earlier from France), and Selma Ascher of Nördlingen, whose family descends directly from Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the Maharam. Daube married in 1936 and divorced in 1964; he had three sons. (Daube's eldest son, Jonathan, has the middle name, "Maharam.") Daube was an in-law of Leo Strauss (one of Selma Ascher's siblings married into the Strauss family of Amöneburg-Kirchhain-MarburgJoachim Lüders and Ariane Wehner, Mittelhessen – eine Heimat für Juden? Das Schicksal der Familie Strauss aus Kirchhain (Central Hesse – a Homeland for Jews? The Fate of the Strauss Family from Kirchhain) 1989). Daube was critical in getting Strauss out of Nazi Germany by helping to find him a position at the University of Cambridge in 1935. Daube fled Germany for England earlier, in 1933, but made several trips back to Europe to help bring out family members, friends, and mere acquaintances, with the assistance of Cambridge professors, fellows, and students, but especially the then-graduate student Philip Grierson.

In 1970, at the height of his career, he left his fellowship at All Souls College and his chair, Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford), and moved to California, where he became Professor-in-Residence at UC Berkeley's law school, then known as Boalt Hall, where he taught for the rest of his life. He married again in 1986.

Daube's teachers include Otto Lenel, who "encouraged" him to take up the study of legal history in the first place, according to Daube's notes in his first published book, Studies in Biblical Law. Daube goes on to thank Professors Johannes Hempel and Wolfgang Kunkel of Göttingen, who trained Daube in rigorous scholarly methods. The influence of C.H. Dodd, whom Daube first met at Cambridge, guided Daube all his life; also at Cambridge, F.S. Marsh and Stanley A. Cook were important influences on Daube. And, finally, Professor William Warwick Buckland: "to him, in love," Daube dedicates his first book.

''Studies in Biblical Law''

The first chapter of Daube's first major book, Studies in Biblical Law, titled "Law in the Narratives," phrased in polite language, nonetheless starts with a revolutionary claim: all scholars since Henry Maine say that there is no separation of law and religion in "primitive," or ancient, legal systems. But, Daube notes, this is a generalization based upon the study of law in the Bible, and the Bible, after all, is "a collection of literature arranged by priests and prophets." They, naturally enough, he continues, "subordinated law to religion; indeed, they represented legal rules as religious rules, destined to guide God’s chosen people." But, he asks, "Is it safe to argue that because the devout authors of the Bible saw law as part of religion, law must have formed part of religion in the Hebrew state?" In answering this, he says, legal historians must go beyond the Bible, using the comparative method.

But, adds Daube, this application of the comparative method is not enough. Because "the Bible is an anthology compiled by priests and prophets, who were neither competent nor even desirous to formulate an accurate exposition of Hebrew law," one must first find out something about the true Hebrew law, separating it "from the dress in which priests and prophets have handed it down to us, like assembling a jigsaw puzzle from scattered fragments." The result of such an inquiry would likely show that the religious character of the law was not originally in it, but due to the theological tendencies of the authors of the Bible. Why, he concludes, should one assume the law sprang from religion rather than religion from the law? This question marks an important step: Biblical legal scholarship is not to be confined to pious exegesis of a text whose sacred character always makes its status primary.

Rather, Biblical law is a field of legal study, of rational inquiry, like any other field of legal study, and must be approached with the same analytical tools and methods. Moreover, this sacred text is not the authoritative statement of Hebrew law, for priestly transmission has distorted the law, the law that had an independent existence in the Israelite state. That law must be recovered from the Biblical narratives by careful juristic analysis.

Daube begins with examples of how that recovery ought to take place. He first looks at the narrative of Joseph and his brothers, showing how it can be understood in the context of principles of the law of custodianship, which provide the implicit legal categories utilized by the text and determine the contours of the action it recounts. And off he goes, inaugurating fifty years of path-breaking scholarship.

Work

Daube made seminal contributions to three fields—Biblical and Talmudic law; New Testament studies; and Roman law. Calum Carmichael, professor of comparative literature at Cornell and Daube's literary executor, describes his memoir of Daube—Ideas and the Man: Remembering David Daube—as "an attempt to convey the spirit of enlightenment that David Daube exuded in all his work and conversation. Outstanding law professor, classical scholar par excellence, ecumenical religious thinker, leading Talmudic scholar, skilled linguist, great humanist of the law, a brilliant literary critic, the foremost Roman lawyer of his day."{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YYkvz4q0OwUC&q=ideas+and+the+man |title = Ideas and the Man: Remembering David Daube|isbn = 9783465033639|last1 = Carmichael|first1 = Calum M.|year = 2004| publisher=Vittorio Klostermann }}

According to Carmichael, on account of Daube's knowledge of Aramaic and the Talmud, Daube was invited to attend the New Testament seminar run by C.H. Dodd at Cambridge. It aroused in him an absorbing interest in the rabbinic background to Christianity. New Testament studies was the area in which he was to make his most original contribution to scholarship, in his eyes also a contribution to Jewish–Christian relations, according to Tony Honoré.{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/daube/oxford.html|title=Tony Honore|website=www.law.berkeley.edu}} Daube reinterpreted many New Testament texts in the light of Talmudic scholarship. The Christian scriptures could be reappraised as a form of Jewish literature, which he called "New Testament Judaism."

W. D. Davies focused on this in his tribute to his teacher on his death: "It is the complexity in David that made him so magical. It is not surprising then that it was this most Jewish of scholars, who taught us that Christianity, is a New Testament Judaism—a strikingly pregnant phrase that he invented and which sums up best perhaps his legacy and the near revolution that he introduced into New Testament studies." In 1962–1964, Daube gave the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology.{{cite web |url=http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPDADB&Cover=TRUE |title=Gifford Lecture Series – Books |access-date=2010-01-14 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100409183033/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPDADB&Cover=TRUE |archive-date=2010-04-09 }}

Students

In addition to Carmichael and the late W.D. Davies, Daube's students include the late C.K. Barrett, Durham (UK); Saul Berman, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah; Davi Ascher Strauss Bernstein, University of Chicago; David Cohen, UC-Berkeley; [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/martin-evans-obit-021513.html Martin Evans], Stanford; William Frankel; (A.M.) Tony Honoré, Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford); Bernard Jackson, Manchester and Liverpool; Lee Kuan Yew, longtime prime minister—and "father of"—Singapore; Fergus Millar, Oxford; John T. Noonan, Jr., UC-Berkeley/United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Stephen Passamaneck, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; the late Lord Rodger (Alan Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry), Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; E.P. Sanders, Duke; Peter Stein, Regius Professor of Civil Law (Cambridge); Géza Vermes, Oxford; Alan Watson, law faculties at the universities of Georgia, Edinburgh, and Belgrade; Reuven Yaron, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Pedagogy

Bernard Jackson testifies: "For two years, I submitted material on a weekly or fortnightly basis. As was his normal pattern with research students, [Daube] would invite me for lunch at All Souls, then spend most of the rest of the afternoon analysing and criticising my work line by line. No more intense or productive supervision could be imagined. I owe everything I may have done subsequently to this foundation. Alan Watson has recorded his enduring sense of fear of disappointing Daube in approaching these sessions. My own recollection is that of the feeling with which I always emerged. However devastating the criticism may have been – and never without justification – Daube always concluded with sincere and persuasive words of encouragement, which made me ready, even eager, to commence the next cycle of destruction.

"He was a warm, wise and generous mentor, whose support went far beyond doctoral supervision and subsequent academic advancement. He did not distance himself from the personal lives of his pupils, both in joy and sorrow. He spoke at [my wedding], but what stands out in my mind is not merely the studied flattery of his speech, but the manner in which he spoke informally to members of our respective families, without a hint of condescension but rather with genuine interest and human feeling."{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/daube/jackson.html|title=British Association of Jewish Studies Bulletin|website=www.law.berkeley.edu}}

Education

{{ill|Berthold-Gymnasium, Freiburg|de|Berthold-Gymnasium Freiburg}}
Universities of Freiburg and Göttingen (Dr jur 1932)
PhD University of Cambridge 1935

Career

1938–46 Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (Honorary fellow, 1974)
1946–51 Lecturer in Law, University of Cambridge
1951–55 Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Aberdeen
1955–70 Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford), and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Emeritus Fellow, 1980
1970–99 Emeritus Professor of Law, Oxford
1970–81 Professor-in-Residence and Director of the Robbins Hebraic and Roman Law Collections, Boalt Hall (School of Law), University of California, Berkeley
1995–99 Emeritus Professor of Law, Berkeley

Publications

=Books=

{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |title=Studies in Biblical Law |location=Cambridge, UK |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=1944 |oclc=780837218 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric |series=Hebrew Union College Annual |volume=22 |location=Cincinnati, OH |publisher=Hebrew Union College |date=1949 |oclc=935807811 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The Defence of Superior Orders in Roman Law |series=Regius Chair Inaugural Lecture, 1955 |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |date=1956 |oclc=9374302 }}
{{cite book |author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism |series=Jewish people: history, religion, literature.; Jordan lectures in comparative religion |volume=2 |location=New York |publisher=Arno Press |date=1956 |isbn=9780405052576 |oclc=642864456 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/newtestamentrab00daub }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Forms of Roman Legislation |url=https://archive.org/details/formsofromanlegi0000daub |url-access=registration |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |date=1956 |oclc=497369 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Sin, Ignorance and Forgiveness in the Bible |location=London |publisher=Liberal Jewish Synagogue |date=1960 |isbn=9780598660787 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The Exodus Pattern in the Bible |series=All Souls Studies |volume=2 |location=London |publisher=Faber and Faber |date=1963 |oclc=327982 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Suddenness and Awe in Scripture: Robert Waley Cohen Memorial Lecture, 1963 |publisher=Council of Christians and Jews |date=1964 |oclc=1063922449 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The Sudden in the Scriptures |location=Leiden |publisher=E.J. Brill |date=1964 |oclc=350719 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Collaboration with Tyranny in Rabbinic Law |series=Newcastle upon Tyne University Publications; Riddell memorial lectures, 37th series |location=London & New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1965 |oclc=978197 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=He That Cometh |series=St. Pauls Lecture |volume=5 |location=London |publisher=London Diocesan Council for Christian-Jewish Understanding |date=1966 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The Significance of the Afikoman |location=London |publisher=Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues |date=1968 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Roman Law: Linguistic, Social, and Philosophical Aspects |series=J. H. Gray Lectures, 1966-7 |location=Edinburgh & Chicago, IL |publisher=Edinburgh University Press & Aldine Pub. Co |date=1969 |isbn=9780852240519 |oclc=22054 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Legal Problems in Medical Advance |series=Lionel Cohen Lectures, Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit bi-Yerushalayim |volume=16 |location=Jerusalem |publisher=Magnes Press |date=1971 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Civil Disobedience in Antiquity |series=Messenger Lectures on the Evolution of Civilization, Cornell University, 1971 |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |date=1972 }} – based on his Messenger Lectures at Cornell{{cite web |url=http://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/lectures/historic.html |title=The University Faculty : Cornell University |access-date=2013-12-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219024638/http://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/lectures/historic.html |archive-date=2013-12-19 }})
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Ancient Hebrew fables: the inaugural lecture of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, delivered in Corpus Christi College, 17 May 1973 |location=[Oxford, UK |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1973 |oclc=18585426 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Wine in the Bible |series=St. Paul's lecture |volume=13 |location=Oxford |publisher=Church Army Press |date=1975 |oclc=13949609 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Medical and Genetic Ethics: three historical vignettes |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies |date=1976 |oclc=2800604 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Duty of Procreation |location=Eugene, OR |publisher=Wipf & Stock Publishers |date=1977 |isbn=9781610975087 |oclc=748935571 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Typologie im Werk des Flavius Josephus |series=Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1977-6 |location=München |publisher=Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften |date=1977 |isbn=9783769614879 |oclc=645229255 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Ancient Jewish Law |series=Norman and Sadie Lee program in Jewish and western civilization |location=Leiden |publisher=E. J. Brill |date=1981 |isbn=9789004065314 |oclc=8650863 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Die Geburt der Detektivgeschichte aus dem Geiste der Rhetorik (trans The Birth Of The Detective Story) |location=Konstanz |publisher=Universitätsverlag Konstanz |date=1983 |isbn=3879402418 |oclc=17149429 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Das Alte Testament im Neuen: Aus jüdischer Sicht |location=Konstanz |publisher=Universitatsverlag Konstanz |date=1984 |isbn=9783879402571 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Sons and Strangers |location=Boston |publisher=University School of Law, Institute of Jewish Law |date=1984 |oclc=746869837 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |author2-last=Carmichael |author2-first=Calum M. |author2-link=Calum M. Carmichael |title=Witnesses in Bible and Talmud |series=Oxford Centre papers |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew |date=1986 |oclc=731034802 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Appeasement or Resistance and other essays on New Testament Judaism |location=Berkeley, CA |publisher=University of California Press |date=1987 |isbn=9780520061583 |oclc=1025287821 }}
{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |editor1-last=Carmichael |editor1-first=Calum M. |editor1-link=Calum M. Carmichael |title=The Deed and the Doer in the Bible: David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 1 |location=Philadelphia, PA |publisher=Templeton Foundation Press |date=2008 |isbn=9781599472256 |oclc=730520009 }}
{{cite book |author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |editor1-last=Carmichael |editor1-first=Calum M. |editor1-link=Calum M. Carmichael |title=Law and Wisdom in the Bible: David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 2 |location=Philadelphia, PA |publisher=Templeton Foundation Press |date=2010 |isbn=9781599473451 |oclc=762577011 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/lawwisdominbible0000daub }}

=Edited by=

{{cite book|editor1-last=Daube |editor1-first=David |editor1-mask=3 |editor2-last=Davies |editor2-first=W. D. |editor2-link=W. D. Davies |title=The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology: Studies in Honour of C. H. Dodd |location=Cambridge, UK |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=1956 |oclc=376862 }}
{{cite book|editor1-last=Daube |editor1-first=David |editor1-mask=3 |title=Studies in the Roman Law of Sale: Dedicated to the Memory of Francis de Zulueta |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |date=1959 |oclc=2889012 }}

=Chapters=

{{cite book|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |chapter=Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation and the Rabbis |title=Festschrift Hans Leward: bei Vollendung des vierzigsten Amtsjahres als ordentlicher Professor im Oktober 1953 |date=1953 |location=Basel |publisher=Helbing & Lichtenhahn |pages=25–44 }}

=Journal articles=

{{cite journal|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=The Earliest Structures of the Gospels |location=Cambridge |publisher=Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas |journal=New Testament Studies |volume=5 |issue= 3|date=1959 |pages=174–87 |doi=10.1017/S0028688500006421 |s2cid=170181216 }}
{{cite journal|author1-last=Daube |author1-first=David |author1-mask=3 |title=Dissent in Bible and Talmud |series=Lecture at Brandeis University |journal=California Law Review |volume=59 |issue= 3|date=1971 |pages=784–94 |doi=10.2307/3479603 |jstor=3479603 }}

''Festschriften''

Daube Noster: Essays in Legal History for David Daube, 1974 (ed. Alan Watson)
Studies in Jewish Legal History: Essays in Honour of David Daube, 1974 (ed. Bernard Jackson)
Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube, 1978 (eds. Ernst Bammel, C.K. Barrett, and W.D. Davies)
Essays on Law and Religion: The Berkeley and Oxford Symposia in Honour of David Daube, 1993 (ed. Calum M. Carmichael)

Memorial volumes

Law for All Times: Essays in Memory of David Daube, 2004. {{ISBN|978-0-9764149-0-2}} (ed. Ernest Metzger)
David Daube: A Centenary Celebration, 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-9566423-0-1}} (ed. Ernest Metzger)