The annual Septuagint Summer Course hosted by the John William Wevers Institute of Septuagint Studies at Trinity Western University (Langley, British Columbia, Canada) has just been announced. The course "The Septuagint and Law" will be held June 24-28, 2024. It is possible to attend either in-person or online. For registration or information, download the poster here.

The dates for Sébastien Morlet’s second series of Grinfield lectures have just been announced. Download the poster here. 

The recent horrific events in Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip have occasioned numerous acts of violence and hate. Particularly concerning is the exponential rise in the number of antisemitic incidents that have taken place even in our universities and various academic settings. These have affected many of our Jewish colleagues and students or those close to them, who now fear for their safety. The history of Septuagint research is not exempt from such sentiments, which is why we feel compelled to express our solidarity with our Jewish colleagues and state in the strongest possible terms our opposition to all forms of antisemitism. At the same time, we deplore the rise of Islamophobia in western societies: as scholars in the field of religion we are committed to promote understanding and harmonious relations with our Muslim neighbors.

— The IOSCS Executive Committee

Following a distinguished six years of service to the IOSCS, at the end of this year Prof. Rob Hiebert is stepping down as President. His contribution to LXX studies has been significant, not least through his involvement in the New English Translation of the Septuagint, the SBL Commentary on the Septuagint Series, and his leadership of the John Wevers Institute at Trinity Western University. He is also preparing the forthcoming volume on 4 Maccabees for the Göttingen Septuaginta series. We are grateful for his leadership over his two presidential terms.

Prof. Hiebert’s successor in the role, Prof. Alison Salvesen, studied with James Barr and Sebastian Brock at Oxford and wrote her DPhil on Symmachus in the Pentateuch (1988). She was the main editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (2021) and is one of the founding members of the Hexapla Project. Among her many interests, she regularly writes on the later Jewish Greek versions and their reception history. She looks forward to serving the IOSCS community in this capacity.

— Alison Salvesen and Jean Maurais

We report the sad news that Robert A. Kraft, a founding member and longtime participant in the IOSCS, died on September 15, 2023 at the age of 89. Bob was a scholar with interests that encompassed the entirety of ancient Jewish and Christian literature. He was a member of the first Executive Committee of the IOSCS (see BIOSCS 2) and served the organization in a range of capacities since its inception. He presented the paper “Translation Technique and Jewish Greek Idiom: Some Examples and Prospects” at the 1968 organizational meeting of the IOSCS. In addition to his publications on the Septuagint, he edited the first two volumes in the SCS series, Septuagintal Lexicography (SCS 1; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1972), which laid the groundwork for a lexicon of the Septuagint and the CATSS project, and 1972 Proceedings of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies and the Society of Biblical Literature Pseudepigrapha Seminar (SCS 2: Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1972). He was a pioneer in and evangelist for the use of computer technology in textual study, particularly with respect to the Septuagint. He co-directed with Emanuel Tov the Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies (CATSS) project, which produced the first parallel aligned text of the Septuagint with morphological analysis. Among his publications on the Septuagint, which included a collaboration with Tov on the DJD publication of the Naḥal Ḥever Minor Prophets Scroll, he edited with Tov and contributed to Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies Volume 1: Ruth (SCS 20; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), which introduced the results of the CATSS project to the scholarly public, and he edited the PHI CCAT/CATSS Demonstration CD ROM #1, which contained the CATSS databases and showed the benefits of electronic storage and distribution of textual data. Throughout his career, Bob pushed the boundaries of what might be possible in the scholarly study of ancient texts, and the IOSCS and the scholarly academy more broadly are in his debt. In addition to his scholarly work, he would often grace friends and colleagues with a poem for important occasions, and he could always be counted on to try to fix something that others thought irredeemably broken. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

— Benjamin G. Wright, on behalf of the IOSCS Executive Committee