International Septuagint Day 2020: An Interview with the Editors of the Lexham English Septuagint

Today is indeed a very special day, for it is the 14th glorious iteration of International Septuagint Day! If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you can read all kinds of tidbits that I’ve written in the past number of years on this festive occasion:

ISD 2019    |    ISD 2018    |    ISD 2017    |    ISD 2016    |    ISD 2015    |    ISD 2014

The short version is, at some point Robert Kraft noticed that February 8th is the only date we know of as being historically related to the Greek Scriptures. In a document dating to February 8th, 533 C.E. the Emperor Justinian announced permission for public reading of Jewish Scriptures in the Roman Empire. He proclaims his approval of any language, but where Greek is used he states that

“those who use Greek shall use the text of the seventy interpreters [i.e. the LXX], which is the most accurate translation, and the one most highly approved…”

So this fine day has been marked as a worldwide celebration ever since 2006, at least it has among the fine folks within the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS). (more…)

Call for Papers: Linguistics and The Biblical Text (IBR 2020)

Several months ago I posted about a brand new initiative that I am co-organizing at the annual meeting of the Institute for Biblical Research, along with Elizabeth Robar, who is a research fellow at Tyndale House, Cambridge. Last year we collaborated to establish the Linguistics and the Biblical Text research group, an initiative that was formed out of our desire to establish a regular setting for charitable interaction among scholars working in or with linguistic theory and the scriptures. (more…)