13 Facts About David Daube

David Daube was the twentieth century's preeminent scholar of ancient law.

David Daube was the son of Jacob Daube, of Freiburg, and Selma Ascher of Nordlingen, whose family descends directly from Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the Maharam.

David Daube was critical in getting Strauss out of Nazi Germany by helping to find him a position at the University of Cambridge in 1935.

David Daube fled Germany for England earlier, in 1933, but made several trips back to Europe to help bring out family members, friends, and mere acquaintances, with the assistance of Cambridge professors, fellows, and students, but especially the then-graduate student Philip Grierson.

David Daube's teachers include Otto Lenel, who "encouraged" him to take up the study of legal history in the first place, according to David Daube's notes in his first published book, Studies in Biblical Law.

David Daube goes on to thank Professors Johannes Hempel and Wolfgang Kunkel of Gottingen, who trained David Daube in rigorous scholarly methods.

And, finally, Professor William Warwick Buckland: "to him, in love," David Daube dedicates his first book.

David Daube begins with examples of how that recovery ought to take place.

David Daube first looks at the narrative of Joseph and his brothers, showing how it can be understood in the context of principles of the law of custodianship, which provide the implicit legal categories utilized by the text and determine the contours of the action it recounts.

David Daube reinterpreted many New Testament texts in the light of Talmudic scholarship.

Alan Watson has recorded his enduring sense of fear of disappointing David Daube in approaching these sessions.

David Daube did not distance himself from the personal lives of his pupils, both in joy and sorrow.

David Daube spoke at [my wedding], but what stands out in my mind is not merely the studied flattery of his speech, but the manner in which he spoke informally to members of our respective families, without a hint of condescension but rather with genuine interest and human feeling.