Last week we learned the sad news that our Greek Paul Project team at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki fell victim to the anarchist/antifa rioting that took place both there an in Athens (see news coverage here and here and here).
In the northern city of Thessaloniki, protesters set up barricades in the streets and hurled Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas. The running clashes went on for hours, and vandals also set fires at two subway construction sites.
There was a lull in the violence during a peaceful evening protest in Thessaloniki but riots continued later. At least 15 people were detained.
Rioters looted items of value and destroyed items left behind, polluting the campus with used syringes, graffiti, and unbearable-smelling chemicals. While the team’s transcription data are safely stored in Münster, all of their local project files have been lost with the computer equipment the looters stole (which was donated by Museum of the Bible last year). Given the economic crisis in Greece, destruction costing an estimated 100,000€ is a significant blow, especially to the student team involved in this work.
Our teammates in Thessaloniki have been producing Greek transcription data for the two Thessalonian letters with the goal of producing both an Editio Critica Maior edition of the letters and a critical Byzantine text for the Greek Orthodox Church. The current Patriarchal Greek New Testament used by the church is the 1904/1912 Antoniades edition. Prof. Ekaterini Tsalampouni leads the team in Thessaloniki and is editor for the Thessalonian letters.