Upcoming Presentations at the November Conferences

conferences

The annual biblical studies conferences in Denver, CO, are just around the corner. We will be jointly presenting two papers that are offshoots of our work on the Reader’s Edition. The abstracts are below. We look forward to seeing some of you there!

Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)

Septuagint Studies Consultation • November 14, 2018

Title: “How We Produced Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition…and What We Learned”

In this paper we will provide an overview of the process by which we produced this book. We will focus in particular on some key statistics about the project, the tools we used to manage it (software, programming, milestone tracking, cloud storage and version control, etc.), and the process by which the final print-ready files were prepared. We will also reflect on some of the key challenges we had to overcome, as well as insights we gained along the way that might be useful to others who are undertaking projects of a similar scale and scope.

Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)

International Organization of Septuagint and Cognate Studies • November 18, 2018

Title: “Σκεῦοι of the Septuaginta: Statistical and Semantic Reflections from the Making of a Reader’s Edition”

This paper presents findings from a multi-year project editing a reader’s edition of the Greek Old Testament (or Septuagint), which involved working closely with the text of 1,175 chapters and crafting over 125,000 individual vocabulary glosses. Three areas of research emerging out of this project will be of interest to Septuagint specialists and students Hellenistic Greek. (1) Quantifying how the critical text has changed over the past century, and how that relates to our selection of the base text for the edition. (2) Analyzing the attributes of the Koine represented by each book/translator(s), with implications for further study on translation strategy. (3) Evaluating the limits of “translation equivalents” (glosses) due to complexities in lexical semantics.

Furthermore, Greg will be presenting a separate paper—which not directly related to this project but arose out of some of the work on it—at ETS (Old Testament, Pentateuch 2 section • November 15, 2018). It is entitled “‘You Shall Observe His Heel’: Tracing the Greek Tradition-History of Genesis 3:15b.”