One of the great legal minds of our time, Daube's depth of scholarship in a range of subjects-ancient literature, English literature, ancient law, medical ethics, much more-was matched by a dazzling agility and originality of mind-for instance: though raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, he produced strikingly original work on the New Testament. David Daube's life spanned almost the entire 20th century and he was witness to its history. Born a Jew in Germany in 1909, he spent World War II and its aftermath in Britain on the faculties of Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Oxford. He came to the United States in the '60s-to the University of California at Berkeley where he reveled in what he called the "unmanicured, unclubbable, countercultural attitudes." Through it all he never lost his love for the land of his birth-though it didn't love him back for many years: he was on Hitler's list of those to be put to death once Germany had conquered England. Not your typical fusty professor, he was a brilliant and charming commentator on matters personal, political, social, and philosophical. The reader of these jottings (set down in the 1970s and '80s) will understand within a page or two why those who knew him treasured him as a friend, mentor, and intellectual provocateur. These private reflections, gathered by one of his most distinguished students, are charming, insightful, thought-provoking, sometimes profound, and sometimes just amusing. His commentaries on political and social issues of his time ranged from bravely original thought on Israel and the Palestinians to an amusing and enlightening review of the sensational porn film Deep Throat. Here are some sample jottings: "I love women. They provide the unhappiness that I need in life." "People are more struck by the asininity of the law when they are trapped by it than when they are let off." "We are all of us survivors all the time; everything that is, is a survivor relative to what has fallen by the wayside. Naturally, having escaped from Hitler's clutches myself, I am a bit more alive to the whole business than the average guy." The books's editor, Calum Carmichael, Professor of Comparative Literature and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell, has degrees in science, historical theology, and law from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Oxford. He teaches biblical and cognate (Near Eastern and Talmudic) literature as well as courses on law and literature in antiquity. He is the author of nine books that focus primarily on biblical law; the editor of a six volume series devoted to the work of David Daube who was his teacher at Oxford; and the author of a memoir, "Ideas and the Man: Remembering David Daube.

"Albert Baumgarten presents the biography of one of the most distinguished historians of the Jews in antiquity that demonstrates the important connections between his scholarship, life and times. The events of the twentieth century provide the context for the analysis of Bickerman's scholarly production." --Back cover.

If we look to the Bible for historical accounts of ancient life, we make a profound error. So contends Calum Carmichael in this original and incisive reading of some of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament’s most famous narratives. Sifting through the imaginative layers of these texts with an uncanny sensitivity and a panoptic critical eye, he unearths patterns connecting disparate passages, providing fascinating insights into how ideas were expressed, received, and transformed in the ancient Near East. Ranging from Jacob’s encounter with Leah to the marriage at Cana to Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, these readings demonstrate the remarkable subtlety and sophistication of the biblical views on marriage, sexuality, fertility, impurity, creation, and love.

This book brings together two scholarly traditions: experts in Roman, Jewish and Islamic law, an area where scholars tend to be familiar with work in each area, and experts in the legal traditions of South and East Asia, which have tended to be less interdisciplinary. The resulting mix produces new ways of looking at comparative law and legal history from a global perspective, and these essays contribute both to our understanding of comparative religion as well as comparative law.