DAVID, MARTIN

DAVID, MARTIN (1898–1986), legal historian and papyrologist. David was born in Poznan, then under German rule, but his family moved to Berlin during World War i. He was drawn to the study of cuneiform law and was appointed lecturer at Leipzig in 1930. On account of the Nazi persecution, David fled to Holland and became lecturer of Oriental legal history and papyrology at the University of Leiden in 1933. During World War ii, David, together with his wife and three children, was imprisoned in the Westerbork and Theresienstadt concentration camps. After the liberation he became professor of comparative ancient legal history, director of the Leiden Institute of Papyrology, and member of the Royal Dutch Academy.

Among his major writings are Die Adoption im altbabylonischen Recht (1927); Assyrische Rechtsurkunden (1929; together with E. Ebeling); Studien zur heredis institutio ex re certa… (1930); Vorm en wezen van de huwelijkssluiting naar de oud-oostersche rechtopvatting (1934); Der Rechtshistoriker und seine Aufgabe (1937); The Warren Papyri (1941; together with van Groningen and van Oven); Papyrological Primer (1946, 1965⁴; together with van Groningen); Gai, Institutionum commentarii, 4 (1954; together with H.L.W. Nelson); Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Aegypten (together with van Groningen et al.), 1–3 (1922–58).

David wrote a number of articles on the relations between biblical and cuneiform laws, emphasizing the basic differences in the social structures in which these two systems developed, hence denying that the former were influenced by the latter.

[Ze'ev Wilhem Falk]