This tribute to Albert Pietersma of the University of Toronto is offered by a highly distinguished international panel of scholars, including John W. Wevers, Takamitsu Muraoka, Anneli Aejmelaeus, Emanuel Tov, Johan Lust, Robert A. Kraft, Johann Cook, Arie van der Kooij, Moises Silva and Claude E. Cox. The focus of the volume is on the Old Greek Psalter and its significance for biblical research and related disciplines, where it marks a definitive statement of research questions and issues in this increasingly important area of biblical textual studies.

While some describe the Greek Psalter as a “slavish” or “interlinear” translation with “dreadfully poor poetry,” how would its original audience have described it? Positioning the translation within the developing corpus of Jewish-Greek literature, Jones analyzes the Psalter’s style based on the textual models and literary strategies available to its translator. She demonstrates that the translator both respects the integrity of his source and displays a sensitivity to his translation’s performative aspects. By adopting recognizable and acceptable Jewish-Greek literary conventions, the translator ultimately creates a text that can function independently and be read aloud or performed in the Jewish-Greek community.

"Numerous Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the book of Psalms combine and split several psalms in ways that are not found in a modern bible. Paul J. Sander explores the literary and theological interpretative possibilities created by these alternate delimitations of the biblical text." -- Provided by publisher

"One of the critical, ongoing discussions in Septuagint studies today concerns the issue of how texts were understood by their translators, and how those translations are able to provide the modern reader with clues to that original interpretation. This study attempts to understand the semantic meaning of these psalms at the point of their inception, or composition, i.e. as translated literary units derivative of a presumed Semitic Vorlage."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

A fresh interpretation of the nature, purpose, and date of Jerome’s Epistle 106 In this volume of the Writings from the Greco-Roman World series, Michael Graves offers the first accessible English translation and commentary on Jerome’s Epistle 106, an important work of patristic biblical interpretation. In his treatise Jerome discusses different textual and exegetical options according to various Greek and Latin copies of the Psalms with input from the Hebrew. Epistle 106 provides insightful commentary on the Gallican Psalter, Jerome’s translation of Origen’s hexaplaric edition. Jerome’s work offers a unique window into the complex textual state of the Psalter in the late fourth century and serves as an outstanding example of ancient philological scholarship on the Bible. Graves’s translation and commentary is an essential resource for scholars and students of patristic exegesis, biblical textual criticism, and late antique Christianity.