Focusing on the Syriac Bible, this volume by Jan Joosten compiles pilot studies that explore the Syriac Old and New Testaments and their interconnections. It highlights the Old Syriac and Peshitta gospels, suggesting they retain elements of an Aramaic gospel tradition. This research offers valuable insights into the earliest oral traditions regarding Jesus' life and teachings, emphasizing the significance of these texts in biblical scholarship.
During its 2,500-year life, the book of Genesis has been the keystone to
important claims about God and humanity in Judaism and Christianity, and it
plays a central role in contemporary debates about science, politics, and
human rights. The authors provide a panoramic history of this iconic book,
exploring its impact on Western religion, philosophy, literature, art, and
more.
In this volume Jan Joosten brings together seventeen articles, published in journals and collective volumes between 1996 and 2008, with one unpublished essay. In these essays he deals mainly with questions of language and interpretation in the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Many of Jan Joosten's studies take their point of departure in one or the other striking features in the language of the Septuagint, propose a theory explaining its peculiarity, and go on from there to relate the linguistic phenomenon to wider historical, exegetical or theological issues. Others deal with problems of method in establishing the historical background of the version, its relation to the Hebrew source text, and its theology. Taken as a whole, Jan Joosten offers an original contribution to a number of contemporary debates on the Old Greek version. Notably in this book he addresses from various perspectives the questions of who the translators were and what they tried to do.
