Ancient Palestinian and Babylonian legal thinking developed in a context of constant exposure to and challenge by the dominant Graeco-Roman and Babylonian cultures. The contributions to this volume, which is the outcome of an interdisciplinary conference held at Trinity College Dublin in March 2002, address a variety of issues in this regard. Both internal and external aspects of Jewish and non-Jewish legal texts are investigated, documentary texts are discussed alongside literary texts, and the Graeco-Roman context of Palestinian legal traditions is supplemented by the Sasanian context of Babylonian halakhah. In addition, the general legal situation in the Roman Empire at large and Roman Palestine in particular is elucidated.Contributors:Catherine Hezser, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Hannah Cotton, Jill Harries, Natalie B. Dohrman, Leib Moscovitz, Hayim Lapin, Bernard S. Jackson, Yaakov Elman, and Ranon Katzoff.