Blurb:

The Book of Ruth has its place in very different canonical positions in the Christian Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible. Following the Septuagint, Ruth is located between Judges and 1 Samuel in the Christian canon. In the Hebrew canon, Ruth can be found among the Ketuvim (Writings) either between Proverbs and Song of Songs or between Song of Songs and Lamentations, depending on the rabbinical tradition this is followed. This chapter argues that there are a sufficient number of structural, semantic and literary connections between Ruth and the concluding chapters of Judges and the opening chapters of Samuel to indicate that Ruth may have been written as a response to those texts, thereby forming the central panel of a literary triptych. This literary evidence increases the likelihood that the Greek canon reflects an earlier version of the Hebrew canon. Early Christian and Jewish sources, especially Jerome and the Bava Batra tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, support the proposition that Ruth originally had its place between Judges and Samuel and was moved to the Ketuvim (Writings) sometime after the third century CE.