Another great opportunity has arisen for those interested in the Septuagint as a student. As in previous years, (see here and here), there will be a week-long seminar in Septuagint studies held at Trinity Western University’s John William Wevers Institute for Septuagint Studies, near Vancouver, B.C. I have done this twice now and found it very useful. This year the seminar will be taught by Dr. Robert Hiebert (see interview here).

As I have mentioned before, the Wevers Institute is the only place in North America where a full-fledged Septuagint degree is offered, as both a Master of Theological Studies and the shorter Master of Theology. If you are interested in LXX studies, you should definitely look into this program. The Wevers Institute also benefits from several excellent scholars, not only including Robert Hiebert (director and this year’s instructor), but also Drs. Larry Perkins and Dirk Büchner, each of whom are working on Pentateuchal commentaries in the SBLCS.

Seminar Details

The seminar will be 3 credit hours and is entitled Exploring Septuagint Origins and Texts, and the provisional texts include  taken from Aristeas, Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, 2 Reigns, Daniel, Esther, Proverbs, and 4 Maccabees. The seminar will be held from May 8–12 of this year. The Vancouver area is a beautiful region that you won’t regret visiting. But if you can’t swing the trip, the Wevers Institute is also offering live-streamed video sessions. The course description from Robert Hiebert is as follows:

“The basic plan of the course is to start by reading the Letter of Aristeas (all of it in English, parts of it in Greek), which presents a second century BCE story regarding the translation of the Septuagint (among other things) and to consider how that story squares with the nature of the translation products that we now have in that corpus. Thereafter we will read selections from the Septuagint, parts of it in Greek and parts in English, to get a sense of the different parts of the translated corpus as well as some of it that was written in Greek from the outset rather than translated from the Hebrew. Finally, there will also be a component that involves working with an important Psalter papyrus text (Papyrus Bodmer XXIV) that will include transcribing a column of text (from a high resolution digital image) and doing some reading on what is involved in papyrological study.”

If you’re interested, email acts@twu.ca. Check out the poster below for more details: