Scribes and Language Use in the Graeco-Roman World

Michael Freeman presents a helpful review of a recent volume:

Sonja Dahlgren, Martti Leiwo, Marja Vierros, Scribes and language use in the Graeco-Roman world. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 147. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2024. Pp. 285. ISBN 9789516535206.

The book has an interesting assortment of test cases regarding language interference, the relationship between author and scribe, and quantitative approaches to stylistic analysis.

Contents

Introduction (Martti Leiwo)

1. The language use of the Narmouthis scribes: Foreign language perception and native language transfers. A case study (Sonja Dahlgren)
2. Scribal Revision in the Process of Text Production. A Linguistic Typology of Scribal Corrections in Four Genres of Greek Documentary Papyri (Joanne Vera Stolk)
3. Whose words? Identifying authors in Greek papyrus texts using machine learning (Marja Vierros & Erik Henriksson)
4. Infinitives at Work. Competing Patterns in Early Ptolemaic Papyrus Letters (Carla Bruno)
5. A Bilingual Scribe in Early Roman Tax Receipts from Elephantine (Ruth Duttenhöffer)
6. Documentary papyri as ‘multimodal’ texts. Aspects of variation in the Nepheros archive (IV CE) (Klaas Bentein)
7. Spoken Greek and the Work of Notaries in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Tommaso Mari)
8. Bilingual Letter Writers: The Verbs γράφω, οἶδα and θαυμάζω in Formulae, Idioms and Collocations (Victoria Beatrix Fendel)
9. ‘You Know Justice and Law and the Kind of Writing of the Notaries’ (Rhet)or(ic)al skills and scribal act in P.Col. inv. 600 (a.k.a. P.Budge), Coptic transcript of a hearing in front of an arbitration council (Tonio Sebastian Richter)
10. Early Medieval Scribes’ Command of Latin Spelling and Grammar: A Quantitative Approach (Timo Korkiakangas)

Greek Paleography Course

A Greek paleography crash course is being offered this summer in Leiden for interested students that is worth consideration. 

Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew

VU Amsterdam has made recordings available of their recent workshop on Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew. Papers include:

1. Sutskover, From Parts to Whole

2. Mollo, Language of the Body

3. Atkinson, Adnominal Possessive Constructions

4. Robar, Poetry and Cognition

5. Van Loon, Mataphors We Live By?

6. Van Hecke, Cognitive Lexical Semantics and the Return of Diachrony

7. De Blois, Discovering the Semantic Structure of Biblical Hebrew

8. Locatell, Cognitive Linguistics and Textual Criticism

9. Mushayabasa, Conceptual Blending in Matthew's Fulfillment Quotations

Corpus of Samaritan Coinage from the Persian Period

The Israel Numismatic Society reports a new publication on the corpus of Samaritan coinage from the Persian period. 

Abstract:

This two-volume monograph, A Corpus of Samarian Coinage, is the definitive culmination of a major research program focused on the Samarian minting authority during the Persian period. This coinage represents one of the earliest and most varied official coinages produced in the southern Levant, likely being issued from the late fifth century BCE until after the Greco-Macedonian conquest.

While building on earlier scholarship, this work offers a substantive re-evaluation of the field. It incorporates numerous newly identified coin types and establishes a robust, modern classification system essential for all future study. The data is based on an exhaustive, multi-year study of the entire corpus of known Samarian issues, involving the global examination of specimens in publications and in public and private collections.

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.