The Celebration is now online on HBT’s video page! The Home for Bible Translators and Scholars celebrated 20 years of training translators in the land of the Bible (1995-2015). While much more took place – with a celebratory 10-day study tour as well as special gatherings – the academic celebration was focused on the 29th March Conference held in cooperation with the Rothberg International School (RIS), Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The theme of the conference was “Text in Context: the Significance of Studying the Text of the Bible in the Land of the Bible”.
We were honored to have warm greetings from the RIS Provost, Hebrew University, Prof. Malka Rappaport Hovav as well as salutations from Dr. Eric Saranovitz, Director of the Special Programs at RIS and Yoel Nesson, former head of Special Programs. HBT Co-Founder Dr. Halvor Ronning shared about HBT’s achievements in theory and HBT’s Associate Dean Brian (Baruch) Kvasnica shared about the academic program and scope of HBT.
The rich day had three sections surrounding Hebrew, Context, and HBT’s past, present and future – an smorgasbord of lectures! In the first section of the The Importance of the Original Context of the Text, Prof Wayne Horowitz gave a stimulating lecture on the Assyrian siege of Judah and Dr. Ronnie Sim brought an erudite lecture on the context of Abraham land purchase and the tacit cultural data.
Dr. Aaron Hornkohl started out the second section entitled The Importance of the Source Language – Hebrew. He provided a brilliant synthesis of his more technical SBL paper on Modern and Biblical Hebrew acquisition. He was followed after lunch by Prof Emmanuel Tov on the Importance of the Hebrew Text for Bible Translation and then Dr. Uche Aaron on how mastering Hebrew can tip the scales in enabling translators to clarify the text.
In the last and third section entitled, The Home For Bible Translators: Past, Present, and Future, we learned about HBT through the keen analysis provided by Dr. Katy Barnwell on the past, Dr. Samy Tioye on the present, and Dr. Bob Carter on the future of HBT.
All videos by Jan Karnis Productions – Hope you enjoy!