John W. Wevers, R.I.P.

JOHN W. WEVERS, requiescat in pace. I am sorry to relay the following from Jack Sasson's Agade List:

From Paul E. Dion came this sad news:
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Sadly, on July 23, Professor Emeritus John William Wevers, of the University of Toronto, passed away at the age of 91. Prof. Wevers was struck by a cerebral hemorrhage in the Toronto nursing home where he had lived since July 2008. A memorial service will be held in Toronto on Sept. 11.

During his long tenure at the University of Toronto, Prof. Wevers had brought the Department of Near Eastern Studies (now merged into the Dept. of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations) to unprecedented complement and quality; he himself became an undisputed master of Septuagint Studies during the last decades of the 20th century, having produced the critical edition of the whole Greek Pentateuch for the Göttingen Septuaginta Unternehmen, and added further text-critical studies, translations, and commentaries to each of the five main volumes of this edition. Prof. Wevers's knowledge and contribution extended to several other languages; he had, in particular, made significant contributions to Classical Hebrew scholarship, as well as vigorously promoting its study at the University of Toronto.

Sizable autobiographical sketches are expected to come out, and will be announced on the web site of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies when available.

[A Festschrift in his honor was published in 1984: DE SEPTUAGINTA. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on his sixty-fifth birthday (ed. Albert Pietersma and Claude Cox; Benben Publications: Mississauga).

A brief notice on him with photo is at the website of the Calvin Theological Seminary from which he received a Distinguished Alumni
Award for 2010 http://www.calvinseminary.edu/events/commencement/2010/distinguishedAlumni.php.]

The IOSCS website is here.

Professor Wevers made massive contributions to our understanding of the text of the Septuagint. His editions of the LXX books of the Pentateuch in the Göttingen series will be standard reference works for many years to come.