I’m excited to announce a new book coming out this October with IVP Academic, entitled The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches. This is a project that I have been working on with my friend and colleague, Gregory R. Lanier, who is a professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Greg and I have worked on a number of projects together by now, all of them related to the Septuagint in some way or another.

This project is unique in a few ways. First of all, this book targets the issue highlighted in its title, namely probing whether and how “the Septuagint” has authority as a text. That is a loaded question, of course. In one sense, the answer is obviously no. Yet there are ways in which it is a little less obvious, especially when it comes to New Testament authors citing Septuagint-like texts in their writing. Greg and I addressed this issue in part in our book The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters (Crossway), but this book takes things further.

Another unique aspect is that this is an edited volume. Greg and I each have chapters in the book, which cover relevant issues in the Old Testament canon and the text, respectively. But we also have a number of other scholars from neighboring disciplines who contributed chapters. These include perspectives from New Testament scholarship, Patristics, Reformation thought, and Protestant and Catholic dogmatic theology. We also have one or two shorter “excursus” chapters that address semi-hot-button/inside baseball issues like the “pure in all ages” clause in WCF 1.8 and so-called confessional bibliology.

You can have a peek at the book in the preview below, and you can pre-order it here.