It is with mixed emotions that I announce a new book that will be available this month with Bloomsbury T&T Clark publishers, Language and Identity in Hellenistic Judaism: Essays in Memory of James K. Aitken (here).

It’s always a pleasure to see a project come to fruition, and it was a pleasure working alongside my friends and colleagues Marieke Dhont and Chris Fresch. But as you can see in the subtitle to this volume, it is offered as a collection of essays in memory of my Doktorvater James K. Aitken, who died unexpectedly on Good Friday three years ago. You can read my tribute to him here.

This book should not have been published for another seven years at least. Jim would have turned sixty-five in 2033. Frankly, even before he passed I had cherished thoughts of organizing his Festschrift. In many ways, this book fills that role, although for very different reasons.

Speaking on behalf of Marieke and Chris, we are grateful to our editor, Dominic Mattos, for his enthusiastic support for this project from the very outset. Dominic knew Jim well and has offered a publisher’s note at the beginning of the volume. Our other contributors represent just a small collection of Jim’s teachers, colleagues, and doctoral students, particularly those with shared research interests.

There have been various published tributes to Jim already, and more are slated to arrive. But we hope this collection of essays reflects Jim’s academic influence and personal impact on so many.

In that spirit, I thought I would also share reflections on my friendship with Jim, offered in September 2023 at the SHG conference in Cambridge: