Father Francisco Martins, Portuguese Jesuit and member of the Jesuit community in the Holy land for the past few years, has just received approval of his doctoral dissertation. We congratulate him on this major accomplishment.

He began his doctoral studies in November 2016, under the direction of Dr. Ronnie Goldstein. The title of his dissertation is: Treasures Lost: A Literary Study of the Despoliation Notices in the Book of Kings. In it, he analyzed the literary motif (the despoliation of the treasures motif) in a number of short texts in the Book of Kings, combining the classical historical-critical methods with a detailed intertextual approach. Those texts and the literary motif was also read in the light of the sources from the ancient Near East (especially the sources in Akkadian).

Next year, Father Francisco will be doing post-doctoral research at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA) and will be working with noted biblical scholar Professor Gary Anderson.