David Daube
| David Daube | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 February 1909 Freiburg, Germany |
| Died | 24 February 1999 (aged 90) Berkeley, California |
| Title | Professor-in-Residence at UC-Berkeley's law school |
| Academic background | |
| Education |
Berthold-Gymnasium, Freiburg |
| Thesis year | 1935 |
| Influences | Otto Lenel |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Ancient and Biblical Law |
| Institutions | UC-Berkeley |
Berthold-Gymnasium, Freiburg
Universities of Freiburg and Göttingen
David Daube DCL, FBA (8 February 1909, Freiburg, Germany – 24 February 1999, Berkeley, California) was the twentieth century's preeminent scholar of ancient law. He combined a familiarity with many legal systems, particularly Roman law and biblical law, with an expertise in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian literature, and used literary, religious, and legal texts to illuminate each other and, among other things, to "transform the position of Roman law" and to launch a "revolution" or "near revolution" in New Testament studies.
He was the son of Jacob Daube, of Freiburg (whose family probably migrated generations earlier from France), and Selma Ascher of Nördlingen, whose family descends directly from Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the Maharam. Daube married in 1936 and divorced in 1964; he had three sons. (Daube's eldest son, Jonathan, has the middle name, "Maharam.") Daube was an in-law of Leo Strauss (one of Selma Ascher's siblings married into the Strauss family of Amöneburg-Kirchhain-Marburg). Daube was critical in getting Strauss out of Nazi Germany by helping to find him a position at the University of Cambridge in 1935. 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.
In 1970, at the height of his career, he left his fellowship at All Souls College and his chair, Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford), and moved to California, where he became Professor-in-Residence at UC-Berkeley's law school, Boalt Hall, where he taught for the rest of his life. He married again in 1986.
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