I usually give Philip Schaff a hard time, but let’s be honest – the ANF and NPNF series of translations (the former edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, the latter by Philip Schaff, and later with Henry Wace) – were amazing feats of translation and publishing for their times. They were, for the English speaking world, the Migne of their age, and animated with a little bit of the spirit of Migne, I would say. Let me quote from Schaff’s preface to the NPNF series 1:

My purpose is to furnish ministers and intelligent laymen who have no access to the original texts, or are not sufficiently familiar with ecclesiastical Greek and Latin, with a complete apparatus for the study of ancient Christianity. Whatever may be the estimate we put upon the opinions of the Fathers, their historical value is beyond all dispute. They are to this day and…

With this post, I want to begin a series “X Christian from Church History on the Biblical Languages.” I often share these sorts of quotes with my seminary students, and I thought they might be helpful to others as well. These posts are intended to be short, mainly consisting of a quote, which can be rather long at times, with brief commentary from me to provide some context.

We all wish we could study with H. B. Swete (1835-1917)

A few weeks ago I posted the first of what will be a three-part series on supervisors and post/graduate programs in Septuagint studies. As I mentioned, this is mostly for the benefit of students considering pursuing further study in the discipline, which is pretty decentralized and specialist. Since there are not a lot of scholars whose work is primarily focused on Septuagint, there are even fewer programs and resources to learn about it. I’m trying to lower the barriers to entry just a little bit here on this site.

The previous post was focused on North America and the United Kingdom. This (admittedly brief) post is titled “Worldwide,” by which I mean scholars in places that are not Europe, which will come in a third and final post. If I have forgotten someone obvious please let me know and…