The Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic Old Testament at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony is dedicated to digitally describe, edit and analyse the transmission of the Coptic Old Testament with a focus on the Sahidic tradition. The long-term project has an opening for a one-year paid trainee program, to be filled at the earliest possible date. This trainee program will give the successful applicant the opportunity to expand their knowledge about the Biblical tradition in Coptic and to receive further hands-on training in editorial methods, manuscript studies and digital humanities, as applied to the Coptic Bible and Coptic literature.

The trainee will commit to working 30 hrs per week in a variety of tasks, which will depend on their experience and interests and the current Old Testament project focus. If pursuing a research project within the wider field of the Coptic Bible the trainee will be able to dedicate up to 50% of this time to their own research.

Prerequisites are a degree in Coptic Studies or a project-related field (Egyptology, Biblical Studies, History of Christianity, Digital Humanities or similar) and a working knowledge of Coptic. Other language skills (in particular in Ancient Greek or Arabic) are welcomed.

Please direct enquiries and (electronic) applications (short CV, digital copies of diplomas or transcripts and letter of motivation) by February 28, 2023 to adw.bewerb@gwdg.de.

For further information contact Prof. Heike Behlmer (heike.behlmer@uni-goettingen.de) or Dr Frank Feder (ffeder@uni-goettingen.de). Information about the project is available on its website: http://coptot.manuscriptroom.com.

The Academy aims to increase the proportion of women in areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly invites qualified women to apply. It also sees itself as family-friendly and supports the compatibility of work and caring commitments.

Disabled persons or those of equal status will be given special consideration if their qualifications make them suitable candidates.

We would like to point out that submitting an application constitutes consent under current data protection law for us to process your application data. You can find more details on the legal basis of this and the use of your data at: https://adw-goe.de/ueber-uns/datenschutzerklaerung/.

Travel and application expenses cannot be reimbursed.

We're happy to announce the third issue of our project's official newsletter.

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We are glad to annouce that the British-German joint project on the Earliest Translations of the Pauline Epistles (GALaCsy) has already started at the Göttingen Academy. For the British side, Hugh Houghton (University of Birmingham), for the German side, Holger Strutwolf (INTF Münster), and Frank Feder (Göttingen Academy) are the Principal Investigators. Göttingen and Münster are primarily responsible for the Coptic transmission which is rich and early, and extant in several Coptic dialects (Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayyumic, and Mesokemic). Two post-doc researchers could be hired for the project: Samuel Moawad (at Münster) and Julien Delhez (at Göttingen). The GaLaCsy project received funding for three years (2022-25) and will explore also the Old Latin and Syriac versions of the Pauline Epistles.

Since the Pauline Epistles were widely used in the Liturgy of the Coptic Church GALaCsy will closely cooperate with the sister DFG-Project at the Göttingen Academy the Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary.

All Coptic manuscripts will be digitally edited in our Virtual Manuscript Room. And, not only the texts will soon be publicly available, but also images of the beautiful manuscripts themselves. Finally, the Coptic texts will enter the synoptic tables and the apparatus of variant readings of the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek Pauline Epistles.  

Timely for Easter comes the launch at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities of a new project closely related to and hosted on the same premises as the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament. This new satellite project is dedicated to the Coptic Holy Week lectionary which is one of the fundamental books for Christian worship in Egypt. It is co-led by Diliana Atanassova and Frank Feder. Lina Elhage-Mensching occupies the position of Research fellow and Peter Missael is the Research assistant. 

Despite its significance, the Coptic Holy Week lectionary in Sahidic, Bohairic and Arabic is still under-researched. The text of the oldest Sahidic Holy Week lectionaries (10th to 14th c.) has been only sporadically used for comparison when investigating the younger Bohairic tradition but has otherwise remained completely unexplored. What is more, the Arabic texts in the Coptic Holy Week lectionaries have been studied only superficially or not at all. The existing editions of the Bohairic Holy Week lectionaries no longer correspond to current scholarly standards. In contrast to earlier research, which can only be described as sporadic, selective, and incomplete, the project aims at a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the Holy Week lectionary in Egypt.

The first principal objective of the project is to provide a digital edition of the oldest extant Holy Week lectionary of the Egyptian Christians. The digital edition will generate both a semi-diplomatic edition of the individual textual witnesses and a critical redaction of the Holy Week lectionary, in which Sahidic, Bohairic and Arabic texts from parchment and paper manuscripts will be compared with each other. For the purposes of this study, the digital edition will use and further develop the infrastructure of the Virtual Manuscript Room (http://coptot.manuscriptroom.com) of the Göttingen Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament. 

The second principal objective is the exhaustive analysis of the Holy Week lectionary and of its development as a lectionary type in Egypt. The analysis will involve a text-historical classification of the biblical transmission in the lectionaries in comparison to the overall transmission in the biblical manuscript tradition. The Göttingen Virtual Manuscript Room will be of great help in achieving the second principal objective as well.

Through the use of innovative editorial tools and methods, the digitally based analysis of the Holy Week lectionary will close the research gaps described above. The project is therefore of the greatest significance both for Coptic and for Liturgical Studies and will provide a deeper understanding of the religious life of the Coptic Church, one of the largest and most important Oriental Orthodox Churches.

The Coptic Old Testament project is pleased to announce a new job opening in a new satellite project. Hugh Houghton (University of Birmingham), Holger Strutwolf (INTF Münster), and Frank Feder (Göttigen Academy) have been successful in obtaining a joint AHRC-DFG grant for the project "The Earliest Translations of the Pauline Epistles (GALaCSy)". Applications for a full-time research position for a 30 month period are now being accepted by the Göttingen Academy.

Applicants are required to have a completed Ph.D. in Coptic Studies, Egyptology, Theology, Christian Languages and Cultures of the Near East or neighboring fields. Proficiency in Coptic, and a good command of (NT-)Greek, as well as familiarity with the textual history of the Bible are expected. Practical knowledge and experience in editing Coptic original manuscripts and their documentation and annotation in electronic databases and online-based web systems would be advantageous.

The main task of the successful applicant will be the documentation and edition of the earliest Coptic witnesses of the Pauline Epistles in the Virtual Manuscript Room of the Coptic Old Testament project in close coordination and cooperation with the project partners in Birmingham and Münster.

For further information about the application and selection process please consult the job advertisement on the Göttingen Academy website.

Applications with a cover letter and the usual documents should be sent until January 23, 2022, to Frank Feder (ffeder@uni-goettingen.de) who will be happy to answer any questions.