This will be the new Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies! Welcome world! This newsletter is intended to be a resource to those interested in Aramaic versions of the Bible and their related studies. It is also the official organ of the International Organization for Targumic Studies.
I hope to have most of the content of the old site up by the end of the day week but our goal is to include a searchable database and that will take some time. In the meantime, put this RSS into your newsreader and look for updates as new material is uploaded or updated.
The Editor
Christian Brady
cbrady AT targum.info
Today ended our two day conference of the IOTS. We were very sorry that Paul Flesher, our President, and Robert Hayward, a distinguished Targum scholar, were unable to join us because of illness. We wish them all the very best.
It has been a wonderful conference with many excellent papers. (And mine wasn’t bad either! 
) In particular I wanted to let everyone know about a few new or perhaps under-consulted resources in the field of Targumic and cognate studies.
Targum Manuscript Database – David Kroeze, Kampen, presented on the state of the new database of targumic manuscripts. This is a tremendous project and is due to go live (although you can consult it now) in August. The funding has run out for the project at this point, with only MSS of Tg Jonathan (to the Prophets) catalogued, but that still includes several thousands MSS. The database can be found at the site http://targum.nl/. They are looking for additional funding and information on MSS. Please contact him at the website if you are able to help. David also reminded us of a few other useful databases available online: IMHM – Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts; GOLD – Genizah On-Line Database.
Critical Edition of Targum Samuel – Our keynote address on Day One was by Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman, Kampen. This project, also found at http://targum.nl/ is an ongoing project to create a critical edition of TgJon to Samuel. At the moment only 1 Sam 1-3 is available. This work represents and amazing amount of work. It is a beautiful site and resource. Sadly it too was part of the grant that was funding the manuscript database and its funding has ended as well. Both of these projects are part of the ongoing ITTEP, International Targum Text Edition Project.
At our business meeting yesterday we also discussed the Newsletter for Targum and Cognate Studies. This has been housed at http://targum.info/ and is primarily a source of bibliography as well as information concerning the IOTS. There has not a been a lot of activity on the site for the last two years, but fear not! We are going to revamp and transform the site! So stay tuned… I promise you will hear it here first!
BTW, judging from the videos on the TV in my hotel, Slovenian music seems to involve quite a lot of accordians, even in heavy metal!
And if you want to see more of my pictures from the trip, click on any of the above pictures to go to my Flickr account.
Well after a delayed flight I arrived in the capital of Slovenia, safe and sound. The room is very nice at Hotel Lev and I am settling in to finish my paper (with my socks and “things” hanging to dry in the bathroom; they wanted €2,80 to wash a pair of socks!). I have been hunting on Google maps to see where our conference will be. Why the first listed hotel, the one I choose, assuming that like the SBL that would mean it is closest to the conference, is the farthest from the university is beyond me. So here is my Google Map with the Hotel Lev an the Law School located on it.
I just received the abstracts from Willem Smelik who will be our acting chair since Paul Flesher will be unable to attend. These are posted below, just follow the link. The schedule of the papers can be found here.
Continue reading ‘Settling into Slovenia and IOTS Abstracts’
