the city of Jerusalem, who were in posses sion of a portion of these Genizah manu scripts, and from them I acquired the col lection which I now possess. The document which I have selected from my collection for detailed description is a bill of divorce. It will be seen from the accompanying illustration that it has been mutilated, and this together with the wrin kles and stains, testifies to the fierceness of its battle with other manuscripts in the dark ness of the Genizah. It is, however, in a fair state of preservation, and the writing is in parts clear and black, while in other parts the ink has faded to a pale brown. This document is eight hundred and fortyeight years old. The following is a transla tion, the missing parts of the manuscript, in parentheses, being supplied at a guess from similar documents in use at a later time. "On the second day of the week; to wit, the eighteenth day of the month of Adar, in the year one thousand three hundred and sixty-five of the Era according to which we are accustomed to reckon in Fostat, Mizraim, which is situated on the River Nile, do I, Joseph, the son of David and whatever other name I may have, determine, being of sound mind and under no constraint. And I do release and send away and put aside thce, my wife Chaba, the daughter of Joseph and whatever other name thou mayest have, who hast been my wife from time past hith erto, and hereby, I put thee aside (that thou mayest have permission) and control over thyself (to go to be married to any man) whom thou desirest (and no man shall hinder thee) in my name from this day (forever; and thou art) permitted to be married to any man. And these presents shall be unto thee from me a document of release and a bill of dismissal and a letter of freedom, according to the law of Moses and Israel. The date in this bill of divorce is the year 1365, according to the era by which men reckoned in Fostat. This is the so-called Seleucidian era. which began in the year 312 before the Christian era.
In order, therefore, to translate this date into the corresponding year of the common era, subtract 312, which gives the date 1053 of the Christian era, or thirteen years before William the Conqueror landed on the shores of England. The Seleucidian era is no longer used in Jewish documents. It was at one time the custom to date the bill of divorce from the reign of Alexander of Macedonia; but as the scribes during the middle ages were not well versed in Greek chronology, it became the established cus tom to date the documents from the year of the creation of the world, according to the traditional calculation. Maimonides, who lived more than a hundred years after this bill of divorce was written, adopted the method of using exclusively the era of the creation. Fostat is the ancient name of Cairo, and Mizraim is the Biblical name of Egypt; the city is particularly described in the bill of divorce as "Fostat of Mizraim situated on the River Nile." After the name of the husband, follow the words "and whatever other name I may have," and after the name of the wife the words "and whatever other name thou mayest have." This formula was established by an ordinance of Gamaliel, president of the Sanhédrin in the first century, and was intended to provide against the danger of invalidating the bill of divorce by mistake in the name of the party, or where the party had more than one name. In later days, when the Jews always had a Hebrew name in addition to and differing from their name in the vernacular, this clause was especially important. Inasmuch as a lunatic or a person under duress was not competent to enter into any legal obligation or execute any legal con tract, it was necessary that the husband in giving the bill of divorce to his wife, should be of "sound mind and under no constraint." The effect of a bill of divorce was to release the wife forever from her husband's control, and to give her, as a divorced woman, abso-
