Thursday, September 07, 2017

Brady at the University of Kentucky

INTERVIEW: Get to Know Christian Brady, Inaugural Dean of the Lewis Honors College (Tim Tracy, University of Kentucky News). Targumist Chris Brady recently made a move to the University of Kentucky. His work has been mentioned from time to time on PaleoJudaica. (See here and links.) This interview tells us some more about his new job and gives and overview of his academic work.
This semester, the head of one of the most highly regarded honors programs in the country joined the UK family as the inaugural dean of the UK Lewis Honors College. Christian Brady for 10 years — from 2006 to 2016 — served as dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. Previously, he directed the honors program at Tulane University.

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What is your academic background? I am particularly interested in how people read and interpret the Bible throughout all ages and in all cultures. My primary area of research is in biblical interpretation, specifically rabbinic interpretation of the Bible within Targumic literature. A “Targum” refers to the Jewish Aramaic rendering of the Hebrew Bible; it is a unique sort of translation. A Targum renders into Aramaic every word of the biblical text in its proper order, but often will add additional material, woven seamlessly into the newly formed text. My particular area of interest is how this additional material transforms the meaning of the biblical text in question.

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