Alison G. Salvesen

Position:

Professor of Early Judaism and Christianity; Supernumerary Fellow in Oriental Studies, Mansfield College 

Faculty / College Address:

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern StudiesMansfield College

Email:

alison.salvesen@ames.ox.ac.uk 

Research 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:

Member of the Executive Committee of the Hexapla Institute and Project, to create 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.

Researching for a monograph on the Syrian Orthodox scholar and bishop, Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), to incorporate selected highlights of his works in modern English translation.

Courses Taught:

I regularly teach Introduction to Septuagint studies; Septuagint and patristic texts; early versions and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible; textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible; Biblical Hebrew prose composition; Syriac texts; Targum Aramaic.

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.).
  • A. Salvesen and T. Michael Law, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
  • A. Salvesen, Sarah Pearce and Miriam Frenkel, eds. Israel in Egypt. The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Series 110 (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
  • “Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal Books’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint, eds. A. Salvesen and T. M. Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 385–402.
  • “Textual Criticism, Translation Studies, and Symmachus’s Version in the Book of Job”, Textus 30 (2021), 43–63.
  • “‘They did not settle in the Land of the Lord: Ephraim settled in Egypt’ (Hos. 9:3): Returning to Egypt in the Septuagint and other Hellenistic Jewish Works”, in Israel in Egypt. The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period, eds. A. Salvesen, S.J. Pearce and M. Frenkel (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 150-77.
  • “Das Gesetz Gottes: Psalter”, Handbuch zur Septuaginta (LXX.H) V, eds. H. Ausloos and B. Lemmelijn (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2020), 156-64.“βδέλυγμα, βδελύσσω, βδελυγμός, βδελυκτός”, The Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint, ed. E. Bons (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).
  • “Imitating the Watchers: Restoring the Angelic Life of Adam’ Actes du Colloque international S. Éphrem le Syrien (Ligugé, juin 2006), ed. B. Outtier. Parole de l’Orient 46 (2020) 315-40.
  • “Symmachus in Hosea and Amos”, in Les Douze Prophètes dans la LXX. Protocoles et procedures dans la traduction grecque: stylistique, poétique et histoire, eds. C. Dogniez and Ph. Le Moigne (Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2019), 308–324.
  • “’Christ has subjected us to the harsh yoke of the Arabs’: The Syriac Exegesis of Jacob of Edessa in the New World Order” Exegetical Crossroads. Understanding Scripture in Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Pre-Modern Orient, eds. R. Grundmann, As. Elias Kattan, G. Tamer, and K.Pinggéra (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017), 145-162.
  • “Late Syriac Translations of the Pentateuch”, Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, eds. A. Lange and E. Tov, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 219–224.
  • ‘The Lexicon of the Tabernacle accounts in the Syrohexapla Version of Exodus’ in Contemporary Examinations of Classical Languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Greek): Valency, Lexicography, Grammar, amd Manuscripts, eds. T. Lewis, A. Salvesen, and B. Turner. PLAL 8 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2016), 187–200.
  • ‘A “New Field” for the Twenty-First Century? Rationale for the Hexapla Project, and a Report on Its Progress’ in The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions. Studies in celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot, eds. A. Piqer Otero and P. Torijano Morales (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 286-309.

Further Info:

Current DPhil Students:

Joel Bell

Joseph Justiss

Guillermo Vellila Guerra

Paul Ulishney

Yael Krämer

Keunjoo Kim

 

Recent DPhil Students:

Pawel Rytel-Andrianik

Christian Brady

Joel Korytko

Jelle Verburg

Jonathan Wright

Bradley Marsh

Photograph of Alison Salvesen