SBL Int. Meeting 2015: Call for Papers

The SBL International Meeting will be held in Bueonos Aires, Argentina on July 20-24. The call for papers closes this week, on 12 February. This is a reminder to log in on the SBL website and submit your proposal to the Working with Biblical Manuscripts (Textual Criticism) program unit.


The current chairs, Timothy B. Sailors and Ronald van der Bergh have issued the following description of the unit and call for papers:

Description: This program unit is devoted to the text of “biblical” writings, as understood in the broad sense of the term: This includes the Jewish Bible, early Jewish literature, and the Old Testament (in Hebrew and Aramaic, Greek, and other ancient languages), as well as early Christian literature and the New Testament (in Greek, Latin, and other ancient languages). We offer a forum for the investigation of all types of material witnesses related to the text of this literature—tablets, manuscripts, ostraca, inscriptions—and for the consideration of the textual form of this literature reflected in its citation and use by ancient authors and in writings from antiquity through the Middle Ages. This consists not only of contributions that deal with the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin textual witnesses, but also those that engage evidence in Ugaritic, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, and other linguistic traditions. A wide variety of additional issues related to textual criticism are also addressed, including epigraphy, manuscript studies, papyrology, codicology, paleography, scribal habits and the production of texts, the history of transmission (and its cultural, social, and religious settings), the practice of textual criticism from antiquity to modern times, restoration and conservation, the use of modern technology in studying this material, the production of critical editions, and discussions of particular passages. Call for papers: Papers concentrating on any aspect of textual criticism are welcome, particularly those that deal directly with manuscripts, i.e., papers that work with material witnesses to the text—tablets, ostraca, inscriptions, papyri, majuscules, minuscules, lectionaries. For the 2015 meeting in Buenos Aires, a joint session with the program unit “Bible and Syriac Studies in Context” is planned. We therefore especially invite papers discussing the evidence of Syriac manuscripts for the textual criticism of the Bible and/or other early Jewish or Christian writings.