Within a discipline as small and technical as Septuagint scholarship the definition of “exciting news” starts to look pretty odd to the typical person on the street. But for those of us involved in the field, the appearance of a new edition within the corpus certainly qualifies.

This is precisely what has happened within the last few weeks, as Dr. Peter J. Gentry finished the critical text of Greek Ecclesiastes. Gentry is a well respected scholar within Septuagint studies as well as the Donald L. Williams Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. According to a recent Facebook post by Peter’s wife, Barbara, this volume represents over two decades’ worth of labor. Thankfully, he is not the only one at work on the so-called Göttingen edition, as a handful of other volumes are currently underway. (more…)