Studies In The Book Of Ben Sira

The volume publishes the papers read at an international conference on the Book of Ben Sira, held at the Shime'on Centre, Pápa, Hungary. Renowned specialists of the field treat among others various questions of early Jewish wisdom thought, the interpretation of history, and canon forming.

The volume publishes the papers read at an international conference on the Book of Ben Sira, held at the Shime'on Centre, Pápa, Hungary. Renowned specialists of the field treat among others various questions of early Jewish wisdom thought, the interpretation of history, and canon forming.

The present volume brings together studies by some of the best specialists on the texts and versions of the Book of Ben Sira. Each textual form is placed in its own historical context and analysed in regard to what explains the typical changes it contains.

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The apocryphal/deuterocanonical Wisdom of Ben Sira, written towards the beginning of the second century BCE, speaks more about friendship than any other book of the Hebrew Bible. Revising his 1996 doctoral dissertation for the Catholic University of America, Corley describes the seven major pericopes in which the sage, probably Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, treats friendship. He also places the treatise in the historical and political context of second-temple Israel. Distributed by the Society of Biblical Literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Book of Sirach raises many questions: philological, exegetical, literary, historical, theological. There were even confessional questions which divided the traditions of synagogues and churches. It is, therefore, a fascinating book, located on the edges of the canon. Does the book attempt to repair the harm done by the erosive criticism of Job and Qoheleth, or is it the work of a thoughtful interpreter who, in a time of change, seeks to bear the tradition towards the new situation emerging from the Hellenistic Diaspora? Is it a book which aims at the restoration of the true faith against the autonomous questing of human wisdom, or is it merely a sincere, if shrewd, experiment at dialogue between the legitimate reasoning of the world and the wisdom given in the Law? According to a well-tried methodology of juxtaposing the specialists of different schools, this volume presents an up to date consideration of historical, exegetical and theological research.

This volume is a revised and enlarged version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation (1999). It gives a comprehensive analysis of the morphosyntax and syntax of the tenses in the Hebrew text of Ben Sira. Due attention is paid to the heterogeneous character of the textual evidence (three manuscripts from the Desert of Judah and six mediaeval manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza), which complicates any linguistic study of Ben Sira. A descriptive analysis is complemented by a comparison with other contemporaneous, earlier, and later forms of Hebrew. It is argued that the Hebrew of Ben Sira is a literary language in its own right, rather than an imitation of Biblical Hebrew or a predecessor of Mishnaic Hebrew.

The Wisdom of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon are included in the Septuagint, but not in the Hebrew Bible. For a long time, these books were little read and studied. Today, however, there is a growing interest in them, stimulated not only by the discovery of Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira but also by the awareness that both books provide a privileged witness to the judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Both books invite the reader to recognise that authentic wisdom consists in fear of the Lord and in loyality to the Torah. In addition to this common feature, both express different points of view in the debate in which the Jewish communities of Jerusalem (Wisdom of Ben Sira) and Alexandria (Wisdom of Solomon) were engaged in the face of the rise of Hellenistic culture. These books contain an essential key to the understanding of Judaism at the time and the beginning of Christianity. Professor Maurice Gilbert s.j. has devoted most of his scientific work, first, on the study of the Wisdom of Solomon and, later, on the Wisdom of Ben Sira. The present volume is dedicated to his honour on the occasion of his 65th birthday. It includes thirty-two studies by some of today's authorities on wisdom literature, and may be considered as a major contribution to the understanding of two important books of the Greek Bible.