Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible

Starting in just a few days, the Museum of the Bible will be hosting an exhibition in Washington, D.C., of the Dead Sea Scrolls in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority. The scrolls will be available in three different rotations:

NOVEMBER 22, 2025–FEBRUARY 2026

First Rotation

• 4Q7 Genesis(g)
• 11Q10 Targum Job
• 4Q83 Psalms(a)
• 4Q210 Astronomical Enoch(c)
• 4Q434 Barkhi Nafshi(a)
• 4Q491 War Scroll(a)
• Eschatological Commentary A
• 11Q20 Temple Scroll(b)

FEBRUARY–MAY 2026

Second Rotation

• 11Q5(a) Psalms (Great Psalms Scroll Fragments)
• 4Q27 Numbers(b)
• 4Q111 Lamentations
• 4Q264 Community Rule(j)
• 4Q448 Apocryphal Psalms and Prayer
• 4Q274 Tohorot A (Purities)
• 4Q400 Non-Canonical Psalms A
• 4Q530 Book of the Giants(b)

MAY–SEPTEMBER 2026

Third Rotation

• 4Q58 Isaiah(d)
• 4Q197 Tobit(b)
• 4Q130 Phylacteries C
• 4Q534 Birth of Noah(a)
• 4Q218 Jubilees(c)
• 4Q275 Communal Ceremony
• 4Q258 Community Rule(d)
• 4Q271 Damascus Document(f)

Anneli Aejmelaeus, RIP

I just learned from Kristin De Troyer that Prof. em. Anneli Aejmelaeus passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Anneli was a kind and generous colleague, mentor, and friend, who supervised my first postdoctoral position at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in "Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions" at the University of Helsinki. In addition to a long and industrious career as a professor at the University of Helsinki, she also served as Professor in Septuagint at the University of Göttingen from 1991-2009. She has the further distinction of being among the first women ordained for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in 1988.

Anneli's life work on the Septuagint culminated in preparing the Göttingen critical edition of the Old Greek text of 1 Samuel, one of the most interesting and challenging textual situations in the study of the text of the Bible. She began working on the edition of 1 Samuel during her time in Göttingen and was able to submit the completed edition for publication soon before her death. Anneli also recently reached out to me to help finalize an edition of an important papyrus of 1 Samuel that we had worked on together in Helsinki with our team at the Centre of Excellence, and she was able to see a near-final version of the edition before she passed. Christian Seppänen and I will finalize that in the near future and see it through to publication on her behalf.

Anneli is survived by her husband Lars. I remember my first time meeting Lars and Anneli at the International SBL meeting in St. Andrews and walking back to our hotels together, thinking they were a very sweet couple. My family will always fondly remember times spent with them, especially picking wild blueberries at their cabin. And I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Anneli for many long hours discussing issues of textual criticism that have helped shape who I am as a scholar today.

ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ κοιμηθήσομαι καὶ ὑπνώσω, 

ὅτι σύ, κύριε, κατὰ μόνας ἐπιʼ ἐλπίδι κατῴκισάς με. (Psalm 4:9, LXX)

When Was the Psalter Compiled?

I just saw that my recent article in the Bible and Interpretation has been published on the question of "When Was the Psalter Compiled?" It summarizes and pulls together arguments for the date of the collection of the proto-MT Psalter that will appear in greater detail in my monograph forthcoming in 2026 in the FAT I series.

“Love in Lines: Syntax, Metre, and Stanza in Akkadian Love Literature” - Daniele Borkowski (University College London)

Daniele Borkowski (University College London) just delivered a fascinating online lecture regarding “Love in Lines: Syntax, Metre, and Stanza in Akkadian Love Literature.” His presentation focused on the poetics of the compositions, which has many parallels with biblical Hebrew poetry. I include my summary notes here of things that seem particularly relevant for comparative study of the poetry of the Bible.

______________________________

Summary of the Poetics of Akkadian Love Poetry of the 2nd Millennium:

• The standard Akkadian verse (he called them lines) has four stresses divided by a caesura that distinguishes two lines (he called them stichoi). Prepositions are not generally factored into the stress-count. The 2/2 pattern is the most common and comprises about 40% of the verses. Next common is 2/1 (about 20%) and 1/2 (about 10%). These three metrical patterns with four or three stressed syllables account for about 70% of verses. He has not yet studied whether any of these metrical patterns apply consistently across full compositions.
• Clausula accadica: This principle says Akkadian lines should end in a trochee (stressed followed by unstressed syllable); about 71% follow this rule, a consistency which supports the existence of meter in the corpus.
• About 70% of the time there is one syntactic clause per line (his stich, I think).
• About 75% paratactic clauses vs. 25% hypotactic; compositions usually have a mix, rather than consistently one style.
• In paratactical constructions, the verbs are often put at the beginning and end of the verse (sim. chiasm).
• He frequently sees patterns in the semantic relationships between lines (stichoi within a verse; e.g., parallelism), including reiteration, contrast, elaboration, et al.
• A substantial proportion of tablets from the 2nd millennium (8/32) draw horizontal lines (usually plus blank space) to indicate stanza breaks. The number of verses per stanza varies both within compositions, but the most common is around 5-6 verses per stanza. Most commonly, these indicate changes of speaker.
• The graphic distinction between different lines (stichoi) is standard practice from the 1st millennium onward, but rare in the 2nd millennium. Most commonly, each verse is written on a single row with a blank space/caesura in the middle separating the lines (stichoi), such that the tablet looks like it is laid out in two columns. One Neo-Babylonian tablet actually further differentiates each accentual unit within each line. Sometimes scribes misdivide the lines within a verse.

Digital Editions of Aramaic and Phoenician Sources

James Moore has released the Digital Editions of Aramaic and Phoenician Sources database. This helpful tool includes an extensive, searchable listing of Aramaic (and other) textual artifacts, map of finds and collections, metadata on each item, transcriptions (with pop-up lexical information), a lexicon, and bibliography. For a particularly relevant example, see his entry for the Elephantine Aḥiqar manuscript. Thanks to James for his hard work and useful contributions!

Coptic OT Trainee Position

Diliana Atanassova announced on Agade an opening for a trainee position on the Coptic Old Testament Project in Göttingen. See the opening and details below:

________________________________________

Dear Colleagues,

Our project, the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony is accepting applications for a trainee position beginning on the 1st of January 2026.

Further information about the position and application details can be obtained through the following link: https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/blog/-/blogs/job-offer-trainee-positi-1

The deadline for applications is the 15th of October 2025. 

Please feel free to pass the information on to colleagues, students and any interested parties.

Many thanks and kind regards,

Diliana Atanassova

Dr. Diliana Atanassova, stellv. Arbeitsstellenleiterin
Niedersächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen

Langzeitprojekt „Digitale Gesamtedition und Übersetzung
des koptisch-sahidischen Alten Testamentes“ 

DFG-Projekt AT 193/2–1 „Digitale Edition 
und wissenschaftliche Erschließung des
koptischen Paschalektionars“ 

Friedländer Weg 11
D-37085 Göttingen
diliana.atanassova@adwgoe.de

Textual Criticism is Cool

Michael Kruger argues that textual criticism is now cool among evangelicals, after 30 years of developments in the field. Certainly this resonates with my experience. People love tangible artifacts, and it's a nice entry point for deeper discussions about the text and transmission of the Bible. I wonder how much this applies to the OT though.