Dr Alison G. Salvesen
Position:
University Research Lecturer; Supernumerary Fellow in Oriental Studies, Mansfield CollegeFaculty / College Address:
Oriental Institute / Mansfield CollegeEmail:
alison.salvesen@orinst.ox.ac.ukResearch Interests:
My main research is in the area of ancient interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. This includes the Greek Septuagint, the later Jewish Greek versions, the Aramaic Targums, the Peshitta Syriac version, and St Jerome's Vulgate translation. I also work on the reception history of these versions during the formative periods of rabbinic Judaism and of Christianity.
Current Projects:
I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Hexapla Institute and Project, which is creating an electronic database of the surviving material from Origen's multicolumnar Old Testament. My own work for the project is an edition of the Greek fragments of the Book of Exodus.
I am an editor of the Bible of Edessa Project, overseeing a series of annotated English translations of the books of the Peshitta Syriac Old Testament and Apocrypha.
I am also working on an introduction to the Syrian Orthodox scholar and bishop, Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), which will incorporate selected highlights of his works in modern English translation.
Courses Taught:
I regularly teach Biblical Hebrew prose composition; Targum Aramaic; Introduction to Septuagint studies; Septuagint texts; early versions and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible; textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.
Recent Publications:
- I-II Samuel in the Syriac Version of Jacob of Edessa, Monographs of the Peshitta Institute, Leiden, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1999) (xlix + 170, 125 pp.).
- "Symmachus and the dating of Palestinian Targum Tradition" Journal of the Aramaic Bible 2 (2000) 233-45.
- "Jacob of Edessa's knowledge of Hebrew" in Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts. Essays in Memory of Michael Weitzman, eds. A. Rapoport-Albert and G. Greenberg (Sheffield 2001) 457-67.
- "Infants or Fools in Eden? An Ambiguity in Early Syriac Tradition" in Hamlet on a Hill. Semitic and Greek Studies presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, eds. M.F.J. Baasten and W.Th. van Peursen (Leuven 2003), 433-440.
- "A Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen and Jerome" in The Ways that Never Parted, eds. A. Yoshiko Reed and A. Becker, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum (T'bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).
- "Psalm 135(136).25 in a Jewish Greek inscription from Nicea", in Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorf, ed. G. A. Khan (Leiden/Boston, 2005), 212-221.
- "Pigs in the Camps and the Breasts of my Lambs: Song of Songs in the Syriac Tradition", in Perspectives on the Song of Songs-Perspektiven der Hoehliedauslegung ed. A. Hagedorn. BZAW 346 (Berlin, 2005), 260-273.
- "The Growth of the Apocrypha" in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies", eds J. Rogerson and J. Lieu (Oxford, 2006), 489-517.
- "The Genesis Texts of Jacob of Edessa: a Study in Variety" in Text, Transmission, and Tradition: Studies on the Text of the Peshitta and its Use in the Syriac Tradition, Festschrift for Konrad Jenner, eds B. ter Haar Romeny and W. van Peursen (MPIL; Leiden, 2006).
- "Without shame or desire: attitudes towards childhood in early Syriac writers" Scottish Journal of theology 59/3 (2006), 1-20.
Other Info:
