Edward Greene Memorial Lecture
Faith in Translation: The story of the Gaelic Bibles of Ireland and Scotland
Donald E. Meek is a native of the Inner Hebridean island of Tiree, and a first-tongue speaker of Scottish Gaelic. Schooled in Tiree and Oban, he took a degree in Celtic Studies at Glasgow University (M.A., 1971, and Ph.D. 1982) and in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge (Emmanuel College, B.A. 1973).
He held a variety of posts at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen (where he was Professor of Celtic, 1993-2001), and finally Edinburgh again (where he was Professor of Scottish and Gaelic Studies, 2002-2008).
His extensive publications (which were recognised by D.Litt. degrees of both Glasgow (2011) and Cambridge (2016)) cover medieval and modern topics, language, literature and history, relating largely to the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland, but occasionally covering aspects of the shared Gaelic inheritance of Ireland and Scotland.
In the mid-1980s, he undertook an orthographic revision of the standard Gaelic Bible for the Scottish Bible Society. This was published in 1992, and it was followed by his edition of a diglot Gaelic/English New Testament in 2002. It was in this context that he made the acquaintance – briefly but unforgettably – of Edward Greene, who was keenly interested in Bible translation, and a generous supporter of such ventures.
To register, please contact daniel.gerrard@greenes.institute.
