lute right over herself. The essential words of a bill of divorce indicating the absolute separation of the husband and wife were "Thou art permitted to be married to any man," or according to the compiler of the Mishnah, "Thou hast herewith from me a bill of dismissal, a document of release and a letter of freedom, that thou mayest go and be married to any man. It will be noticed that this bill of divorce has no subscribing witnesses. After the bill of divorce was written it was not customary for the husband to sign it, because his name appeared in the body of the document, but it was customary to attest it by the signatures of two witnesses. As late as the middle of the second century of the Christian era, it was decided by a dis tinguished authority that a bill of divorce was valid even though it had no subscribing witnesses. It is possible, therefore, that our bill of divorce was a perfectly valid docu ment, although no witnesses subscribed. On the other hand, it is more probable that after it was written, the parties were reconciled, and that therefore it was never attested or delivered to the wife, and, as a useless instru ment, was thrown into the Genizah. To the student of Jewish law, this docu ment is of peculiar interest, because its form differs materially from that prescribed in the Shulhan Arukh ("The Prepared Table," a great code of the law, compiled in the year 1554 of the Christian era), or in the great code of Maimonides, which was completed in the year 1180 of the Christian era. The formula given in the latter is the earliest of which we have any record, and our docu ment appears to be more than a hundred years older. It shows that the mere form of the instrument was considered less important at that time than at a later period, provided that all the essential words were contained in it. The various rules and regulations which later rabbinical authorities established for the proper preparation of a bill of divorce, were of course unknown to the scribe who
wrote in Postal in the year 1053. He pre pared his bill of divorce in the same manner as he would have prepared any other legal document; and the numerous regulations concerning the number of lines, and the spelling of words and thes hape of the let ters, which later authorities deem of su preme importance in bills of divorce gave him no concern. From another collection of Genizah manu scripts now owned by the Honorable Mayer Sulzberger, judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, I have selected for description a bill of release, which also ap pears in fac-simile. It is interesting because. like the bill of divorce, it contains the date of its writing; and it is important because it is a legal document of rare form. It was written in the year 1352 of the era of the Seleucidae, corresponding to the year 1040 of the Christian era—thirteen years before the bill of divorce. It was a contract made between a man and the parents of his divorced wife, and constitutes what we should call a general release of all claims and rights of action that he had against them. The history of the case, so far as it may be gleaned from the document itself, is as fol lows: Benjamin ben Joseph and his wife. Ganya bath Amram, lived in the city of Fostat (Cairo), and their daughter Raza was married to Sabaa ben Manasseh. For some reason unknown to us (perhaps for no reason at all) Sabaa gave a bill of divorce to his wife Raza, and she removed from his house and returned to the home of her parents. Naturally, this little episode did not tend to increase the good feeling that existed between Sabaa and his ex-parentsin-law. It seems that when Raza left her husband's house she took with her not only her own separate property and the amount of her Ketubah (marriage settlement) to which she was legally entitled, but also some of the property of Sabaa, and, deeming pos session nine points of the law, she and her parents refused to give the property up to its rightful owner, Sabaa. The latter prob-
