Research Project, 2020–2040
A project of the
Academy, since 1970
Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony
For more than hundred years the major critical edition of the Old Testament in Greek, the so-called Septuagint, is being prepared in Göttingen: From 1908 to 2015, the „Septuaginta-Unternehmen” was responsible for this edition, and since 2016, a research commission, called „Kommission zur Edition und Erforschung der Septuaginta”.
In 2020, a new long-term Academy project is established: „Die Editio critica maior des griechischen Psalters”. This project is exclusively dedicated to the edition of the Greek Psalter. The Psalter belongs to the most widespread, complex, and extensively interpreted books in the Bible. As a liturgical prayer and individual meditation book, it combines Judaism with Western and Orthodox Christianity. Its influence on poetry (e.g. Arnold Schönberg, „Moderne Psalmen”; Paul Celan, „Tenebrae”), music (e.g. Igor Stravinsky, „Symphony of Psalms”; Leonard Bernstein, „Chichester Psalms”), and visual arts (e.g. Marc Chagall, „Psalms of David”) reaches up to the present and makes it one of the fundamental texts of European literature, and world literature as well.
The aim of the new Psalter project is to explore the tradition and textual history of the Greek Psalter, and to prepare a new critical edition of the Septuagint Psalms and Odes for the Göttingen series, which will substitute the outdated edition by Alfred Rahlfs (1931). At the end, the critically reconstructed text is promised to be provided in a hybrid edition, printed as a book and presented online.
Persons
- Dr. Felix Albrecht (Office Site Leader)
- Dr. Margherita Matera (Research Associate)
- Dr. Georgi Parpulov (Research Associate)
- Dr. Maria Tomadaki (Research Associate)
- Johannes Gronemann (Research Assistant)
Contact person for the academies' programme
Sebastian Zwies M.A.
Geschäftsstelle Mainz
Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 2
55131 Mainz
Tel: 06131/218 528-17
E-Mail: sebastian.zwies@akademienunion.de