Ben Sira

This article argues that in Ben Sira 50 the high priest is a representative office, not a person. That office sums up and binds together in worshipful unity (at-one-ment), through liturgical and civil duties, multiple identities: those of Adam, Israel, Lady Wisdom, God the Creator and the whole cosmos. The high priest is a multiple personality order. Chapter 50 is the literary and theological climax of the work. And the text is a vital witness to the shape of Israel's Temple theology in the Hellenistic and Persian periods, and to the way the Pentateuch was read and interpreted.

The intention of this paper is to examine how the rich imagery and varied terminology the Hebrew Book of Psalms or the Siracides used for wicked and evil persons is translated into Greek. Equivalents ἁμαρτωλός, ἀσεβῆς and ἄδικος are the most common terms for wicked persons, thus the translation seems rather impoverished; there is no specificity concerning what kind of wrong is intended, but the three Greek words cover several or most of these specific terms: murder, adultery, robbery, unjust acts etc. But this is not the whole story. When one takes into consideration other terms both in the Hebrew and in the Greek texts, some interesting features emerge. First, the Hebrew words that seem at first to have a rather specific meaning in certain contexts, may have developed more general ones in others which may have influenced the Septuagint translations. In the same way, these Greek adjectives are not necessarily to be taken solely as indicating wickedness or evil in their most general sense, but they have more specific characteristics, as well.

This paper will outline the canon-conscious worldview of Ben Sira, highlight the major contents of his authoritative corpus of Jewish Writings, and describe his hermeneutical strategies. Ben Sira's interpretive methods include (1) his reading the Jewish Scriptures as a coherent religious message and (2) his realization and application of these texts to and within his believing community. This scripturally authoritative worldview understands that the Jewish Scriptures are not locked away in the past, but rather it believes that they can and ought to be realized in the present believing community who models and participates in its story.

The relevant texts share the idea of an unbreakable covenant
of promise. After a situation of judgment, this covenant is granted
for all time to either a priest or to the post-exilic reunited Israel
(understood as the cultic community). In the Qumran texts
the covenant granted to the animals (cf. Hos 2:20) is added. The
passages are to be understood against the background of a this-worldly
futuristic eschatology, although in the Qumran texts
otherworldly dimensions are also added, showing apocalyptic
traits. Four thematic segments can be distinguished in the Old
Testament sources:
1. The one nation Israel under one Davidide;
2. The country and Jerusalem;
3. The temple;
4. The nations.

Jean-Sébastien Rey, “Repenser le genre de ‘Dame Sagesse’ et révéler des mystères en Si 4,11-19”, in Représentations et réceptions de la figure de la sagesse dans l’antiquité (ed. S. Anthonioz et C. Dogniez ; Orient et Méditerranée 35 ; Leuven : Peeters, 2021), 221-236.

While political and economic aspects of Pauline organizational forms have been variously explored by scholars, the socio-religious ramifications of Paul's collective designation of his communities as ekklēsiai need further examination. In this article,

Lilith understood as the first wife of Adam, the mother of evil spirits and the nocturnal demon particularly fond of men and newborns belongs to the mythical tradition derived from the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira. The latter is a cryptic yet ribald composition and as such defines the hermeneutic framework for the interpretation of the Lilith-myth contained therein. The present study has therefore two basic purposes. First, to offer the critical translation and commentary of the Lilith-myth present in the Alphabet of Ben Sira. Second, to define the roles this myth might have played in its cultural context.

Does God test His people? Nicholas Ellis examines the interplay between theological conviction and biblical hermeneutic, starting from the Epistle of James, and opening into a wide-ranging study of ancient convictions and hermeneutics in Jewish and Christian literature.

Noting the debates around whether ‘wisdom’ constitutes a genre, this chapter instead studies the multiple smaller genres of which wisdom literature consists. Texts use (and sometimes intentionally misuse) genres to communicate with readers, providing them with conventions for interpretation and expectations about content. Surveying Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon, the paper discerns four clusters of genres, grouped according to their communicative purpose. Some genres intend to instruct their users (sayings, instructions, diatribe, protreptic, and didactic narratives); others engage in reasoning (reflections and wisdom dialogues). These genres are not unexpected in wisdom literature, but the next are more familiar from other biblical corpora: some genres offer praise (either to wisdom, people of God), and others enunciate complaints (laments and legal complaints). These multiple genres combine and interact in complex ways within the wisdom book.

Le but du présent article est de présenter deux textes peu connus qui se trouvent « en marge » du canon des écrits bibliques. Il s’agit de deux passages qui défendent, chacun à sa manière, le concept du libre arbitre, soit en recourant à des modèles bibliques (Siracide 15,11-17), soit en recourant à un vocabulaire philosophique (le Psaume de Salomon 9, 4). Chacun de ces textes a eu une histoire spécifique : le livre du Siracide n’a pas été inclu dans le canon de la Bible Hébraïque, et en ce qui concerne les Psaumes de Salomon, ses traces se sont perdues déjà dans l’antiquité tardive. Toutefois, ces deux textes témoignent d’un débat au sein du judaïsme de l’époque hellénistique qui vise à formuler, d’une facon plus abstraite que les écrits antérieurs, le concept du libre arbitre.

Резюме В статье представлен перевод пролога переводчика к книге «Премудрость Иисуса сына Сирахова» на русский язык. Перевод сопровождается историко-филологическими комментариями и обзором дискуссионных проблем интерпретации.
Abstract The article presents a new translation of the Prologue to Ben Sira into Russian. The translation is supplied with commentaries and an overview on the problems with the interpretation.

La obra que refleja la apertura hacia un nuevo modelo de saber que, incorporando la tradición, aborda la labor del conocimiento de sí y de la responsabilidad del hombre. Un antideterminismo que convive durante el siglo II a.C. con otras posturas que buscan comprender la misión del ser humano en la historia.

Was Paul's view of evil based on Adam's fall or a mere reflex of Christology? Tyler A. Stewart argues that, in Galatians, Paul's thoughts about where evil comes from and why it continues are not based on Adam's fall as the background story, but rather the rebellion of angels. Edited PhD Dissertation published with Mohr Siebeck (WUNT 2).

This paper analyzes a single passage from the Book of Ben Sira, Sir 5:9-6:1, in order to demonstrate how each ancient version of this passage reveals a slightly different emphasis or idea. Each version, moreover, exhibits a distinct structure that reflects its specific idea. The significance of this for the book as a whole is that it illustrates how an ancient reader's or scribe's wish to find or impose a coherence in the text could lead to him or her altering the text in deliberate as well as accidental ways.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate Ben Sira’s teaching on friendship within the religious and cultural context of his time, in view of the Hellenistic emphasis on philia (“friendship”). While friendship is of contemporary interest, until recently there has been little research into the understanding of friendship in Second Temple Judaism. This study aims to fill the lacuna by focusing on the apocryphal/deuterocanonical Wisdom of Ben Sira (Sirach). In fact, no book of the Hebrew Bible says as much about friendship as does the Wisdom of Ben Sira. The 2020 book contains a new preface by the author.

The purposes of this paper are (1) to outline the early Jewish traditions concerning Lilith so as to provide the backdrop for (2) the reconstruction of the main elements of her image in the Alphabet of Ben Sira [ABS] which contains the most elaborate variant of the Lilith-myth. The latter in turn will be (3) confronted with the early rabbinic traditions concerning Eve so as (4) to present the role of Lilith in unburdening Eve of her problematic past on the one hand and (5) to acknowledge the role of Eve in elevating Lilith to the position of the “prototypical” Jewish femme fatale. The conclusions are that (1) the image of Lilith in the ABS draws from the traditions arose around Eve in the early rabbinic literature; (2) the main difference lies in the fact that Lilith is portrayed as far more defined and unambiguous; (3) one of the functions of Lilith in the ABS is to promote the positive image of Eve.

In this master thesis, I investigate how Philo of Alexandria (ca. 15 BCE - 45 CE), as a Jewish philosopher, interpreted the Jewish figure of Wisdom (a personification that Proverbs 8 describes as having been present with God when he created the world) in the Platonic/Pythagorean philosophical context in which Philo operates. To this end, I examined the personification of Wisdom in the Hebrew wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, Baruch & Ben Sira). Then, I searched through Plato's dialogues for similar ways of conceptualizing the world order and its relation to the divine. In my third chapter, I review the tradition of the early Academy and of neo-Pythagoreanism, which forms the hermeneutical paradigm for Philo's understanding of Plato. Then, I turn to the Greek translations of the Jewish wisdom literature, and to Aristobulus and Wisdom of Solomon, to look for attempts to relate Wisdom to Greek philosophy before Philo. Finally, I discuss a select number of passages in which Philo speaks about wisdom.

los manuscritos del mar Muerto como el acontecimiento arquellógico más importante del siglo XX para los estudios bíblicos, Una praeba de su afirmación la tenemos en la identificaciórt de los fragmentos del Ben Sira encontrados en Qamrán. Todos sabíamos qae el libro del Eclesiástico l,tabía sido escrito en bebreo, pero basta ruosotros sólo había llegado en und traduccidru griega, Los textos de Qumrán sacaron a la luz fragmentos ltebreos de la obra, Toda urud reuoluciín para los estadios sobre el libro del Eclesiástico 1t para poder leer el texto ltebreo original.

In this paper the reception of the book of Joshua as reflected in the Old Greek version is placed within the context of contemporary interpretations of the figure and book of Joshua in the Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonean, Julio-Claudan and Flavian periods. Attention is given to passages in Ben Sira, Eupolemos, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Qumran Joshua Apocryphon, 4QTestimonia, the Testaments of Moses, Philo, Acts, Hebrews, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Sibylline Oracles, Josephus and Pseudo-Philo. Particularly the latter two rewritten versions show interesting parallels and contrasts with the Old Greek version of Joshua, when it comes to the role of warfare and attitude to foreign powers. It is argued that a historical and contextual approach instead of an inner-biblical approach to reception history helps to explain the early reception history and even late redaction history of that biblical book.

This article explores the problems posed by language due to its imprecision, the disparity between what one says (or means to say) and what is interpreted. Ben Sira warns his readers of the dangers posed by the changing contexts of an utterance. Sensitivity to context reflects other aspects of Ben Sira’s teaching, such as his awareness of people’s differing perspectives. In addition, Ben Sira is concerned that his readers be aware of the multiple meanings behind words due to the polysemous nature of the words themselves, their morphology, and/or how they are used.

It has been argued that Ben Sira, as a Hellenistic wisdom text, is an important document that combines Israelite wisdom tradition with Torah including Deuteronomistic languages, so that wisdom in Ben Sira is recognised as Torah (15:1; 24:23). Scholars until now have proposed diverse ways of understanding such a close relation between Wisdom and Torah. Some think that Ben Sira is “sapientializing” Torah or Deuteronomi(sti)c heritage, others still maintain that Ben Sira is “torahizing” wisdom tradition. Otherwise, both literary profiles are not subjugated to each other, but are correlated as retaining independent identities (e.g., Goering). A closer look at these scholarly claims indicates that Ben Sira does not equate the concept of wisdom with Torah, but it uses no more than the widespread Jewish laws that are integrated with instruction or advice literature just as indicated in Proverbs 1-9. In Ben Sira, wisdom is the consequence of Torah (1:26; 15:1-8; 24:23-26) and Torah is the consequence of pursuing all wisdom (19:20) and wisdom is a product of internalizing and working with Torah and instructions (1:26; 6:37; 15:1; 24:23-7). In this paper, I examine scholarly arguments which make assumptions about the confluence of Wisdom and Torah in Ben Sira, and I put forward the claim that Ben Sira has little influence of the canonical form of Torah and that the context of Ben Sira, though there are similar expressions with Pentateuch, is quite different from what Torah says.

В сборнике статей, посвященном 80-летию профессора А. А. Алексеева, представлены результаты исследований отечественных и зарубежных ученых по библеистике, христианской литературе, истории русского языка. Издание предназначено филологам, историкам, религиоведам, специалистам по древней и средневековой культуре.

Ben Sira places more substantial weight on the leadership of pan-Aaronid/anti-Zadokite (Olyan) or Zadokite priests (Boccaccini, Kaiser) such as Aaron, his grandson Phinehas son of Eleazar (Sir 45:6-26)—missing non-Aaronid Levites—than the governance of Moses (45:1-5). The honour of the two great forefathers culminates in the praise of the high priest, Simon II son of Onias (50:1-24) and his priestly Temple service. From such a supportive reaction on the Jerusalem priesthood and Temple, scholars have maintained that Ben Sira belongs to a priestly group or a circle of the scribe-sage subjugated to priests and that Sirach hints at the merging point between the created and the priestly order. Consequently, this indication of the harmonization between Sapiential and Zadokite Judaism might justify Jerusalemite priestly groups much power. There is nothing problematic in talking about Sirach’s engagement (Sir 24; 50) with P writings and the divine election of the Jerusalem priesthood in the framework of Sir 44-50, but it is misleading to put Sirach in Priestly writings and to conclude that Sirach merges the two separate traditions (sapiential and priestly). Here, I argue that wisdom discourses in Sir 24 and 44-50 (esp. 50) are the structuralized adaptation of Prov 8 and 31:10-31 and that Ben Sira as a Jewish scribe grants its authority and power to Zadokites derived from the model of the divine wisdom in Proverbs.

Keywords: Priestly Pentateuch, Wisdom Literature, Sirach/Ben Sira, The Book of Proverbs, Torah

Az antik mediterrán világban a közös étkezések nem csupán a szociális, hanem a vallási életben is fontos szerepet játszottak. "A közös étkezéseket, banketteket tekinthetjük a görög-római világ szociális intézményének. […] a leletek az sugallják, hogy ezek az étkezések hasonló formában zajlottak és egészen hasonló módon gondolkodtak ezekről, értelmezték ezeket széles körben, az antik világban" Ezek az étkezések kötötték össze a különféle csoportok tagjait, számtalan formájuk létezett, viszont az közös vonásuk volt, hogy szociális vonatkozásukon túl, minden esetben megjelent azok vallási jellege is. Jelen írásunk egy izgalmas szakasszal foglalkozik Jézus, Sirák fia könyvéből.

During the Hellenistic period, the different philosophical schools developed different theories and techniques of consolation. Epicurean technique called for distracting the mourner by pleasant memories and was widely practiced, even by those who were not philosophical hedonists. Th e technique was altered slightly as it passed into popular use, where in it came to be conceived as a kind of mental dissimulation or even as a therapeutic "beguiling" of the mind by any of a number of pleasant distractions. Th is forms the likely background to Ben Sira's advice to those confronting death at xiv 16 and xxx 23 to "beguile your soul," an observation that provides further evidence of Ben Sira's contact with and measured appropriation of Hellenistic intellectual culture. Despite his traditionalism Ben Sira was influenced on a number of points by the cosmopolitan social mores of his time. 1 It remains unclear, however, to what degree he was influenced by Hellenistic intellectual culture. 2 Stoic parallels are sometimes cited, and it is likely that at least a few of these (e.g., doctrine of opposites) are genuine borrowings. 3 Ben Sira also shows certain similarities *) Matt Goff read an earlier version of this paper and off ered a number of helpful recommendations.

Rabbinic wisdom materials betray the influence of Israelite and Greco-Roman wisdom on the one hand and the rabbinic system of law and values on the other. This chapter considers both the familiar and distinctive dimensions of rabbinic wisdom and focuses particularly on the place of wisdom within, and its contribution to, a rabbinic worldview. In addressing this issue, the chapter surveys the major wisdom works in rabbinic literature, the definition and scope of "wisdom" in the rabbinic corpus, and the reception of important earlier wisdom compositions in rabbinic literature.

This is a pre-proof version of the article that appeared in the Festschrift for P. Beentjes, Rewriting Biblical History: Essays on Chronicles and Ben Sira in Honour of Pancratius C. Beentjes. Jeremy Corley and Harm van Grol, eds. FS Pancratius C. Beentjes. DCL Studies 7. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2012, 139–157.

This article aims to confront and question the theoretical distinction between textual criticism and redaction criticism from a pragmatic perspective. In order to accomplish this goal, we will examine the Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira as a test case and a paradigmatic example. The following situations will be examined: cases of irreducible divergences between the Hebrew witnesses, scribal " mistakes, " doublets in MSS A and B, and the so-called Hebrew II.

This article argues that Ben Sira chapters 24 and 50 are composed according to a carefully worked intratextuality between each other and according to a deeper intertextual relationship with Genesis 1 and Exod 25–40. These multi-directional literary relationships explain the apparent lack of thematic order and sequence in the two chapters. They also lead to the conclusion that Ben Sira knows and develops the idea that the temple is a microcosm of the universe and its liturgy a celebration and reenactment of the Creator's original work. Within that temple cosmology, Ben Sira presents the high priest Simon (ch. 50) as both the true Adam, the image and likeness of God, and the real presence of the Creator, in his cultic and civil duties.

"The Book of Ben Sira/Ecclesiasticus includes many prayers or statements concerning prayers in reflection and practice. Lament (distress, sin) and praise (creation, history, anthropology) are both essential for the issue of prayer. The primary subjects of prayer are Sirach’s students, besides the people in general, as well as examples from history (e.g. David). Motivation to prayer can be found in examples of lifes and in a variety of instructions for application, both with a high degree of reflection.

Im Sirachbuch finden sich Gebete und zahlreiche Aussagen zum Gebet in Praxis und Reflexion. Inhaltlich prägen Klage (Notkontexte, Sünde) und Lob (Schöpfung, Geschichte und Anthropologie) getrennt, als auch gemeinsam konstitutiv, die Gebetsthematik. Die primären Subjekte des Gebets sind dabei die Schüler Sirachs. Neben diesen spielen Aussagen zum Menschen allgemein als auch Beispiele aus der Geschichte (z.B. David) eine herausragende Rolle.  Methodisch variierend regen nicht nur (Lebens-)Beispiele zum Gebet an, sondern werden vielfältige Hinweise zur rechten Anwendung gegeben, beide getragen von einem hohen Grad an Reflexion."

Ben Sira is in general classified as the Jewish wisdom literature with Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, but has peculiar characteristics of combining both the Law and the Israelite wisdom tradition with the history of Israel. Especially, Ben Sira (along with Qoheleth and the Wisdom of Solomon) utilizes the idea and language of determinism, that God absolutely determines human activities and fates in time and space. Determinism in Sirach, however, is neither identical as the philosophical determinism in Stoicism nor precisely belongs to the genre of apocalyptic such as Daniel (e.g., Sir 1:1-11). Instead, Ben Sira deals with the theological tension between inescapable evildoings and divine determination (Sir 15:11-20) and with the divine appointment of times and days (33:7-13). In this presentation, by examining passages related to the deterministic idea and the Jewish history in Ben Sira (Sir 15:11-20; 33:7-13; 43:1-8; 50:22-29), I will argue that Ben Sira’s conception of time and Jewish history is associated with the broad Hellenistic determinism along with the wisdom tradition (e.g., Sir 24).