Good news for those looking for some extra training in the area of Septuagint research. The 2019 Septuagint Summer School is now official at Trinity Western University, organized through the John William Wevers Institute for Septuagint Studies.

I have posted in the past about how difficult it can be to find direct instruction in this field (e.g., here), and this is one of the few recurring opportunities to do just that. If this opportunity sounds slightly familiar, that’s because this is the fifth or sixth time the TWU Summer Course has been offered. You can check out my posts on the 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015 courses.

This year’s course will be held from June 24th-28th at 8:30am to 12:30pm (PDT), but for those who cannot make it to the Pacific Northwest there is also a live-stream option. It is designed as a three-credit course at the graduate level.

The Septuagint, Translation, and Jewish Scribalism

The topic for the 2019 course deals with the intersection of translation and Jewish scribalism, and it will be led by Dr. John Screnock, who is Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at the University of Oxford. He has done some excellent work in Hebrew historical linguistics as well as textual criticism, the latter of which he is writing on for a handbook I am co-editing (more on that in due course).

I asked John to provide a little more detail about what the summer course will cover. Here’s what he had to say:

“In The Septuagint, Translation, and Jewish Scribalism, we will think about the Septuagint in the context of scribalism in Jewish antiquity, and as a product (potentially) of Jewish scribalism. This will involve some consideration of the phenomenon of translation from the perspective of translation studies, and consideration of the Septuagint’s possible origins. Views that tie the Septuagint closely to the Hebrew text and to Hebrew scribes will be contrasted with views that isolate the Greek text from its Hebrew origins. Finally, we will explore the ways in which the Septuagint can point to a Hebrew text, and even function as a Hebrew text.”

Here is the course poster:

This is definitely worth considering if you are interested in Septuagint. I have been to two of these in the past and benefited from them very much.