Post-Doctoral Research at the University of Helsinki

Today I officially accepted an invitation to conduct post-doctoral research at the University of Helsinki as part of the Centre of Excellence in "Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions." I will be working in Helsinki from 1 September 2014 to 31 December 2016, working on the Septuagint manuscripts of Exodus. My family and I are very excited about moving to Finland, and I look forward to getting connected with my new colleagues and starting this challenging project. Thanks to everyone in Birmingham, Helsinki, and beyond, who made this opportunity possible. Below is the abstract for my research project:

Abstract

As part of the University of Helsinki’s Centre of Excellence in “Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions,” this project will entail a comprehensive (re-)consideration of the earliest, continuous-text, Greek witnesses to the text of Exodus with a view both to reconstructing the original Greek translation and to elucidating how and why the text changed over time and what this tells us about the authority and reception of the book in antiquity. I will undertake fresh transcriptions of all the Greek manuscripts dating from the 7^th century and earlier, including those that have only recently come available. I will then systematically compare each manuscript with each other manuscript and with the Hebrew scrolls from the Judean Desert to gain a clearer picture of manuscript relationships and the complex history of the Greek text of Exodus. This research will require the use of computerized tools and methods developed in the digital humanities to store, organize, manipulate, and display the large amounts of data envisaged for this project. I intend to publish the results in an electronic edition, one or more articles, and a monograph giving a synthesis of my conclusions.