FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PESHITTA PROJECT

This year the Peshitta Project is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. This occasion will be marked by a public event, which will take place on Friday, 18 December 2009, at the Snouck Hurgronje House, Rapenburg 63, Leiden.  Anyone interested will be welcome.

In 1959 the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT) asked Professor P.A.H. de Boer to undertake the Peshitta Project on behalf of Leiden University. Its goal was to produce the first scholarly edition of the Syriac version of the Old Testament, the Peshitta. For many years the project was limited to the edition of the biblical text, but in the 1990s, additional targets were formulated. Thus the Peshitta Institute now coordinates the edition of a concordance of the Peshitta, the study of the biblical quotations in Syriac commentaries, as well as an annotated English translation of the Peshitta, entitled The Bible of Edessa. It has become the main centre of expertise on the Syriac versions of the Bible. 

The programme is as follows: 

14.45  Coffee and tea

15.15  Opening address by Professor Arie van der Kooij, General Editor of the Peshitta Edition: The Peshitta Project at Fifty

15.45  Musical intermezzo

16.00  Presentation of the first copies of the fourteenth volume of the edition, containing Ezra-Nehemiah and 1-2 Maccabees, to Mor Polycarpus Augin Aydin, Metropolitan and Patriarchal Vicar for the Archdiocese of the Netherlands of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and Professor Wim van den Doel, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University.

16.10  Keynote lecture by Dr Alison Salvesen, Oriental Institute, Oxford: The Role of the Peshitta in the Reception History of the Bible in the Syriac Churches

16.50  Musical intermezzo

17.00  Drinks

Arie van der Kooij
Bas ter Haar Romeny
Konrad Jenner
Wido van Peursen