Researchers of the Bible Arabica: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims research group
(2013-2018: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – Deutsch-Israelische Projektkooperation (DFG-DIP), 16th round)
-
Principal Investigators
Aurélie Bischofberger
After a having completed a BA in Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Geneva in 2013 and a long-term stay in Jerusalem, Aurélie Bischofberger obtained an MA in Semitic Languages and Jewish Studies in Heidelberg in 2016. Between August 2016 and 2018, she worked as a research and teaching assistant for the chair of Old Testament and History of Ancient Israel at the Institut romand des sciences bibliques of the University of Lausanne. She is currently writing a PhD thesis on Arabic Versions of Leviticus 11: A Comprehensive Approach of Manuscript Evidence, Translation Techniques and Genetic Affiliations under the joint supervision of Meira Polliack (Tel Aviv) and Christophe Nihan (Lausanne). Her project “Clean and Unclean Animals in the Arabic Versions of the Bible: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Arabic Manuscripts of Leviticus” is funded by the Swiss National Fund since June 2019 (http://p3.snf.ch/Project-185373#). In November 2019 she was invited by the Institute of Semitic languages in Heidelberg as a visiting scholar and taught a course on the Arabic Bible during the Summer term 2020.
Rob Turnbull
Robert Turnbull completed a BSc (Mathematics and Astrophysics) at Monash University in Australia from 2001 to 2003. He then worked for Monash Cluster Computing where he was part of a team developing software for computational modelling in geodynamics. From 2010 to 2016, Turnbull completed an MDiv at Ridley College in Melbourne (part of the Australian College of Theology). During this time, he also spent several years working in Jordan where he worked for a centre for deaf adults. There, he learned Arabic and found a love of Arabic manuscripts. He is completing his PhD studies at Ridley College under the supervision of Professors Alexander Treiger and Michael Bird on a version of the Gospels in Arabic found in manuscripts of the Sinai New Finds. He currently works as a Research Data Specialist at the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform at the University of Melbourne. Robert Turnbull has developed of a number of mobile apps for language learning, including one for learning Hebrew and Greek vocabulary from biblical texts and he is working to release apps for learning Arabic vocab from the Qurʾān, Syriac vocab from the Peshitta and, in partnership with Beth Mardutho, an app version of a textbook for Surayt (a new-Aramaic language). His interests include codicology, liturgical development, the Arabic lectionary tradition and New Testament textual criticism. He seeks to use mathematical modelling to assist in the study of textual traditions and is working to develop open-source software for manuscript analysis.
On his scholarly activities, see https://robertturnbull.academia.edu/
Doron Ya’acov
Dr Doron Ya’acov is Senior Lecturer in Hebrew language at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Herzog College. He served as scientific secretary at the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem (2007–2015). He is currently involved in the Academy’s Historical Dictionary Project, and he is academic supervisor of the collection of Jewish community traditions, founded by Prof. Shlomo Morag. He researches the ancient reading traditions of the Bible and rabbinic literature and the Hebrew language of medieval literature, focusing on traditions of Yemenite Jews in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. Ya’acov graduated with a BA in the Bible and Hebrew Language from Herzog Teachers’ College (2001) and received an MA in Hebrew Language from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2005). His PhD dissertation (supervised by Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012) was on The Hebrew Language of the Jews of Southern Yemen (the Sharʻab and ʻAdan [Aden] Communities): Phonetics and Morphology of the Noun in the Mishnah. Within the Biblia Arabica project, he researched a traditional Yemenite Jewish reading of Sa’adia Gaon’s translation of the Bible, including an analysis of the text’s grammar and special phenomena relating to the Yemenite oral tradition of Judeo-Arabic, which he intends to publish as an edition, see his article “The Yemenite Branch of Manuscripts of Rav Sa‘adia Gaon’s Tafsīr” (in Jewish Biblical Exegesis From Islamic Lands).
For his publications, see https://hebrew-academy.org.il/2016/01/27/%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%A7%D7%91/
