treasure trove
A small room on the lower level of TWU’s Norma Marion Alloway Library is lined, floor to ceiling, with filled bookcases. A dehumidifier purrs on the desk. The mysterious bouquet of vintage books—sweet, with undertones of spice, and a peppery finish—is pervasive, but not unpleasant.
Amid cracked leather bindings chased in gold, one discerns titles in exotic languages including Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German. Here, volumes of Thucydides. There, an Armenian-English dictionary.
“Just imagine someone slapping this on the photocopier,” says Sylvia Stopforth, MLIS, Archivist and Assistant Librarian. She turns the marbled pages of a book so fragile it’s hard to picture it on the shelves of a circulating library.
the wevers collection
This room (formerly a study space) houses part of the Wevers Collection—a donation of some 3,000 volumes from the extensive personal library of the late Rev. John William Wevers, ThD, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. A linguist and renowned Septuagint scholar, Wevers once taught and mentored TWU’s own Rob Hiebert, Ph.D., Professor of Old Testament Studies and Director of the Septuagint Institute.
The Septuagint—essentially, the Hebrew to Greek translation of the books we’ve come to know as the Old Testament—was commissioned by Ptolemy II, king of Egypt from 283 BCE to 246 BCE. Most Old Testament quotes found in the New Testament originate in the Septuagint, widely available to Hellenic Jews who no longer spoke Hebrew by early Christian times. Beyond its theological value to biblical scholars, the study of the Septuagint includes comparative linguistics, history, and anthropology— among other disciplines.
Hiebert contributed his translation of Genesis to A New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS). Completed in 2007, nets is the first complete English translation in some 150 years and makes the Septuagint accessible to a general audience.
Nathaniel Dykstra, who studied under Hiebert and works as his research assistant and computer guru, recently defended his thesis in the MA in Biblical Studies program at TWU. “For those of us reading the Bible in modern languages,” he says in an online post, “the difficulty of the translation process is often overlooked.” Scholars, he says, seek insight into the nature of translation and the motives behind it.
the gods must be crazy
Sometimes treasures drop from the sky, like the pop bottle falling from a plane upon the puzzled Kalahari bushman in the 1981 movie, The Gods Must be Crazy—a particular favourite of Wevers’.
When, almost a decade ago, Wevers told Hiebert he was interested in donating his personal library, Hiebert immediately said, “TWU will take it!” and then informed the librarians of his “rash deed.”
A rash deed, to accept a major collection on behalf of a university library? Well, yes. Where to store it? How to maintain it?
“It’s the eternal balancing act,” archivist Stopforth says, “between preservation and providing access. If you can’t preserve a treasure properly, in a considered way, it might not be available to others in the future.”
“The Wevers donation will not be housed separately,” says William Badke, Associate Librarian for TWU and ACTS Seminaries. “It significantly fills a gap in our holdings so that study of the Septuagint can be enhanced at TWU.” A good portion of the collection has already been catalogued and placed in general circulation. Additionally, the library expects another Septuagint collection in coming years from a foremost authority. Albert Pietersma, Ph.D., Wevers’ colleague at U of T, has also promised his personal library to TWU.
There’s tremendous advantage to receiving whole collections like these. “Professor Wevers was a working premier professor in the field of Septuagint studies, and used this collection for his own research and production of scholarly books and articles,” Badke says. “Thus, our students gain access to resources valued by a giant in the field of Septuagint studies.”
“The news of the donated library has spread far and wide,” Hiebert says, “since Professor Wevers was a well known scholar—enhancing TWU’s reputation as an important centre of biblical scholarship.”
Following his death on July 22, 2010, at the age of 91, Wevers’ family endowed the Septuagint Institute—to be renamed the John William Wevers Institute for Septuagint Studies—with a $400,000 gift.
The Institute’s next goal is to ignite interest among other benefactors to establish the John William Wevers Chair in Septuagint Studies. Hiebert’s Institute colleague, Peter Flint, Ph.D., was awarded the prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Dead Sea Scrolls Studies in 2004. To create another chair in Septuagint Studies would ensure TWU’s reputation as the preeminent centre of biblical scholarship and research in Canada. The University is currently preparing to raise the funds needed to establish this chair.
John William Wevers, CA. 1958.
dreams of gold and water
“My fondest dream,” Hiebert says, “would include a fully-endowed chair in Septuagint Studies at TWU, as well as another fully-endowed, full-time research position in the soon-to-benamed John William Wevers Institute for Septuagint Studies.” Hiebert envisions a steady stream of keen and brilliant Septuagint majors in the forthcoming Ph.D. religious studies program at TWU, enthusiastic about becoming involved in the research projects of the Institute fellows (Larry Perkins, Ph.D.; Dirk Büchner, Ph.D.; Flint; and Hiebert himself).
Hiebert, co-editor-in-chief of the newly launched Society of Biblical Literature Commentary on the Septuagint, envisions TWU as the de facto centre for the society.“I anticipate TWU being the hub for the continuing development of the Greek Online Lexical Database (GOLD) and the Web Application for Textual and Exegetical Research (WATER),” he says.
There’s a powerful alchemy in these acronyms. GOLD and WATER, Hiebert explains, are cutting-edge TWU ventures that combine biblical textual scholarship and web technology.
Started in 2005 in response to the challenges of creating a critical edition of the Septuagint, Hiebert and assistant Dykstra embarked on a project to develop web-based tools to facilitate Septuagint research.
GOLD is a Greek language wiki; WATER reflects the depth of Septuagint studies. Since there are many copies of the books comprising the Septuagint (more than 1,000 for Psalms alone, Dykstra notes), one goal is to compare copies and note the variants. Leveraging the power of databases, Dykstra says, allows them to store, preserve, and analyze the text of every copy.
Since scholars from remote locations worldwide will be able to work as collaborators, international interest is strong. Hiebert and Dykstra travelled to conferences in Göttingen, Germany, and Helsinki, Finland, in 2010 to present papers on the development of WATER.
Working with Wevers’ legacy as director of the Institute, aided by high tech tools of GOLD and WATER, Hiebert will continue to nurture student apprentices like Dykstra and others. For, ultimately, the greatest treasure the Institute can attract is its student body.
Hiebert’s fondest hope? “That students from all over the world,” he says, “will see TWU as a prime destination for the study of the Septuagint.”
by Loranne Brown, MFA
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