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In 2014 Hannah Cotton, professor emerita of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was volunteering her time at the Israel Antiquities Authority’s scrolls laboratory, looking through some ancient documents written in Nabatean, a form of ancient Arabic. It was one of many documents which have been discovered in the desert caves of Judea, where people stashed valuables both during the Jewish War of 67-70 AD (in which the temple was destroyed), as well as the Bar Kokhba Rebellion of 132-135 AD.

Both ended badly for the Jewish population. People did not return for their precious treasures, either because they’d been sold into slavery, deported, or, most likely, because they were dead. These documents are often lumped together under the title the Dead Sea Scrolls.

As she looked at the several documents, she realized the last one wasn’t written in Arabic. It was in Greek. It turned out to be the longest Greek document ever discovered in the Judean desert.

Not only that, despite its damaged condition, it provided a fascinating glimpse into the legal world of Judea and the ten cities during the Roman occupation, just prior to the Bar Kokhba rebellion.

For the next ten years, Cotton was part of a team that laboriously transcribed and translated what became known as “Papyrus Cotton” in honor of its discoverer. It was finally published in January of 2025, thanks to a team that included Anna Dolganov of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Fritz Mitthof of the University of Vienna, Avner Ecker of Israel’s Bar Ilan University, and Cotton herself.  

Forgery and Fiscal Fraud in Judaea and Arabia on the Eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Memorandum and Minutes of a Trial before a Roman Official (P. Cotton) may seem like a dry title, but its 135 pages are rich with fraud, counterfeiting, and a scheme to trade in slaves that may or may not exist without paying any taxes. The papyrus document consists of the private notes written to aid the prosecuting attorneys that were going to bring this case to trial. Strategies involving facts to present at the trial, answers to any objections made by the defense, and important oratorical points to make are included.

Because of references to one Rufus, who was governor of the region during the time, it is possible to date the document to the years 129-132 AD. The two defendants, Saulos and Gedalias, were both Jewish. (Both their names appear in the Bible).

Gedalias, who comes from a wealthy family, and whose father was an important official, is characterized as a fraud, a tax evader, counterfeiter, incitement to violence, and perhaps even rebellion against Rome. He claimed to be impoverished, but the papyrus noted that he might be feigning poverty so he did not have to fulfill civic requirements and may actually have been rich from ill-gotten gains.

Indeed, the prosecutors worry that if they list all his shortcomings the judge won’t believe them. “As regards his committing violence and sedition and banditry, and the money that he counterfeited, and how he escaped from prison, and how during the visit of the emperor he extorted money from many people, among the Lectus the centurion, and how he was many times convicted and banished — if we report on this, we will give the impression that we believe we are helpless against his great power.”

Saulos, “a friend and collaborator and accomplice” was accused of selling slaves across provincial lines without paying taxes, moving them from place to place in a sort of shell game. It is possible the sales never took place. One of the slaves supposedly freed was named Onesimus, a name familiar from the New Testament.

Although both are defendants, the authors speculate that it is possible that one of them was ratting out the other.

Fraud and tax evasion were considered extremely serious crimes in the Roman empire. Roman citizens and others of wealth or stature might be banished as punishment. Those of lesser status could be executed by several horrible means, including crucifixion.

On the other hand, the authors speculate that perhaps these were Jewish patriots who were trying to free Jewish slaves, as required by the Torah, without paying taxes to Rome. Was their real crime that they were somehow involved with the spirit of revolution that was brewing in Judaea?

There is even a question — did these slaves even exist?

Gaps in the document make it impossible to guess how exactly the trial came out., or even if it was ever brought to court. The breakdown of Roman rule during the Bar Kokhba rebellion (which resulted in the expulsion of all remaining Jews from Judea, after hundreds of thousands were killed by the Romans) caused the authors to speculate if perhaps this document was taken to the Judean caves to be preserved until order and law was restored.

The 132 lines of the document are written by two different hands, and it includes a lot of legal terminology, some of it consisting of Greek translations of Latin legal concepts.

There is one other significant fact about this document. In an interview with the Times of Israel, Avner Ecker, a member of the translation team, said, “The only other criminal trial of a high Roman official ever recorded in Judea — or in the region in general, apart from Egypt — is the trial of Jesus.” Indeed, this is “the best-documented Roman court case from Judea apart from the trial of Jesus.”

The fact that prosecutors were held to a high standard of proof and required a good deal of time and preparation provide a sharp contrast to the way Jesus was railroaded by Judean and Roman officials. On this Reign of Christ Sunday, we recognize even more than ever that Jesus, like many of the poor and downtrodden, had no access to the protection of judicial procedures and safeguards of his day — and ours.

(The article itself was published in the journal Tyche 38, but there are many news articles online as well.)