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Adrianus van Selms
Born	(1906-01-22)22 January 1906 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	30 April 1984(1984-04-30) (aged 78) Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
Education	Utrecht University
Occupations	Theologian, biblical scholar, Semitic philologist, minister and academic
Employer	University of Pretoria
Known for	Old Testament scholarship, Semitic languages, Arabic Afrikaans studies and criticism of apartheid theology
Spouse	Johanna Schrijvers (m. 1930)
Children	3
Parent(s)	Jan van Selms Jannetje Alida de Kievid

Adrianus van Selms (22 January 1906 – 30 April 1984) was a Dutch theologian, Old Testament scholar, Semitic philologist, biblical archaeologist and minister who spent most of his academic career in South Africa. He joined the University of Pretoria in 1938, becoming professor and head of its Department of Semitic Languages in 1948. He held the chair until his retirement in 1971 and also taught biblical archaeology in the theological faculty of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHK) from 1938 to 1962.

Van Selms published widely on the Hebrew Bible, the languages and cultures of the ancient Near East, Ugaritic, the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical archaeology, Christian doctrine and Islam in South Africa. His study of early Muslim religious texts written in Arabic script but largely in Afrikaans became an important contribution to the history of written Afrikaans.

He was also a critic of racial segregation within the NHK. He contributed to the 1960 anti-apartheid theological collection Vertraagde Aksie (Delayed Action), opposed the racial exclusion contained in Article III of the church's constitution, resigned from its theological faculty in 1962 and severed his membership of the denomination in 1967.

Early life and education

Van Selms was born in Amsterdam on 22 January 1906, the son of Jan van Selms and Jannetje Alida de Kievid. He attended primary school and the gymnasium in Hilversum. In 1923, he began studying literature and theology at Utrecht University.

In 1926, Van Selms accompanied the Assyriologist Franz M. Th. de Liagre Böhl to Palestine, where he assisted with Ernst Sellin's archaeological excavations at Shechem. He subsequently attended a course at the German Evangelical Institute for the Study of the Holy Land in Jerusalem under the Old Testament scholar Albrecht Alt. The experience gave him early practical training in biblical archaeology and strengthened his interest in interpreting biblical texts in their ancient Near Eastern setting.

Van Selms passed his candidate examination in theology in 1927 and in Semitic languages in 1928. He continued his postgraduate research while serving as a minister and received his doctorate in theology from Utrecht University on 13 June 1933. His supervisor was the theologian and scholar of religion H. Th. Obbink.

His dissertation, De Babylonische termini voor zonde en hun betekenis voor onze kennis van het Babylonische zondebesef (The Babylonian terms for sin and their significance for our knowledge of the Babylonian conception of sin), examined Akkadian terminology and Babylonian religious thought. The study attracted scholarly attention and led to invitations to write commentaries on Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles for the Dutch series Tekst en Uitleg.

Ministry and family

In 1930, Van Selms became a minister of the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk at Hansweert in Zeeland. On 21 May 1930 he married Johanna Schrijvers in Arnhem. They had three children: Marrigje Marianne, born in 1932; Jeanette Silvia, born in 1933; and Adrianus, born in 1936.

Van Selms moved to a congregation in Culemborg in 1935. Alongside his pastoral work, he continued writing on Old Testament interpretation, biblical archaeology, Christian doctrine and devotional subjects. In 1938, he received an honourable release from his congregation to accept an academic appointment in South Africa.

University of Pretoria

Van Selms arrived at the University of Pretoria in 1938 as senior lecturer in Semitic languages in the Faculty of Arts. His appointment supplemented the work of Berend Gemser, who had helped establish the academic study of the Old Testament and Semitic languages at Pretoria.

At the same time Van Selms accepted a part-time appointment in the NHK's section of the Faculty of Theology. He taught a year-long course in biblical archaeology and occasionally taught Old Testament subjects. His teaching brought students of theology into sustained contact with the archaeology, history, languages and literature of the ancient Near East.

After returning from wartime service, Van Selms resumed his position as senior lecturer in 1946. Two years later, he was promoted to professor and head of the Department of Semitic Languages, a position he held until 1971. He trained postgraduate students in languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic and Modern Hebrew.

Van Selms supervised and examined research across several disciplines, including Old Testament studies, Semitic languages, Judaica, law and sociology. A number of his former students subsequently occupied chairs in theology and Semitic studies at South African universities. He was also a co-founder and regular contributor to the Old Testament Society of South Africa.

Second World War

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Van Selms entered the service of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. He was promoted to the rank of captain in 1942. After the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war from 1942 until 1945.

During his captivity Van Selms acted as a minister among fellow prisoners. He later referred to this ministry as the “church behind the barbed wire”. His publications during the East Indies period included numerous contributions to the Indisch Weekblad, while his devotional work God en de menschen was reprinted in Bandoeng in 1941.

Van Selms returned to South Africa in 1946. The University of Pretoria had retained his academic position during his absence.

Scholarship

Old Testament studies

Van Selms approached the Old Testament through close philological analysis combined with the study of its historical and social setting. He resisted strict allegiance to a single scholarly school and frequently proposed original interpretations based on comparative Semitic evidence.

His early biblical commentaries included Ezra en Nehemia (1935), I Kronieken (1939) and II Kronieken (1947). He later co-edited the Dutch commentary series De Prediking van het Oude Testament with A. S. van der Woude. For that series he wrote a two-volume commentary on Genesis, three volumes on Jeremiah and Lamentations, and a two-volume commentary on Job.

Van Selms regarded philology, history and theology as interdependent. He argued that textual criticism could not be separated mechanically from exegesis and often interpreted biblical language in relation to Akkadian, Aramaic, Arabic and other Semitic parallels.

His research ranged across biblical law, royal terminology, Israelite institutions, Hebrew grammar, the Psalms, prophecy and wisdom literature. He also contributed entries to reference works including the New Bible Dictionary, the supplementary volume of The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

Ugaritic and ancient Near Eastern studies

Van Selms made a significant contribution to the interpretation of Ugaritic texts, which had become available to scholars following the discovery of Ugarit in 1928. His 1954 monograph Marriage and Family Life in Ugaritic Literature examined marriage customs, family structures and legal terminology in Ugaritic sources.

He continued to publish on difficult Ugaritic words and texts in journals including Ugarit-Forschungen and the Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages. His comparative knowledge of Semitic languages allowed him to relate Ugaritic evidence to Hebrew vocabulary and biblical institutions.

Van Selms also wrote on Babylonian religion, Sumerian culture, Canaanite law, ancient Near Eastern royal institutions and the historical geography of Palestine. His scholarship consistently sought to situate biblical texts within the broader cultures of the ancient Near East.

Dead Sea Scrolls

Following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Van Selms introduced Dutch-speaking readers to the Qumran texts. His De rol der Lofprijzingen (1957) translated and interpreted the Thanksgiving Hymns, presenting an important body of Jewish literature from the period between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

He also published popular and academic discussions of the Isaiah Scroll and other early discoveries from the Judaean Desert. His work combined translation with historical and theological interpretation.

Arabic Afrikaans and Islamic studies

Van Selms became an early scholar of texts produced by the Muslim community of the Cape Colony. He examined manuscripts written in Arabic script but composed wholly or partly in an early form of Afrikaans, now commonly described as Arabic Afrikaans.

In 1951, he published Arabies-Afrikaanse Studies I: 'n Tweetalige (Arabiese en Afrikaanse) Kategismus, an edition and study of a bilingual Muslim catechism. He later contributed an introduction to the publication of Abu Bakr Effendi's nineteenth-century religious manual.

His most extensive work in the field was Abu Bakr se “Uiteensetting van die godsdiens”, published in 1979 by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The manuscripts contained Afrikaans predating much of the language's better-known printed literature and were therefore important evidence for the history of written Afrikaans as well as for the intellectual and religious history of Cape Muslims.

Other interests

Van Selms's scholarship extended beyond biblical and Semitic studies. He published on Christian doctrine, liturgy, preaching, modern church architecture, Dutch confessional writings, classical literature and seventeenth-century Dutch poetry. He was particularly interested in Joost van den Vondel and assembled a personal collection of seventeenth-century Dutch verse.

A bibliography prepared from Van Selms's own records after his death contained 363 titles. A later assessment identified more than 37 books and approximately 350 academic and popular articles.

Opposition to apartheid theology

Van Selms's opposition to racial segregation developed primarily from his understanding of the nature and unity of the Christian church. He rejected the contention that ecclesiastical unity could be merely spiritual or invisible while Christian congregations remained institutionally divided by race.

In 1960, he contributed the chapter “Die gemeenskap van die heiliges en die kleurvraagstuk” (“The communion of saints and the colour question”) to Vertraagde Aksie: 'n Ekumeniese Getuienis uit die Afrikaanssprekende Kerk. The volume, edited by Albert Geyser and B. B. Keet, was the first coordinated theological protest against apartheid by a group of Afrikaans-speaking clergy and scholars.

Van Selms also opposed Article III of the NHK's church constitution, which restricted membership of the denomination to white people and provided for racially separate churches. He acknowledged having participated in an earlier formulation of the article, but maintained that he had understood separate congregations as a voluntary linguistic or missional arrangement rather than a permanent system of compulsory racial exclusion.

In the 1961 article “De Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika en de Kleurscheidslijn” (“The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika and the colour line”), Van Selms criticised the denomination's racial policy and rejected the findings of a church commission that treated unity in Christ as compatible with institutionally segregated churches. He appealed to Scripture and Article 27 of the Belgic Confession, which describes the church as one universal community.

His position aligned him with Geyser, who similarly argued that Article III lacked New Testament support. Their criticism contributed to wider ecumenical debate surrounding Vertraagde Aksie and the 1960 Cottesloe Consultation.

Van Selms resigned from his part-time theological appointment in 1962. He remained professor of Semitic languages in the secular Faculty of Arts, but ceased publishing in official NHK journals. In 1967, he formally left the NHK because of its officially sanctioned racial segregation and subsequently joined the Presbyterian Church in South Africa.

Honours and recognition

Van Selms was elected a full member of the South African Academy of Science and Arts and a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1959, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

He was made an honorary member of the British Society for Old Testament Study in 1975 and received the South African Academy's Stals Prize for Theology in 1976. The University of South Africa awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology in 1977, and the University of Pretoria awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1982.

A Festschrift, De fructu oris sui, was presented to him by former students on his retirement. An issue of the Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages and volume 41, issue 2 of HTS Teologiese Studies were later dedicated to his memory.

Later life and legacy

Van Selms continued to research and publish after retiring from his chair. The University of Pretoria provided him with an office, where he completed further studies and worked on his final major commentary, a two-volume treatment of the Book of Job.

He died in Pretoria on 30 April 1984, aged 78. After his death, his widow and children donated his academic library and his collection of seventeenth-century Dutch poetry to the University of Pretoria. Part of the collection was housed in the Van Selms Reading Room established by the Faculty of Theology.

Van Selms helped develop Semitic and Old Testament studies as established academic fields in South Africa. His students carried his philological and interdisciplinary approach into theology and language departments at several universities. His scholarship remained notable for the breadth with which it connected biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern languages, archaeology, Christian theology and South African religious history.

His work on Arabic Afrikaans helped establish Muslim manuscripts as important sources for the history of Afrikaans, while his opposition to compulsory racial separation placed him among the dissenting theologians who challenged the NHK's theological defence of apartheid.

Selected publications

• (1933). De Babylonische termini voor zonde en hun betekenis voor onze kennis van het Babylonische zondebesef. Wageningen: H. Veenman & Zonen.
• (1935). Ezra en Nehemia. Groningen: Wolters.
• (1937). De Zondag. Nijkerk: Callenbach.
• (1937). Solidair!. The Hague: Boekencentrum.
• (1939). I Kronieken. Groningen: Wolters.
• (1940). God en de menschen. Zeist: Ploegsma.
• (1947). II Kronieken. Groningen: Wolters.
• (1948). Licht uit Licht: Het Christelijk geloof naar de belijdenis van Nicea. Amsterdam: Ploegsma.
• (1951). Arabies-Afrikaanse Studies I: 'n Tweetalige (Arabiese en Afrikaanse) Kategismus. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• (1954). Beginsels van Protestantse kerkbou. Cape Town and Pretoria: HAUM.
• (1954). Marriage and Family Life in Ugaritic Literature. London: Luzac.
• (1957). De rol der Lofprijzingen: Een der Dode Zee-Rollen vertaald en toegelicht. Baarn: Bosch & Keuning.
• (1960). “Die gemeenskap van die heiliges en die kleurvraagstuk.” In A. S. Geyser and B. B. Keet, eds., Vertraagde Aksie: 'n Ekumeniese Getuienis uit die Afrikaanssprekende Kerk, pp. 36–47.
• (1961). “De Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika en de Kleurscheidslijn.” Kerk en Theologie. 12: 151–165.
• (1967). Genesis, 2 volumes. Nijkerk: Callenbach.
• (1967). Levend Verleden: Een zwerftog door Noord-Israel. Nijkerk: Callenbach.
• (1969). Jerusalem door de eeuwen heen: Van vóór koning David tot generaal Dayan. Baarn: Hollandia.
• (1972–1974). Jeremia, 3 volumes. Nijkerk: Callenbach.
• (1974). Jeremia III en Klaagliederen. Nijkerk: Callenbach.
• (1979). Abu Bakr se “Uiteensetting van die godsdiens”. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• (1982–1983). Job, 2 volumes. Nijkerk: Callenbach.

See also

• Albert Geyser
• Ben Marais
• Berend Gemser
• Cottesloe Consultation
• Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika

Further reading

• Oberholzer, J. P. (1992). “Adrianus van Selms, deeltydse dosent 1938–1962.” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies. 48 (1/2). doi:10.4102/hts.v48i1/2.2377.
• Van Rensburg, Hans (2017). “Adrianus van Selms (1906–1984): What Does Abide?” Journal for Semitics.
• Van Rensburg, Hans (2024). Adrianus van Selms: Concise Versions of His Contributions in Dutch and Afrikaans Theological Journals (1938–82). Johannesburg: UJ Press. doi:10.36615/9781776489237.
• Van Wyk, W. C. (1985). “Professor Adrianus van Selms.” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies. 41 (2): 171–182. doi:10.4102/hts.v41i2.2119.

External links

• Biographical memorial by F. C. Fensham, Digital Library for Dutch Literature
• Adrianus van Selms: Concise Versions of His Contributions in Dutch and Afrikaans Theological Journals, UJ Press