Henning Ambjörn Sjörs, author of Motion, Voice, and Mood in the Semitic Verb, joined us for a Q&A on his current research and the impact it will have on the field.

Can you tell us about your current research, and how you became interested in the topic?

I am currently a member of a research team at the University of Cambridge, England, that aims to produce a new grammar of Biblical Hebrew. The grammar has been commissioned by Oxford University Press, and the research project is led by Professor Geoffrey Khan. My responsibilities include writing original sections relating to Biblical Hebrew syntax, undertaking primary research on the topics when necessary, and collating different traditions of Biblical Hebrew, such as biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran and medieval Masoretic manuscripts. As a member of the team, I am able to wholeheartedly focus on one of my great interests, Biblical Hebrew grammar.

How do you anticipate your research will help inspire other research in the field?

Whereas previous grammars of Biblical Hebrew have tended to focus on a single tradition of the language—the Tiberian Masoretic tradition—the upcoming reference grammar will include a diversity of traditions: Qumran and medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; transcriptions of Biblical Hebrew from antiquity to the Middle Ages in Greek and Latin; various oral reading traditions of Biblical Hebrew; and interpretative history as reflected in ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic translations. Thus, we hope to broaden the horizons of the field of Biblical Hebrew studies and Biblical Studies in general by calling attention to the relevance of the diverse collection of Hebrew traditions for linguistics, the history of interpretation, and the history of Judaism and Christianity themselves.

How has technology affected your research over time?

Since the project in Cambridge aims to document diversity in interpretation among the ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible, I use Bible study programs on a daily basis to study not just the Hebrew text, but the Septuagint, Vulgate, Peshitta, and Targums. In my previous research, I have also used computerized corpora of other languages, such as Arabic poetry and Old Assyrian. Being able to search large-scale text corpora, even when not morphologically or syntactically tagged, seriously facilitates linguistic inquiries.