Willem Th. van Peursen received his Masters in Theology (1995) and Semitic Languages (1995) at Leiden University, where he also did a PhD project on the verbal system in the Hebrew text of Ben Sira under the supervision of Prof. Takamitsu Muraoka (1999; cum laude). After his PhD he carried out a postdoctoral researach project on the Syriac text of Ben Sira, related to the research project Computer-Assisted Linguistic Analysis of the Peshitta (2000–2005). In this project he started to be involved in the computational analysis of Hebrew and Syriac texts. He continued this line of research in his NWO-vidi project Turgama: computer-assisted linguistic analysis of the Peshitta and the Targum (2005–2010). Since then as associate professor of Old Testament at Leiden University (till 2012) and as professor of Old Testament with a special focus on computational analysis at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (from 2012), he has directed various projects on the computational linguistic analysis of the Hebrew Bible and other ancient texts, always trying to keep pace with developments in Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence, as appears from the projects "Morphological Parser for Inflectional Languages Using Deep Learning" (eScience Center, from 2021) and "Seeing The Words: Evaluating AI-generated Biblical Art" (from 2023)
prof. dr. Willem van Peursen
Research
Teaching
Willem van Peursen’s teaching includes the following topics:
- Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, including the BA-course Exegesis Old Testament.
- MA programs Biblical studies and Digital Humanities, which can be followed in the one-year MA programme Exploring a Profile and as a two-year Research MA, including the MA courses ‘Digital Hermeneutics and the Reception of the Bible’ and ‘Analytical tools and the study of the Bible’.
- Two courses in the minor programme “Bible Translation in the Digital Age”:‘Bible Translation and Digital Humanities’ and ‘Bible Translation: Practical Skills’
- Courses in Syriac language and culture, including Cultuur en Literatuur van het Syrisch Christendom, Syriac I and Syriac II.
Ancillary activities
- Peshitta Stichting | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2012-10-01 - present
Ancillary activities are updated daily
Publicaties