Back in April I announced that my new book, Ruth: A Handbook on the Greek Text, was coming to press soon. Well, it is now available from Baylor University Press as the latest volume in the Baylor Handbook on the Septuagint series (BHLXX). My author copies have arrived, and they look sharp!

In keeping with the series’ “Greek priority” approach, the handbook treats the Greek text of Ruth as a document in its own right, not only as a translation of the Hebrew. Here is how the publisher describes the volume:

“In Ruth, William Ross provides a foundational examination of the Greek text of the book. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. Ross’s exposition is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, Ruth also reflects recent advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics and is informed by current discussions within Septuagint studies.”

The book is a compact paperback (189 pages), and it is one of six volumes now in the series, alongside handbooks on Amos, Habakkuk–Haggai, Psalms 89–105, and both halves of 2 Maccabees.

I’m grateful to the series editors, Seth Ehorn and Sean Adams, and to the team at Baylor University Press for their patience and care in seeing the book through production. If you missed them, the endorsements and my two podcast interviews about the book are in the earlier post. Here is one of them as a taste:

Ross demonstrates that a direct, close translation of the Hebrew may nonetheless display a remarkable degree of faithfulness to the literary conventions of post-classical Greek in the first century BCE.

~Alison Salvesen, Professor of Early Judaism and Christianity, University of Oxford

You can get a copy directly from Baylor ($64.99) or in the usual places (e.g., Amazon). If you’re heading to the ETS and SBL meetings in Denver later this month, you’ll also find it at the Baylor University Press booth. If you are teaching LXX or Greek exegesis, I hope you’ll consider it for the classroom!