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)
