Bible - Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha - the Wisdom of Ben Sira

Bible - the Wisdom of Ben Sira

THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA, a poetic ethical and didactic work, part of the apocrypha (see Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha). The author of the work is Shim‘on ben Yehoshua ben El‘azar ben Sira (in the Slavic version—Jesus son of Sirach). The work was written in Hebrew around 170 BC. BC.

The oldest fully preserved version is the Greek one, made by the author's grandson in 132 BC in Egypt. In Christian sources, beginning in the 4th century AD, the Wisdom of Ben Sira is often called Ecclesiasticus (abbreviated Ecclus.). The Wisdom of Ben Sira consists of eight sections, each of which begins with a poetic praise of wisdom or sages. The last section, "Praise to the Fathers," extols the great men of the Bible and concludes with praise for the high priest Shim‘on the Just. The greater part of the Wisdom of Ben Sira consists of sayings similar in form to those of the Book of Proverbs. The book also contains psalms, which are requests addressed to God and hymns of thanksgiving to him, didactic poems that interpret historical events and issues of everyday life, poems praising God, and an alphabetical acrostic on the importance of wisdom.

The purpose of the Wisdom of Ben Sira is to teach a person to act in all circumstances in accordance with ethical standards and common sense. Like the Proverbs of Solomon, the Wisdom of Ben Sira emphasizes that fear of God is the beginning and end of all wisdom. The book bears a clear imprint of the conditions of the place and time of its creation. In general, in its religious worldview, it can be compared with the worldview of the later Judaism Pharisees. At the same time, some influence of Greek literature, traces of Greek Gnosticism and, possibly, Greek philosophy are felt in it. In contrast to other books of parables, in which the authors address youth, the Wisdom of Ben Sira focuses attention primarily on the family. The basis of the well-being and happiness of the family, in the opinion of the author, is the reasonable and God-fearing behavior of its head. Therefore, it is to him, the father of the family, that the author first addresses himself, giving advice and instructions, according to which one should marry a beautiful and gentle woman, raise sons in the spirit of the Torah, marry daughters young, act honestly and piously with fellow citizens, etc.

For Jewish religious authorities of the early Talmudic era, the Wisdom of Ben Sira had a significance almost equal to the significance of the Proverbs of Solomon. The maxims of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, cited under the author's name or anonymously, are found throughout the Talmudic literature. A number of maxims of the Wisdom of Ben Sira are quoted in other books of the Apocrypha, in the New Testament, in the Syriac version of the Book of Ahikar, and in the works of Jewish scholars of the early Middle Ages. The influence of the Wisdom of Ben Sira on a number of early Jewish prayers and on early piyyutim is quite significant. The Wisdom of Ben Sira first mentions some of the customs later codified by the Halacha (such as reciting a thanksgiving to God at the sight of a rainbow), and contains the earliest reference to the eighteen blessings (see the Amidah). It can be assumed that the original text of the Wisdom of Ben Sira in Hebrew still existed at the time of Saadia Gaon (10th century), but was then lost. Fragments of the Hebrew text were found in 1896 by Shlomo Schechter in the Cairo Geniza. In recent years, several more fragments have been found, some of which contain only individual verses, rewritten with numerous errors and distortions. Individual fragments in Hebrew were found in Qumran, and in 1964 Yiggael Yadin discovered fragments at Masada that prove that the Genizah manuscript contains a Hebrew text of the Wisdom of Ben Sira that goes back to the original text of the book. A critical edition of the Hebrew text of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, including fragments from the Cairo Genizah, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Masada, as well as an explanatory index to all the words of the text, was published in 1973 under the supervision of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

Numerous works of Catholic and Protestant church music have been written to various parts of the text of the Wisdom of Ben Sira.