Dr. Stephen N. Lambden
In the 1960s and 1970s I became fascinated with the philological, doctrinal, historical and theological positions of the Bābī-Bahā'ī religions. After obtaining a BA Hons. degree in Religious Studies and studying Biblical Hebrew, a little Greek and Syriac, then Arabic and Persian, I commenced doctoral research in 1982 at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) with Dr. Denis MacEoin (then lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies). I worked on the thesis:
Some Aspects of Isrā'īliyyāt and the Emergence of the Bābī-Bahā'ī Interpretation of the Bible
Following a near fatal car crash outside Lancaster (UK) in April 1987 serious disability and several months of hospitalization resulted. This demanded the suspension of the abovementioned doctoral research for more than a decade (1987-1998). During these years, I learned to walk and do other basic things again and concentrated on expanding my personal library. I struggled to keep up to date with the fast evolving fields of Shī`ī, Shaykhī and Bābī-Bahā'ī Studies. Numerous friends and colleagues aided me in my attempt to amass Biblical, Islamic and Bābī-Bahā'ī primary sources such that I completed my Ph.D in 2002.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This website is in the process of being setup to share old, current and ongoing work in the fields of Biblical, Islamic, Shī`ī-Shaykhī and Bābī-Bahā'ī Studies. It will replace my now dated, unrevised and inadequate UK based site: http://www.hurqalya.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ Many of the text files to be posted here are written with Unicode fonts (e.g. Arial Unicode MS, Times New Roman, etc) which exist within many recent (e.g. Microsoft) operating systems. This generally makes visible the academic transliterations used on this Website including, for example, Arabic, Persian and the biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) as well as that of key scriptural languages of major world religions. For the academic transliteration used here the Unicode font should contain: Basic Latin; Latin-1; Latin Extended-A; Latin Extended-B and Latin extended Additional. For Arabic and Persian and certain of the scriptural languages (Hebrew and Greek, etc) this Website often makes use of an expanded Unicode version of Times New Roman.
Set forth here will be English translations from Arabic, Persian and other sometimes scriptural languages of largely Islamic, Shī`ī -Shaykhī and Bābī-Bahā'ī primary, secondary and/ or tertiary sources some dating as far back as 1978. Many are distinctly provisional in the sense of being constantly subject to revision and correction. In this connection I would be delighted to receive critical suggestions for improvement, preferably communicated by email to my UC-Merced email address = slambden@ucmerced.edu In addition to the Web publishing of revised versions of portions of my work, the now 30 year old periodical Bahā'ī Studies Bulletin (BSB) will gradually be revised and re-published here. At some stage in the future it is hoped that this or a related site will also update my other ongoing periodical project entitled Syzygy: A Journal of Bābī-Bahā'ī Studies. This latter journal will be largely concerned with the philological, textual, academic analysis, study and translation of Bābī-Bahā’ī primary scriptural sources and historical issues associated therewith.
