You don't have to be a postmodernist—and I am not—to take the view that the reading of ancient texts by legal historians cannot be “innocent.” All meaning is constructed: texts do not “make sense;” we attribute sense to them. And the sense we attribute is in part a function of the resources we bring to that process. Necessarily, we bring culturally contingent assumptions. We may not be able to rid ourselves of such assumptions, and restore ourselves to that state of innocence which traditionally has been identified with “objectivity.” But we can seek to lay bare those assumptions to the maximum possible degree, so that we can subject them to some process of evaluation (a process, no doubt, whose own assumptions should be subjected, equally, to critical examination).

If we ask what kind of assumptions the legal historian brings to ancient texts, the most ready answer would, no doubt, be assumptions regarding typical models of legal development. We can certainly identify the operation of assumptions of this kind in the modern literature relating to biblical law. The argument of this paper, however, will be that it is not sufficient to confine ourselves, for this purpose, to “models of legal development.” That very notion encompasses more general issues—what is law? what is development?—which themselves fall for examination.

We present the results from our first observing runs with the South Pole Imaging Fabry-Perot Inteferometer (SPIFI). SPIFI is a direct detection imaging spectrometer for use in the submillimeter - the first of its kind. SPIFI employs a 5 × 5 element array of bolometers as its focal plane, and uses two Fabry-Perot in series as its resolution achieving devices. To date, SPIFI has had 5 observing runs on the 15 meter James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), three of which were entirely weathered out. During the two good runs, we obtained fully sampled maps in the 370 μm [CI] fine structure line and 372 μm CO(7→6) rotational line of the Galactic Center and the nuclei of several infrared bright galaxies. We present the results, and preliminary analysis of the data obtained for several of these sources below. To date, we have only used SPIFI in the 350 μm telluric window, but SPIFI can also access the 450 and 600 μm windows available to the JCMT, and the far-IR 200 μm window available to the NSF's 1.7 m AST/RO telescope at the South Pole. SPIFI is fully described in [1,2,9].

I first met Ze'ev Falk early in 1967, when I spent two months in Jerusalem in the course of my doctoral studies (with David Daube, in Oxford). His friendship and generosity to me during that period remain strong in my memory. Not only did 10 Harav Berlin become a home from home; from there he assisted me to meet others (not least, Nahum Rakover) who also became, in the years that followed, close colleagues and associates. His studies in Biblical legal terminology proved of great assistance to me, and his Hebrew Law in Biblical Times remains a useful starting point for the study of biblical legal institutions. In many respects, his early concentration on biblical law provided the foundations for his later thinking, for which he was perhaps better known in Israel, on the values of Jewish law and the problems presented by Jewish family law in modern times. I offer my tribute in the form of a study of Exodus 21:18–19, a text which, apart from its particular problems and interest, has proved a focus for debate upon the general character of early biblical law, and in particular the casuistic provisions of the Mishpatim.

As 1984 approaches, Orwell's vision throws its forward shadow over our perception of our situation. No one ever doubted that law could be made an instrument of tyranny. But there are aspects of 1984 which prompt us to ask whether even the concept of law does not itself constitute a social problem, specifically a deprivation of certain freedoms which in other contexts we value. I shall not be concerned with the extent to which the content of particular legal systems tyrannise their subjects. Rather, my concern is with the ways in which law, by virtue of its formal nature, deprives the subjects of a legal system of freedom. So considered, there are two quite distinct accusations of tyranny which may be levelled at the law: one is so-called “legalism”, which may be regarded as a tyranny of the (intellectual) right; the other is existentialism, viewed as a tyranny of the (intellectual) left. I shall suggest that these two tyrannies in fact represent extreme points on a single spectrum, and that this spectrum may be observed not only in the operation of legal systems, but also in legal philosophy and indeed in theology. In fact, the parallels between legal philosophy and theology may be taken to reflect different (but not historically unrelated) modes of address of the same basic issue in the history of ideas.

The problems of reconstructing the development of liability for animals in Roman law are considerable. Each of the remedies is attended by major difficulties for the historian. We have the following:

(1) A Twelve Tables remedy for pauperies—an archaic term, the meaning of which is obscure;

(2) A Twelve Tables remedy for depasturation, of which there is no surviving quotation, but only a small number of allusions;

(3) An edictum on dogs and certain wild animals, undated and surviving in two versions with hardly any juristic interpretation;

(4) A “lex Pesolania” concerning dogs, the very existence of which has been questioned;

(5) The classical actio de pauperie, the basis, extent, and remedy for which have all been assailed by the interpolationists;

(6) The classical actio de pastu, evidently superseded by Justinian's day and thus leaving but few traces.

The Common Lawyer, to whom these remedies may reasonably evoke the types of damage represented by scienter and cattle-trespass and the special rules for dogs and ferae, will not be surprised to find, in addition, the application of general culpa principles by the extension of the actio legis Aquiliae.

I. The Decemviral Remedies

Some strands of ancient tradition maintain that the Decemvirs adopted an eclectic method, incorporating within the Twelve Tables both ancestral custom and foreign law.