Early Jewish Divorce Documents

Two divorce documents found in caves in the Judean desert offer a glimpse of how divorce was practiced in Roman-era Judaea. The first, an Aramaic document found in Wadi Murabaat sometimes called the “Masada get,” is a Jewish decree of divorce from Joseph son of Naqsan to Miriam daughter of Jonathan. The get was presented at Masada and is dated to “year six,” that is, six years after the start of the First Jewish Revolt, or 72 CE (see The First Jewish Revolt, 66–73 CE). The text gives the wife permission to marry any Jewish man she chooses and bears a striking resemblance to Jewish divorce documents written millennia later.

The second document, found in Naḥal Se’elim, appears to be a divorce decree given by Shelamzion daughter of Joseph to Eleazar son of Hananiah, although some scholars understand it as an acknowledgment by Shelamzion of having received her ketubah money. If the former interpretation is correct, this is a rare piece of evidence that Jewish women sometimes initiated divorce before the restriction of that right to men became standard. It is notable that this document is also written in Aramaic and seems to have been executed in a Jewish court of law. The contract is dated to “year three of the freedom of Israel,” that is, three years after the onset of the Bar Kokhba revolt, or 135 CE, and refers to Bar Kokhba as “the Nasi [prince] of Israel” (see Bar Kokhba Letters and Archaeology).