VISITING

Andrei Desnitsky researches social metaphors in the Bible and their intercultural transmission

Since June 2024, Andrei Desnitsky has been a guest researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. His stay, which will last until May 2025, will enable him to complete a publication on early Christianity and prepare a project proposal for DFG funding.

Research focus and academic career

Desnitsky was born in Moscow and spent most of his life there. He worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IOS) in the Ancient Orient department. He also worked as a consultant for the Bible Translation Institute, which deals with translations of the Holy Scriptures into languages of the former Soviet Union.
In 1997, Desnitsky completed his doctorate at the IOS with a thesis on the translation technique of the Septuagint in the context of Hellenistic poetics, in which he analyzed chants and benedictions in the Pentateuch. His further research was dedicated to the structure of biblical texts, which led to his habilitation in 2010 with a thesis on the nature and function of biblical parallelism. Due to his significant scientific contributions, he was appointed Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2015. Desnitsky's particular expertise in the theory and methodology of modern Bible translation is also demonstrated by the fact that he recently published his own translation of the New Testament into Russian.
Due to his critical stance towards the war in Ukraine, Andrei Desnitsky left Russia in the fall of 2022. Since then, he has lived with his wife in various countries, including Lithuania, Montenegro and Germany. In the first half of 2024, he was a visiting researcher at the University of Münster before accepting the invitation from CERES.

Research project on metaphors and social institutions in the New Testament

At CERES, Desnitsky is now focusing in particular on preparing a DFG funding proposal. In his research project, he is investigating how social metaphors in the New Testament are translated in reference to the background of different cultural and religious contexts. For his analysis, he draws on Russian, Crimean Tatar and Azerbaijani translations of the Bible, which he has studied in detail. Since comparable studies have hardly existed in the specialist literature to date, his research project makes an important contribution to both philology and religious studies. We wish Andrei Desnitsky a productive and insightful time at CERES and every success with his DFG application.