It’s time for my characteristically late annual reading list from last year. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I do this every year (here). My all-time low was in 2023, only to be outdone this time at a miserable twenty-four. I am not proud of it, but I post it here nonetheless. Chalk it up to busyness! (A lousy excuse.) (more…)
Author: William A. Ross
International LXX Day 2025
I am once more thrilled to proclaim that today is International Septuagint Day! Let the festivities begin! Here’s a list of links to previous years’ celebrations:
ISD 2023 | ISD 2022 | ISD 2021 | ISD 2020 | ISD 2019
ISD 2018 | ISD 2017 | ISD 2016 | ISD 2015 | ISD 2014
True Septuagint enthusiasts will be amazed to see the remarkable discovery I made recently: I real, live, definitely not AI-generated image of King Ptolemy II himself, holding a physical copy of Rahlfs-Hanhart while strolling past the Library of Alexandria. Incredible.
There are many ways to celebrate. One good way would be to pick up a copy of my new abridged reader’s edition of the Septuagint, or perhaps purchase one for your valentine. More information here.
Other than that, I thought I would simply provide a list of some of my newer publications in the discipline. If any of these are of interest to you, drop me a message and I’d be happy to send you a copy.
- “Donkey Words and Dating the Greek Pentateuch.” Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies (2023) 56: 131–149.
- I wrote this essay for the 2022 IOSOT Congress in Zurich. Like several other papers presented there, mine was funneled into the JSCS for reasons of space, which in my view is just fine since it may get more readership in the journal than the conference volume (which won’t be in print for a while still). The upshot of this article is to test and build on John Lee’s scholarship from fifty years ago to solidify and refine the case for dating the Greek Pentateuch in the third century based on language change in Greek and papyrological evidence.
- “Some Problems with Talking about ‘Septuagint Greek’.” Journal for the Study of Judaism (2023) 54.4-5: 451–493.
- I wrote about this article before, but at that point this article was only available digitally. It’s now in print in the 2023 issue of JSJ. This piece makes the case that most of our scholarly discourse about the language of the Septuagint is (unconsciously) colored by a long history of linguistic prescriptivism and negative value judgments. I go through a large swath of intellectual history to show this, moving into recent Septuagint scholarship as well. I suggest sociolinguistics as a path forward, a framework I’m working on elaborating through various other pieces I’m still writing (see below).
- “Sidney Jellicoe and the Formation of the IOSCS (1967–1969).” Journal for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (2022) 55: 9–30.
- I wrote this article quite a while ago actually, but it came out about a year ago now in the JSCS so I figured I might as well highlight it here. This project was something I did during covid lockdowns, since I had lousy access to physical books but a huge library of digitally scanned correspondence among Sidney Jellicoe and Harry Orlinsky. It was actually a lot of fun to read through it all and recreate the story of how the IOSCS was established.
Book Announcement: An Abridged Septuagint Reader
Just a brief post this morning to draw attention to a new book: Septuaginta: An Abridged Reader’s Edition (Hendrickson 2025), which you can buy in the usual places (e.g., Amazon). The concept is simple. This volume is a selection of passages drawn from the (much!) larger reader’s edition of the entire Septuagint corpus, which was published back in 2018. You can read more about the “big boy” version here.
Because the full reader’s edition is so huge (over 3,000 pages in two volumes), it’s on the more expensive side of things and not at all convenient to carry around. My editor Greg Lanier and I tossed around the idea of an abridged version for a while to help offset these issues, and now it’s done.
The content of the abridged reader’s edition is exactly the same as the “big boy” version, except there is 94% less of it. This slimmer volume clocks in at only 273 pages and you can get your hands on it for about $25. There are two main features of the abridged version that I really love:
- The seventy passages (get it?) that we selected are “the interesting ones,” meaning they include key events or theologically influential sections for NT authors. Selections come from all sections of the corpus: Pentateuch, Former and Latter Prophets, Wisdom, and Deuterocanonicals, so you get a bit of everything.
- We have classified all of the passages into five difficulty levels and labeled each one, so that you’re aware of what you’re in for in terms of reading challenge.
So although it’s still a month until International Septuagint Day, it’s certainly not too early to celebrate, or to double down on your New Year’s resolution to read more Greek in 2025. Pick up a copy of this abridged reader for yourself.
PS. I recognize that my posts on this site have been very sparse in the last year, and I intend to post more often this year.
Septuaginta &c. 