James Aitken profile

Teaching Officers | Lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament and Second Temple Studies

Profile

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Courses taught this academic year

• Judaism and Hellenism (D2d)
• Judaism in the Greek and Roman Periods (B3)
• Hebrew Psalms (C1a)
• Creation and Covenant (C2)
• The Exilic Age (B2)
• MPhil, Old Testament

Research interests

• Second Temple Judaism
• Apocrypha
• The Septuagint
• Book of Judges
• Hebrew language and Lexicography
• Greek language and Lexicography

Current Research Projects

1. 'Artefacts of Ancient Judaism: A teaching site utilizing library resources': an educational project supported by the subject centre of the Higher Education Academy, and CARET.
2. ‘Words from the Sand: A Lexical Analysis of Early Greek Papyri from Egypt’: a contribution to the study of the ancient Greek vocabulary in the post-classical period, in collaboration with Dr Trevor Evans (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) and Dr John Lee (Macquarie University), and supported by Australian Research Council (ARC DP) funding for the period 2010–14.
3. Education and the Septuagint translation: a monograph on the Septuagint within the context of ancient education.
4. Member of Advisory Board, Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint, Strasbourg.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome applications / enquiries from research students in the areas of my research interests. My particular interests include the place of the Septuagint within Jewish and Egyptian society, the language of the Septuagint (especially vocabulary), second temple Jewish literature (especially Ben Sira, Wisdom, Judith, Tobit), Hellenistic Judaism, Hebrew semantics, and post-exilic biblical studies.
Those with suggestions of areas they would like to study are also welcome to enquire.

Publications

Full list of publications are available in a separate document (coming soon).

Books

• The Semantics of Blessing and Cursing in Ancient Hebrew (Louvain: Peeters, 2007).
• G.I. Davies, assisted by J.K. Aitken, D.R. de Lacey, P.A. Smith & J. Squirrel, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Currently completing: Greek Ecclesiastes and Jewish Cultural Identity.

Edited books

• The Continuum Companion to the Septuagint (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, forthcoming 2012).
• On Stone and Scroll: Essays in Honour of Graham Ivor Davies (ed. with K.J. Dell and B.A. Mastin) (BZAW 420; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011).
• Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers (edited with T. Rajak, S. Pearce & J. Dines) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
• Challenges in Jewish-Christian Relations (edited with E. Kessler) (New York: Paulist Press, 2006).

Recent papers

• ‘The Characterisation of Speech in the Septuagint’, in C. Exum and D. Clines (eds), The Aileen Guiding Conference (Sheffield: Phoenix, forthcoming).
• ‘Text Criticism: Apocrypha,’ in M.D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Books of the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press), forthcoming.
‘Fat Eglon’, in G. Khan & D. Lipton (eds), Studies on the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible in honour of Robert Gordon (VTS 149; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 141-54.
• ‘The Significance of Rhetoric in the Greek Pentateuch,’ in J.K. Aitken, K.J. Dell, and B.A. Mastin (eds), On Stone and Scroll (BZAW 420; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 507–21.
• ‘barak, etc.’, in H.-J. Fabry and Ulrich Dahmen (eds), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Qumrantexten, Band 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 521–28.
• ‘za‘am, etc.’, H.-J. Fabry and Ulrich Dahmen (eds), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Qumrantexten, Band 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 861-62.
• ‘The Literary Attainment of the Translator of Greek Sirach’, in J.-S. Rey & J. Joosten (eds), The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira: Transmission and Interpretation (JSJSup 150; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 95–126.
• ‘Judaic National Identity’, in L.L. Grabbe & O. Lipschits (eds), Judah Between East and West: The Transition Period from Persian to Greek Rule (ca. 400-200 BCE) (LSTS 75; London T&T Clark, 2011), 31-48.
• ‘Job’s diet: comfort, food and suffering’, in Piotr Mitzner and Anna Szczepan-Wojnarska (ed.), Hiob Biblijny, Hiob Obecny w Kuluturze (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynala Stefana Warszawa, 2010), 47–68.
• ‘Jewish Use of Greek Proverbs’, in N. de Lange et al. (eds), Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions (Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 53-77.
• 'The Septuagint Translation Legend in a Byzantine Prognosticon', Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies 43 (Winter 2008-09), 32-35.
• 'Context of Situation in Biblical Lexica', in J. Dyk and W. van Peursen (eds), Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III (ISLP; Gorgias Press, 2009), 181-201.
• 'Other Hebrew Lexica: Zorell and Alonso Schoekel', in J. Dyk and W. van Peursen (eds), Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III (ISLP; Gorgias Press, 2009), 251-64.
• 'Phonological Phenomena in Greek Papyri and Inscriptions and their Significance for the Septuagint', in J. Corley and V. Skemp, Studies in the Greek Bible: Essays in honor of Francis T. Gignac, S.J. (CBQMS, 44; Washington DC: CBA, 2008), 256-77.
• 'The God of the pre-Maccabees: Designations of the divine in the early Hellenistic period', in R.P. Gordon (ed.), The God of Israel (University of Cambridge Oriental publications, 64; Cambridge University Press, 2007), 246-66.
• 'Poet and Critic: Royal Ideology and the Greek Translator of Proverbs', in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers, edited by T. Rajak, S. Pearce, J. Aitken & J. Dines) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
• 'Rhetoric and Poetry in Greek Ecclesiastes', Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 38 (2006), 55-78.
• 'What does Christianity in Jewish terms mean?', in J.K. Aitken & E.D. Kessler (eds), Challenges in Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: Paulist Press, 2006), 203-17.
• 'Sanctus Matthaeus, magister sapientiae, summa cum laude', in Jeremy Corley & Vincent Skemp (eds), Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit (CBQMS, 38; Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2005), 264-79.
• 'Hengel's, Judentum und Hellenismus', Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (2004), 331-41.
• 'Introducing the Septuagint', Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies 34 (2004), 20-26.