Closing of the edition of the St Matthew Passion (Mt 26-28)
The team is working !In these last months of 2020, there is a heightened sense of excitement in the Hierosolymitan offices of The Bible in its traditions. Most of the research assistants are entering the final stretch of the edition of the St Matthew Passion.
Since 2005, under the direction of Brother Olivier-Thomas Venard, with the constant assistance of Bieke Mahieu, dozens of researchers have collaborated on this project, which was the real experimental laboratory of The Bible in its traditions.
In 2018, the decision was made to stick to the scientific material collected over the years and to start the printed edition. The Peeters brothers encouraged us, proposing to publish what will have all the makings of a Matthaean encyclopaedia of the Passion in a volume of two or three volumes in our collection.
After systematic proofreading by the editorial committee and various assistants, Bieke Mahieu prepared the texts for layout and printing, with her customary acuity. Until the penultimate stage, all the work is done online, in the dedicated lab on our collaborative platform, which is constantly being improved by Fr. Kevin Stephens.
In August 2019, the team will send chapter 26 to Peeters, and at the end of January 2020 chapter 27, then chapter 28 and hundreds of summary notes relating to the Passion “en ses Traditions”, until May. The normaliens of the year 2019-2020, Pauline Micos, Geoffroy Aujay de la Dure and Arthur Lesage, guided by Bieke Mahieu, contributed to the editorial rereading.
In total: 5 versions (the Byzantine text, the Textus Receptus, the “Nestle-Aland”, the Vulgate and the Peshitta) of the St Matthew Passion translated and compared, 28 themes dealt with (from textual criticism to … dance!), produced by more than 60 contributors: in 2 beautiful volumes of more than 400 pages each, the publication is hoped for the end of the winter or spring 2020-2021
James edition
Another very advanced project of The Bible in its Traditions is the edition of the Epistle of James in English, whose translations and annotations have been carried out by Prof. Martin Albl (Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI). Martin Albl (Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI). Joseph Ahmad, our assistant from Notre Dame University, and Fr. Łukasz Popko, director of the BEST editorial board, are responsible for this project. Together with the Committee, they have been meeting weekly to refine the translation of the Latin and Greek texts and to assess the progress of the project.
For his part, Joseph is proofreading and correcting the annotation to bring it up to the standards of the collection, occasionally adding notes. He also implements the bibliography of the forthcoming critical edition in our database. The editorial work around this text and its variants has a very special flavour in the context of Jerusalem today.
“Interestingly, the Greek text has more mystical and philosophical overtones than the usual English translations, which focus more on ethics and morality. I am also interested in the Jewish dimensions of the epistle, which are illustrated in our notes. It is clear that James himself was a Jew – and, if Hegesippus is right, a member of the priestly caste. It is therefore only natural that the type of language used by James should be so peculiar. He wrote in Greek, but with a Semitic spirit.” – Joseph
Jewish mirror of the Gospels: a first volume of “Essays on the Bible in its Traditions
Our collaborator Sister Agnes (Nathalie Bruyère), published in April the fruit of several years of discoveries, encounters and friendships in Israel, as well as studies and research carried out within the framework of “The Bible In Its Traditions”, in partnership with Domuni Universitas.
In a few short chapters, this is an introduction to the Jewish context of the Gospels.
While tracing the historical conditions of their composition, this work presents the principal Jewish literary sources of the time and what they contribute to the reading of the fundamental texts for the Christian faith. Sister Agnes (Nathalie Bruyère) explores the work of the daring scholars of our time who – in 2011 for the first time in history – published an edition of the New Testament entirely annotated by Jews, the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2011, 2017).
This Mirror is addressed to all persons of good will who wish to work intelligently for mutual understanding between Jews and Christians today and to promote their cooperation for the common good.
A big book about Jesus
Piloted for *the Bible in its Traditions* by fr. Renaud Silly, O.P., professor of Sacred Scripture at the *Studia* of the Province of Toulouse and regular collaborator at the École Biblique, in dialogue with Olivier-Thomas Venard and the Editorial Committee, in the spirit of our beautiful Hors Série in Le Figaro last year, this dictionary, largely composed from the material accumulated over the years in our platform-database **bibletraditions.org,** has set itself the goal of uniting a historical approach and a history of reception in over 400 entries. >It will be published in the “Bouquins” collection, by Robert Laffont, in spring 2021.
