IMESIDENT OF MAYNOOTH DIES

Mgr. Edward Kissane Scholar and Poet
By Fr. J. 11. CREHAN, S.J.
MONSIGNOR EDWARD KISSANE, the late President of Maynooth who died on Saturday last, was probably the principal Old Testament scholar in Ireland of the present century.
He was a Kerryman, born in 1886. ordained in his own country and then trained at the Biblical Institute (Rome) in its early days before the first World War.
He held the chair of Old Testament studies at Maynooth for 25 years (1917-1942) and was its President for the last sixteen (1942-1959). His work there will no doubt be commemorated in the many periodicals which are now produced by Maynooth; it may suffice here to mention some of his published work on the Scriptures.
RESTRAINT
He worked on the more poetical parts of the Old Testament, the Psalms, Isaias and Job, which are the books most likely to be read by a modern student for their own sake. He was conservative in his interpretation. knowing what others had written hut never being influenced unduly by their opinions, and he was never a mere compiler.
His restraint in making conjectural emendations of the textwhich is the bane of so much Old Testament work-was praised by his reviewers. He treated his text as poetry (which was a surprise to some) and did not fail to see it as a whole, not being in favour of dissections into fly-sheets and innominate scraps.
Five years after he finished his work on Isaias the great scroll of Isaias was discovered at Qumran, and it is to be hoped that some young Irish • scholar will re-edit Dr. Kissane's work, taking account of what the scroll has to tell.
He was sometimes criticised by non-Catholic reviewers for not giving all his reasons for positions he might take up in his work, but here he was handicapped by the problem how much learned apparatus his public would pay for; put in too much and the hook would be out of reach One may say, however, that the Kerry mountains and bays are probably a better background for coming to appreciate Hebrew poetry than the sandy wastes of Pomerania.
Mgr. E. J. Kissane Mgr. E. J. Kissane Mgr. Edward J. Kissane, D.D„ President of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, since 1942, died in a Dublin nursing home last Saturday, aged 72.
Born in Ballyhunion, Co. Kerry. he studied oriental languages and Greek and Hebrewpalaeography at the Pontifical Biblical Institute at Rome, where he went after his ordination. He also travelled in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt as part of a postgraduate course in Biblical studies. After four years as a professor of Sacred Law at St. Auguqine's Seminary, Toronto, he returned to Maynooth In 1917 as professor of Old Testament and Oriental Languages. He was elected a member Of the Royal Irish Academy in 1943, and in 1949 he became a pro-Vice Chancellor of the National University of Ireland He was awarded honorary degrees by both the National University of Ireland and the St. Francis Xavier University of Nova Scotia.