Jean-Dominique Barthélemy: a tribute

By Jan de Waard, UBS Interregional Coordinator of Work on Ancient Languages and Texts

FRIBOURG, Switzerland — Professor Jean-Dominique Barthélemy died on February 10 at the age of 81. His much-regretted departure brings to an end more than 30 years of co-operation with UBS.

Dominique, as he was known, was one of the leading Old Testament textual scholars of the last century. He was the inspiring co-ordinator of the UBS-sponsored Hebrew Old Testament Text Project Committee which identified almost 6,000 Hebrew Old Testament problem cases on which many translators are lost without adequate help.

The result of the endeavours of the committee, on which Professor Hans-Peter Rüger, also the former chairman of the UBS European Region Translation Committee, played an important role, was the publication of the Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Project in five volumes. These were a tremendous help to desperate translators. It was possible to publish only three volumes of the final report in French (Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament 50/1 – 50/3) during Dominique’s lifetime, but these allowed scholars to become convinced of the significance of the committee’s decisions.

Unfortunately, the finishing touches were not made to Psalms and Proverbs before his death, and it can only be hoped that they will appear posthumously in their final version.

Dominique not only influenced his own generation. He also paved the way for the next century: the preparation of the forthcoming Biblia Hebraica Quinta and of a series of Handbooks in which the relevance of his work is made clearer to translators.

As the UBS officer responsible after the departure of Eugene Nida, and as a pupil and friend of Dominique, the best thing I can do is to quote the dedication of the last volume of the final report to Hans-Peter Rüger: “A Peter qui, déjà attablé avec les Prophètes, sourit maintenant de la naïveté de nos balbutiements.” (“To Peter, who, already seated at the table of the Prophets, just smiles at the naivety of our stammering”.)