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. 