ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author looks at some examples of questions that do not come entirely from the papyri “themselves,“ studied in the philological tradition, but that are raised at least partly from outside it, with the papyri then brought in to help test hypotheses formulated from other disciplines or sources. A different but equally interesting case of the papyri playing a role in examining a thesis derived from literary sources is a study by Ranon Katzoff of rules governing the relationship of dowries and marriage gifts in Roman and Jewish law. Katzoff reexamined a thesis set forth by Asher Gulak in 1933 linking late Roman law, some provisions in rabbinic literature, and the evidence of some papyri and inscriptions from Egypt. In the past twenty years papyrology, like ancient history generally, has received a powerful stimulus from the entry into the study of classical antiquity of the New Institutional Economics.
