The Bible in Its Traditions

On this day after Notre-Dame de Lourdes, let us believe in miracles more than ever!

Here is a little one, dear Friends:

Our developers have switched BibleArt to “live” mode for computers, as was already the case for mobile devices. We were waiting for this crucial step to resume this journal of the construction site of our digital biblical cathedral. Indeed, from now on all your corrections and suggestions can be made immediately!

And here are two other signs of hope sent by the generous intelligence of fortunate people:

We have received support for 2025 from the Société pour la Gestion des Droits d’auteurs, the cultural body of the Princely Government of Monaco, and from the Porticus Foundation.

On behalf of all of you, beneficiaries of our work, let them be warmly thanked here!

For you, therefore, the news of our construction site in the heart of this winter 2025,

full of promises of spring.

 

Frère Olivier-Thomas Venard

 

Like any ongoing project, our tool is constantly being improved. We thank you for your indulgence if you encounter some slowness in loading the notes.


WORKS COMPLETED

Foundations

In the translator’s workshop
Diverse facets of our art of translating.

The scientific topicality of the Bible, the foundation of our culture, is a hot topic today among historians. Several research programs here in Jerusalem study the fruitful encounter of Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures at the time when Christianity and rabbinic Judaism were born in parallel.

The Bible, a hybrid of three cultures

Word of the month
Words discovered, rediscovered or proposed, throughout our translation work.

“Ventilate.” The word often appears under the inspired pen of Saint Jerome: would it be possible that the prophets spoke like…the Tontons Flingueurs?

VENTILATE with God!


Walls and Buttresses

Contexts: welcome to our home!
Topography, archaeology, sociology, ancient cultures.

While waiting to welcome you, first archaeological tour in what was the largest Byzantine monastery in Jersualem, the Domaine Saint-Étienne where the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem is located, which runs our program…

The place of the Protomartyr of Christ.

 

 

 


Ornaments

 

Reception in visual arts

 

Each of the feasts of the Holy Mother of God provides an opportunity to revisit an experience that is at the heart of the human condition: motherhood. The greatest artists have examined its depths. It has even become a genre. It was particularly present in the work of the most famous painter of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso, which we continue to explore as a pivotal moment in the history of art, thanks to the Almine & Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation.

 

Brief history of maternity hospitals.

 

 

Picasso’s work is at the hinge between traditional painting and the multifaceted experimentation of contemporary arts.

 


Work Monitoring
Portrait of the month

The word to the builders of our biblical cathedral.

fr Łukasz Popko, Doctor of Biblical Sciences, Professor at the Ecole Biblique, Director of our Editorial Board

BibleArt, for me…

… he is the youngest and most flamboyant offspring of our research program The Bible in its Traditions. I have been part of the Editorial Board since I arrived as a teacher at the School in 2015. That’s already nine years!

Our first major task was preparing the publication of Hosea, our English edition of the book of Hosea. In The Bible in its Traditions everything revolves around the biblical text. So I started my work with the translation and all the annotation directly related to the words: textual criticism, vocabulary, figures, and this remains my priority to this day.

My mother tongue is Polish so I cannot produce the translation myself, but I make sure that the source text is represented as closely as possible. If you find reading our translations stranger than other French translations, it may also be my fault! Because as an “outsider” who tests the limits of languages, I often bother our collaborators with questions like: “Could we render this play on words?” What a pity to let this Semitism go!”

I am also preparing a new edition of the Second Book of Kings for Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Working on the BEST project is also an opportunity for me to broaden my research to the New Testament. It is very important for specialists not to lock themselves into their research.

My motto…

It’s “less is more”! I don’t always follow this phrase, but I think it gives a good direction, to choose quality over quantity: in words, in friends, in books, and even in food!

My favourite book in the Bible…

This is the book I am studying: for the past four days it has been the book of Job.

Read more.


YOUR SAY

“A thousand times thank you for this collection of new advances in the understanding and genesis of all these books, thanks to the incessant work of the researchers of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem.

Believe that I will not hesitate to distribute your work to my friends, particularly those interested in the Bible.

I am very grateful to you.

With my deepest respect,

J.-F. Deschamps, Paris”

 

“Dear brothers, thank you for this circular, charged with a perfumed zephyr!

We want to keep your message for a long time, witness to the characteristic work of the EBAF, since its foundation.

Patience and science, acribie and ambition, tradition and innovation: everything is put at the service of the noblest of projects…

Very faithfully,

G.-M. Marty, Toulouse”

 

I support the enrichment of BibleArt translations and annotations

 

Each month, we share with you the progress of the BibleArt project: a new feature on the biblical text, a new feature on the content surrounding Scripture and a new feature on the reception of the biblical text, particularly in the cultural environment. But also, focus on a particular theme or point, meetings, portraits, testimonies, etc.
 
*Images taken from Spinello Artenio (ca. 1350-1410), Foundation of Alexandria, scene from the HIstories of Alexander III, fresco, 280 x 370 cm., 1407-1408 (detail), ballroom of the Public Palace, Siena, Tuscany, italy (UNESCO World Heritage List since 1995).

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