Martin Abegg

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Martin Abegg (2016).

Martin G. Abegg Jr. (born March 6, 1950 in Peoria ) is an American Protestant theologian and Qumran researcher .

Life

Abegg first studied geology at Bradley University in his hometown of Peoria. After completing his studies, he moved to Seattle in 1972 and ran an industrial supply outlet there. He was teaching Sunday school classes in his ward in the late 1970s , and this inspired him to take language classes at Northwest Baptist Seminary in Tacoma . He then taught Hebrew at that seminary for two years and pastor a church in Vashon Island for one year .

In 1984 he decided to continue his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and it was here that he first came into contact with the Dead Sea Scrolls . It was more of a coincidence. Abegg had attended a seminar on the Septuagint with Emanuel Tov , and it turned out that Tov had changed his plans and wanted to examine biblical texts from Qumran instead of the Septuagint version of the book of Jeremiah. At first disappointed, Abegg began to be interested in the subject.

After returning to the United States, Abegg continued his Qumran studies. The Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati awarded him a doctorate in 1993 for his critical edition of the so-called Rule of War of Qumran (1QM). Abegg's collaboration with Ben Zion Wacholder began here at the Hebrew Union College , as a result of which a preliminary edition of the unpublished texts from Cave 4 could be presented to the public. The appearance of the first volume in 1991 contributed to the fact that the publication of the Qumran texts, which had stalled since 1960, was reorganized.

Martin Abegg taught at the Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake from 1992 to 1995. He then moved to British Columbia with his family . There he holds the Ben Zion Juniper Chair in Qumran Studies at Trinity Western University in Langley . Together with Peter Flint, he heads the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute there.

Martin Abegg did his doctorate with a text-critical edition of 1QM.

Qumran research

Ben Zion Wacholder had received permission from John Strugnell to have photocopies made of the 2,500-page Qumran Concordance that the editorial team had created for internal use. The meanwhile blind juniper had been waiting for decades for the texts from Cave 4 to be published. The concordance showed every Hebrew or Aramaic word in its context. Wacholder's doctoral student at the time, Abegg, came up with the idea of ​​entering every single entry of the concordance into a computer and, using reverse engineering , reconstructing the transcriptions of the Qumran texts that had served as the basis for creating the concordance. Since the computer only accepted texts that were written from left to right, each Hebrew or Aramaic entry had to be read in from back to front. Abegg developed the Glue program , which made this procedure superfluous. Then he still had to enter 42,000 lines in Hebrew and 15,000 lines in Aramaic. He was able to hand over the first 50 pages of the reconstructed text to Wacholder in early 1991. He wanted to have the texts printed immediately, but Abegg worried that his scientific career might end before it began. Colleagues advised against publication. When the first volume finally appeared in print in September 1991, the monopoly of the previous editors (the so-called Scrollery) was broken.

Works

  • (together with Ben Zion Wacholder) A preliminary edition of the unpublished Dead Sea scrolls. The Hebrew and Aramaic texts from Cave Four reconstructed and edited , 4 volumes. Washington DC 1991 to 1995.
  • (together with James Bowley and Edward Cook) The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance , Leiden 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Cast of Characters: The Dead Sea Scrolls and why they matter - The Cartel Buster: Martin Abegg Jr. In: biblicalarchaeology.org. Biblical Archeology Society, April 16, 2012, accessed February 15, 2018 .
  2. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran . Tübingen 2016, p. 23-24 .
  3. a b Jason Kalman: From The War Scroll to A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: Marty Abegg… In His Own Words . In: Kipp Davis, Kyung S. Baek, Peter W. Flint, Dorothy Peters (Eds.): The War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Martin G. Abegg on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday . Brill, Leiden 2016, p. 25 .