The Jewish Manumission Inscriptions of the Bosporus Kingdom

E. Leigh Gibson analyses a little-known group of Greek inscriptions that record the manumission of slaves in synagogues located on the hellenized north shore of the Black Sea in the first three centuries of the common era. Through a comparison of this corpus with manumission inscriptions from elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world and an analysis of Greco-Roman Judaism's own interaction with slavery, she assesses the degree to which the Black Sea Jewish community adopted classical traditions of manumissions. E. Leigh Gibson demonstrates that the Jews of this region incorporated Greek manumission practices into their communal life. In turn, the Jewish community's oversight of these private legal contracts suggests that the wider Bosporan community extended respect and legitimacy to its local Jewish community.