Jan Joosten | |
---|---|
Born | Ekeren, Belgium | 17 May 1959
Criminal charges | Possession of images and videos of child pornography |
Criminal penalty | One year in prison |
Ecclesiastical career | |
Religion | Christianity |
Church | United Protestant Church in Belgium |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Biblical studies |
Institutions |
Jan Joosten (born 17 May 1959) is a Belgian biblical scholar and convicted sex offender. [1] [2] From 2014 to 2020,he was Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford; [3] he was previously Professor of the Old Testament at the University of Strasbourg. [4] [5] In June 2020,he was found guilty of possessing child pornography,and was dismissed from his Chair at Oxford. [1] [6]
Joosten completed his studies in 1981 in Brussels. His areas of interest are the Septuagint,Syriac versions of the Bible,a biblical manuscript found at Qumran,and the Diatessaron. He was a pastor for six years in Belgium. [1] He was,until June 2020,also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature. He is considered one of the most distinguished biblical scholars of his generation. [7] As of Friday 3 July 2020,Joosten was no longer employed by Oxford University nor was he a trustee of Christ Church College,and he was no longer affiliated in any way with the institution. [6]
Joosten was president of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. [8]
On 18 June 2020,Joosten was sentenced by the Saverne (he lives in the Bas-Rhin region) criminal court to one year in prison and placed on the sex offender registry in France for holding 27,000 images and one thousand videos of child pornography,including images of children being raped. [1] [2] [9] Joosten admitted to offences dating from 2014 to May 2020 after being exposed by Strasbourg LION (laboratoire d’investigation opérationnelle du numérique) as part of a lengthy investigation. [10] Joosten downloaded the images over a six-year period. He was 'relieved to be arrested'. [11] He described his addiction to pornographic images and videos of children as a "secret garden" that contradicted who he is as a person. [12]
On his conviction,he was not immediately incarcerated. His sentence would be supervised,and he would have to complete a three-year programme of treatment. [1] He was prohibited from any activity bringing him into contact with minors. Joosten has four children. [1]
Rémi Gounelle,the Dean of the Facultéde théologie protestante de Strasbourg,released this statement following Joosten's arrest:
Nous sommes tous tombés de haut. Il n'y avait aucune suspicion de ce genre, aucun problème avec les étudiants. C'est une affaire moralement très choquante mais qui ne remet pas en cause les grandes compétences pédagogiques et scientifiques de Jan Joosten. C’est surtout profondément triste. Jan est tombé dans une forme d'addiction dont il n'a pas réussi à sortir. Il luttait contre ses pulsions négatives sans parvenir à y échapper. Cela nous montre la complexité de l’être humain. Jan est un collègue très apprécié et il vivait avec ça. Cela rend humble de découvrir cette addiction, cette fragilité. [11]
Gounelle argued that, whilst the unmasking of Joosten as a paedophile was deeply shocking, it does not call into question his pedagogical and scientific skills. [11] Joosten still holds a role at the University of Strasbourg. [7]
In a public statement that noted his "shocking crimes and... the suffering endured by those in the images he accessed," Oxford University announced Joosten's removal from employment. [13]
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic, are a sub-group of the Semitic languages containing many varieties that originated among the Arameans in the ancient region of Syria. For over three thousand years, Aramaic varieties served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. Several varieties are still spoken in the 21st century: the Neo-Aramaic languages.
The Diatessaron is the most prominent early gospel harmony, and was created by Tatian, an Assyrian early Christian apologist and ascetic. Tatian sought to combine all the textual material he found in the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—into a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death. However, and in contradistinction to most later gospel harmonists, Tatian appears not to have been motivated by any aspiration to validate the four separate canonical gospel accounts; or to demonstrate that, as they stood, they could each be shown as being without inconsistency or error.
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond those contained in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as canonically used in the tradition of mainstream Rabbinical Judaism. The additional books were composed in Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, but in most cases, only the Greek version has survived to the present. It is the oldest and most important complete translation of the Hebrew Bible made by the Jews. Some targums translating or paraphrasing the Bible into Aramaic were also made around the same time.
4 Maccabees, also called the Fourth Book of Maccabees and possibly originally known as On the Sovereignty of Reason, is a book written in Koine Greek, likely in the 1st or early 2nd century. It is a homily or philosophic discourse praising the supremacy of pious reason over passion. It is a work that combines Hellenistic Judaism with influence from Greek philosophy, particularly the school of Stoicism.
Hexapla is the term for a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex word-for-word comparison of the original Hebrew Scriptures with the Greek Septuagint translation and with other Greek translations. The term especially and generally applies to the edition of the Old Testament compiled by the theologian and scholar Origen, sometime before 240.
In contrast to the variety of absolute or personal names of God in the Old Testament, the New Testament uses only two, according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia.
The Tetragrammaton, or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym יהוה, the name of God in Judaism and Christianity. The four letters, written and read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass". While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally.
Eugene Charles Ulrich is an American Dead Sea scrolls scholar and the John A. O'Brien Professor emeritus of Hebrew Scripture and Theology in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is chief editor of the biblical texts of the Dead Sea scrolls and one of the three general editors of the Scrolls International Publication Project. Ulrich has worked under two editors in chief on the scrolls project, namely John Strugnell and Emanuel Tov.
The Western Aramaic languages represent a specific group of Aramaic languages once spoken widely throughout the ancient Levant, from ancient Nabatea and Judea, across Palestine and Samaria, further to Palmyra and Phoenicia, and into Syria proper. The group was divided into several regional variants, spoken mainly by the Arameans and ancient People of the Levant, such as the people of Palestine before Islam. All of the Western Aramaic languages are today considered extinct, except Western Neo-Aramaic.
The New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title (NETS) is a modern translation of the Septuagint (LXX), that is the scriptures used by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews of antiquity. The translation was sponsored by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS). The Psalms were published in 2000 and the complete Septuagint in 2007.
Patrick Balkany is a French politician.
Joseph White (1745–1814) was an English orientalist and theologian, Laudian Professor of Arabic and then Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford.
George Eulan Howard was an American Hebraist, noted for his publication of an old Hebrew edition of Matthew. He was a full Professor Emeritus and Head of the Department of Religion and Hebrew (Ret.) at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Howard also was a former President of the Society of Biblical Literature, Southeastern Region.
Takamitsu Muraoka is a Japanese Orientalist. He was Chair of Hebrew, Israelite Antiquities and Ugaritic at Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1991 till 2003 and is most notable for his studies of Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics and the ancient translations of the Bible, notably of the Septuagint.
The Regius Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford is a professorship at the University of Oxford, founded by Henry VIII in 1546.
The manuscript 4Q120 is a Septuagint manuscript (LXX) of the biblical Book of Leviticus written on papyrus, found at Qumran. The Rahlfs-No. is 802. Palaoegraphycally it dates from the first century BCE. Currently the manuscript is housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Aramaic studies are scientific studies of the Aramaic language and cultural history of Arameans. As a specific field within Semitic studies, Aramaic studies are closely related to similar disciplines, like Hebraic studies and Arabic studies.
Sidney Jellicoe was a British-Canadian dean emeritus, biblical scholar, Harrold professor of Divinity, theological educator, and priest.
AlbertPietersma is Dutch professor emeritus of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek in the Department of Near and Middle East Civilizations at the University of Toronto‘s Faculty of Arts and Science.