Sirach and Its Contexts. The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing 2020052255, 2020052256, 9789004447325, 9789004447332

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Sirach and Its Contexts

Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism Editors René Bloch (Institut für Judaistik, Universität Bern) Karina Martin Hogan (Department of Theology, Fordham University) Associate Editors Hindy Najman (Theology & Religion Faculty, University of Oxford) Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven) Benjamin G. Wright, III (Department of Religion Studies, Lehigh University) Advisory Board A.M. Berlin – K. Berthelot – J.J. Collins – B. Eckhardt – Y. Furstenberg S. Kattan Gribetz – S. Mason – F. Mirguet – J.H. Newman A.K. Petersen – M. Popović – I. Rosen-Zvi – J.T.A.G.M. van Ruiten M. Segal – J. Sievers – W. Smelik – G. Stemberger – L.T. Stuckenbruck L. Teugels – J.C. de Vos

volume 196

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/jsjs

Sirach and Its Contexts The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing Edited by

Samuel L. Adams Greg Schmidt Goering Matthew Goff

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Adams, Samuel L., 1970- editor. | Goering, Greg Schmidt, editor. |  Goff, Matthew J., editor. Title: Sirach and its contexts : the pursuit of wisdom and human  flourishing / edited by Samuel Adams, Greg Schmidt Goering, Matthew  Goff. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Supplements to the  Journal for the study of Judaism, 1384-2161 ; volume 196 | Includes  index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020052255 (print) | LCCN 2020052256 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004447325 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004447332 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Ecclesiasticus—Criticism, interpretation, etc. Classification: LCC BS1765.52 .S57 2021 (print) | LCC BS1765.52 (ebook) |  DDC 229/.406—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052255 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052256

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1384-2161 ISBN 978-90-04-44732-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-44733-2 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Samuel L. Adams, Greg Schmidt Goering and Matthew Goff. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

‫אוהב אמונה אוהב תקוף‬ ‫ומוצאו מצא הון‬

A faithful friend is a powerful ally, and the one who finds him has found a treasure. Sir 6.14

… ‫הבל אדם בגויתו‬ ‫אף שם חסד לא יכרת‬

Human beings are but a vapor in their bodies, but a reputation for lovingkindness will not be cut off. Sir 41.11 (Ms B)

…

To Géza G. Xeravits, friend, scholar, lover-of-life, conference organizer extraordinaire

∵

Contents List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables ix Abbreviations x 1

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts 1 Greg Schmidt Goering

part 1 The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Contexts, Categories, and Approaches 2

Wisdom as Genre and as Tradition in the Book of Sirach 15 John J. Collins

3

Wisdom in Transmission: Rethinking Sirach and Proverbs 33 Jacqueline Vayntrub

4

Appearance versus Reality and the Personification of Wisdom: Sirach’s Place in the Early Jewish Sapiential Tradition 56 Bradley C. Gregory

5

Ben Sira’s Tour of the Cosmos: Sir 42:15–43:33 as Ekphrastic Wisdom 74 A. Jordan Schmidt

part 2 The Hebrew Manuscripts of Sirach: Diversity, Continuity, and Transmission 6

Sirach MS C Revisited 91 Frank Ueberschaer

7

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach 104 Eric D. Reymond

8

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach 125 Jean-Sébastien Rey

viii

Contents

part 3 Sages and Their Contexts: Hellenism, Hymns, and Pedagogy 9

Where Is Ezra? Ben Sira’s Surprising Omission and the Selective Presentation in the Praise of the Ancestors 151 Samuel L. Adams

10

Sages as Singers in Sirach and the Second Temple Period 167 David A. Skelton

11

Sirach and Imperial History: A Reassessment 184 James K. Aitken

part 4 The Reception of the Book and Figure of Ben Sira in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 12

Ben Sira’s Pseudo-Pseudepigraphy: Idealizations from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages 213 Benjamin G. Wright III and Eva Mroczek

13

The Act of Reading Ben Sira as a Generative Context for Jewish Liturgical Poetry and the Book of Ben Sira Itself 240 Matthew Goff

14

Ben Sira in Ethiopia: The Andǝmta Commentary on Sirach 1 and 24 262 Yonatan Binyam Index of Ancient Sources 285 Index of Modern Authors 296

Illustrations, Figures and Tables Illustrations 1.1 8.1

KKK Rally Sign, Charlottesville, VA, 8 July 2017. Photo credit: Jalane Schmidt 5 Reconstruction of Sir 35:26 141

Figures 8.1 8.2

The intricate textual situation of Sir 32:18 136–139 Tentative solution 140

Tables 3.1

3.2

Distinctive characteristics of “oral” and “written” cultures delineated by Wood in Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1775), schematized by Bauman and Briggs (2003) 35 Personages named in frames to ancient Near Eastern instruction texts 48

Abbreviations In addition to standard abbreviations listed in The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed., Atlanta, SBL Press, 2014, the following are used in this volume. BH DJPA Jastrow LS3

MH OGIS RH SEG TH

biblical Hebrew Sokoloff, Michael. Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period. 2nd edition. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002. Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: Pardes, 1950. Sokoloff, Michael. A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’ s Lexicon Syriacum. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Mishnaic Hebrew Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae rabbinic Hebrew Supplementum Epigrahicum Graecum Talmudic Hebrew

chapter 1

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts Greg Schmidt Goering This volume presents essays that were delivered at an international symposium held at Union Presbyterian Seminary (Richmond, VA) and the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), over three days in July 2017.1 Entitled “The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing: A Virginia Conference on the Book of Sirach and its Contexts,” the symposium aimed to gather an international cohort of experts on the book of Sirach in order to analyze various contexts in which this multiform textual tradition is and has been written, rewritten, transmitted, and studied. In recent decades Sirach has enjoyed a renaissance. The publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the second half of the twentieth century substantially increased scholarly attention on Second Temple Judaism and its extant literature in general. In addition, the discovery in the late 19th century of the previously lost Hebrew versions of Sirach, among other factors, generated a renewed interest in this pivotal text from the Second Temple period. The present moment witnesses an unprecedented scholarly examination of the book: in Europe scholarly attention to the book is burgeoning, and in the English-speaking world, no less than five commentaries are underway; many of the authors of these commentaries were present at the symposium. In 2014, Sam Adams and I realized that Virginia was becoming a locus for research on Sirach. Sam had arrived in Richmond in 2006, I came to Charlottesville in 2007, and Brad Gregory arrived at the Catholic University of America in nearby Washington, DC in 2014. Hence, three of those five English-language commentaries are being co-authored in the Virginia-Washington, DC area. Sam and I thought we should take advantage of our proximity, as well as the rich and complex history of our geographic location, to host a conference on Sirach. The idea existed only in our minds for some time, until, in early 2016, along with Matthew Goff, we became serious about trying to organize an event

1 The content of the present volume differs from the 2017 conference in several ways. It does not include the essay by one participant, Elisa Uusimäki, “Travelling for the Sake of Wisdom: Itinerant Sages in Ben Sira and Beyond.” It does include essays from two scholars who were not present in Virginia (John J. Collins and Yonatan Binyam).

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in Virginia. Sam suggested we hold a symposium during the summer of 2017, meeting for part of the time in Richmond and part in Charlottesville. Beyond the locus of Virginia, we thought together about the reasons for a meeting in Virginia at this moment in the history of research on Sirach. We decided on the theme expressed in our symposium title: “The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing: The Book of Sirach and its Contexts.” As Eva Mroczek, one of the participants, has argued, Sirach is not a book in the modern sense of the term but rather an ongoing stream of tradition, without fixed beginning and end.2 Scholars who endeavor to understand Sirach must consider its multiple channels, various communities, and moments in history … in a word, its contexts. Let me briefly comment on several of these contexts. 1.1

The Context of the Humanities

Sirach enjoyed widespread circulation and influence in antiquity. The book, however, has been relegated to secondary status in Christian and Jewish traditions. In Judaism, Sirach didn’t make it into the canon, though rabbinic sources frequently cite it as authoritative. In Christianity, Protestants excluded the work altogether from their canon, relegating it to the Apocrypha, while Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians included it among the Deuterocanonical Literature, a subset of their canons. As such, Sirach has been studied heretofore in the West, primarily in a Catholic, confessional context. Recently, scholars of Sirach have begun to view the theological construct “Deuterocanonical Literature” as an unhelpful framework in which to study the book.3 For historians of Second Temple Judaism, the category obscures more than it illumines. The books that comprise the category have little in common, other than membership in this theological construct. Each individual book of the Deuterocanonical corpus must be studied in its own contexts. In the case of Sirach, this means examining the book in its broader, and now better known, context of Jewish wisdom literature from the Second Temple period. Such a paradigm shift commends the context of humanistic inquiry for the study of Sirach. At the same time that interest in Sirach has surged, scholars across the humanities are asking profound questions about the nature of wisdom and what it means for humans to flourish. How do humans acquire wisdom? How do they transmit it to others? What roles do desire, pursuit, ethics, and instruction 2 Mroczek, The Literary Imagination, 86–113. 3 Goering, “Mr. Deuterocanonical Literature,” 261–63.

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts

3

play in the attainment of wisdom for the purpose of human flourishing? What can a humanistic approach to an ancient wisdom text teach us about the nature of wisdom and the ways humans acquire, embody, and transmit it? As an anthology first compiled by a Jewish sage in the early second century BCE, and with a vibrant ongoing life through the middle ages up to the present, the book of Sirach provides a significant window into ideas about wisdom and human flourishing in the Second Temple Jewish period and beyond. This volume brings together essays that locate and analyze this ancient sapiential text in its historical, literary, geographical, cultural, and political contexts, in order to understand its views on the pursuit of wisdom and human flourishing. 1.2

Historical, Literary, and Linguistic Contexts

Sirach was composed in Hebrew and translated into Greek, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic, and Georgian. Traditionally, scholars have sought to trace this multiplicity of manuscript traditions backwards, in order to reconstruct the original Sirach.4 More recently, scholars have understood the great variety in the manuscripts as a sign of the significance that communities attributed to the book. As participant Jean-Sébastien Rey argues, each act of copying or translating was more than mere preservation; it was also an act of modernizing and elucidating the text for a new time.5 The multiple translations and divergent textual traditions point to the popularity and endurance of the book of Sirach. Each manuscript has its own context and needs to be studied as such. This approach to the complexity of the manuscript tradition calls into question what we mean by “the book of Sirach.” Since scholars are unable to reliably reconstruct a parent text, we are left with not one book but many versions of Sirach in various languages, each in multiple editions, contained in manuscripts dating to a wide range of centuries, each with its own provenance. This suggests we cannot authentically describe what Ben Sira said or thought, since the various textual traditions do not speak univocally. It also provides a challenge for those of us writing commentaries on the book: how ought we present and treat responsibly this complexity, while we comment on the book?

4 See, e.g., Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 51–62. 5 Rey and Joosten, eds., The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira, vii.

4 1.3

Goering

Contemporary Contexts for Interpretation

As scholars of ancient texts, we must also always remain mindful of our own contemporary contexts of interpretation. Our own interactions with and interpretations of ancient texts are also shaped by our own contexts. We live in a grave historical moment: when authoritarian strongmen rule over a number of nations, and when voices and movements that would restrict freedom, exclude others, and perpetrate hate and violence have gained traction. In the United States, violence against African Americans has achieved such notoriety that the need for a movement called Black Lives Matter exists. Anti-Muslim sentiment remains high. What does it mean for us to pursue wisdom, to improve the human condition, to promote human flourishing, now in this moment of world history? What wisdom might the ancients have to speak to us in our situation? It was fitting that the conference took place in Richmond and Charlottesville over three days. Both are beautiful, modern cities, and both have a complicated past, especially when it comes to racism. Richmond is the modern-day capital of Virginia, and it also served historically as the capital of the Confederate States of America, the side that ultimately fought for the rights of states to decide whether or not they could permit the institution of slavery during the American Civil War. Vestiges of this history abound, perhaps most strikingly in the numerous statues celebrating Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue. Thomas Jefferson chose Charlottesville as the site for his university and made his home in nearby Monticello. One of the nation’s founding fathers, Jefferson was a very complicated figure, and his legacy has undergone reappraisal in recent years. Author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”), he also held slaves his entire life. In his practice as a lawyer, he sometimes defended slaves suing for freedom, yet he never freed his own slaves, even after fathering six children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman in his household. So the problems of race go right to the very beginning of Virginia’s history. The thread of racism continued beyond Jefferson, with the founding of a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Charlottesville in 1921, through white resistance to school desegregation in the late 1950s and 1960s, until this very moment. By happenstance, the symposium occurred between two rallies held in Charlottesville by white supremacists. On July 8, the Saturday before the symposium convened, a group of approximately 30 members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from Pelham, NC, rallied in favor of keeping a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, which the city council had

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts

illustration 1.1

5

Members of the Ku Klux Klan at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, 8 July 2017 Photo credit: Jalane Schmidt

recently voted to remove. Several weeks after the conference, on August 11 and 12, a much larger Unite the Right rally of various white supremacist groups convened on the city to promote white nationalism; as they marched with torches through Jefferson’s iconic University of Virginia Grounds on the night of the 11th, they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” On the 12th, violence between white supremacists and counter-protestors erupted, and a white supremacist killed a counter protestor, Heather Heyer, and wounded 19 others, in a terrorist attack with a motor vehicle. These contemporary events may seem far removed from our academic pursuits in conferences such as the one that resulted in this volume of essays. But they are not. In the July 8 rally held by the Ku Klux Klan two days earlier, a single sign held by a KKK member referring to the statue of Robert E. Lee read, “Remove not the ancient landmarks thy fathers have set!” quoting Proverbs 22:28. These ancient wisdom texts we study are being used by various groups to mobilize and promote their own agenda. This is not new; the Bible has always been interpreted to support a wide range of agendas. But this example serves as a reminder that what we do is not confined to the ivory tower. These events provide part of the contemporary context for our own discussions of wisdom and human flourishing in Sirach. And our work can and should have implications for the contemporary world.

6

Goering

The time is ripe for a reexamination of the book of Sirach. To our knowledge, a major international conference on Sirach had never before been held in the United States. Most such conferences have been held in Europe, where a confessional approach has often prevailed. As a current locus of Sirach scholarship, the Richmond-Charlottesville-Washington, DC area provided an ideal venue for a conference that lays the groundwork for the future study of Sirach in contexts more appropriate for broader humanistic questions about the pursuit of wisdom and human flourishing. It is our belief that the following essays do just that.

…

The essays in Part 1, “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Contexts, Categories, and Approaches,” reflect on the scholarly contexts into which we place Sirach when we study it, such as the category “wisdom literature” or different methodological approaches. In the volume’s opening essay, “Wisdom as Genre and as Tradition in the Book of Sirach,” John J. Collins engages recent conversations among scholars of wisdom literature (Kynes, Sneed, Weeks) about the problem of wisdom as a genre. He argues that “wisdom” remains useful as a category, if it is understood in terms of prototype theory, which defines a core identity with fuzzy edges. Taking Proverbs as prototypical, one can understand Sirach in the context of the prototype of wisdom, even though it has its distinctive features and modifies prototypical instructional literature. In other words, scholars can appreciate the richness of Second Temple Jewish literature only by examining both generic qualities and innovative features of a text. Jacqueline Vayntrub’s essay “Wisdom in Transmission: Rethinking Sirach and Proverbs” provides a counterpoint to Collins’s argument. Her essay highlights the problematic circular reasoning that haunts definitions of Proverbs as paradigmatic wisdom based on vocabulary and literary form. She argues that instead of viewing Proverbs as a timeless prototype of a wisdom anthology, scholars should take it as a specific articulation of what a mashal (usually translated as “saying” or “proverb”) is. Once we escape this developmental model of wisdom literature, we can understand wisdom’s thematic concerns and how it functions as a discourse. For example, she shows how analyzing the succession and transmission of wisdom across generations proves fruitful for understanding the similar concerns and distinctive features of a book like Sirach in the larger context of wisdom literature. In his essay “Appearance versus Reality and the Personification of Wisdom: Sirach’s Place in the Early Jewish Sapiential Tradition,” Bradley Gregory

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts

7

explores the epistemological question of how sages come to know what they know. He first shows how Proverbs portrays Woman Wisdom as transparent and Woman Folly as opaque. This juxtaposition exemplifies that the epistemology of Proverbs cannot be strictly empirical; one must accept such teachings from tradition. Gregory then shows Ben Sira’s awareness of the epistemological problem of accessing wisdom and competing claims to wisdom in the context of Second Temple Judaism. Examining Sirach 4 and 6, he shows that Ben Sira does not treat Folly as personified and, moreover, that in Sirach Wisdom appears bad though she is actually good, thus inverting the appearance versus reality framework. In this way Ben Sira establishes his authority as the teacher who can provide a reliable insight into the nature of reality. A. Jordan Schmidt’s essay, “Ben Sira’s Tour of the Cosmos: Sir 42:15–43:33 as Ekphrastic Wisdom,” forms something of a companion to Gregory’s essay, in that it focuses on the rhetorical means and ends of Sir 43.1–26, the central part of The Hymn to the Creator. Schmidt argues that the poem forms an ekphrasis, a common ancient Greek technique of describing something vividly so as to bring it before the eyes of the reader. Focusing on the visual language of the poem, he proposes that the poem’s purpose is twofold: to inspire readers to praise God and to teach students how to contemplate the created world. In the context of Greek rhetorical techniques, we can observe how Ben Sira uses the poem to guide his readers to see the cosmos as he wants them to see it. The essays in Part 2, “The Hebrew Manuscripts of Sirach: Diversity, Continuity, and Transmission,” consider the challenges of interpreting Sirach in the context of its complex manuscript tradition, as well as what the complexity of the manuscript tradition tells us about Sirach and the scribes and communities that preserved and transmitted it. In his essay “Sirach MS C Revisited,” Frank Ueberschaer asks whether this unusual manuscript can be read as a coherent wisdom text and, if so, what is its message. After reviewing various proposals for how to understand the deliberately arranged anthology of MS C, he argues that the manuscript’s beginning and ending in antiquity were as we have them today. Ueberschaer proceeds to read MS C as a work in its own right, with its own structure and message. He concludes by arguing that the manuscript provides an example of a text conceived by a teacher as a summation of what one ought to know for a successful life. By comparing MS C with other witnesses to Sirach, we gain valuable perspective into the process of scribal activity, in which texts are both preserved and reworked at the same time. Eric Reymond, in his essay “Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach,” investigates the thorny issue of distinguishing two easily confused consonants in the two longest Hebrew manuscripts. The similarity of the two

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letters led to numerous errors in transmission of the text, and as Reymond demonstrates many scribal mistakes were based on misreading one consonant for the other. But other explanations are possible, such as an otherwise unattested word. Thus, he asks, how can scholars determine what constitutes a scribal error and which are merely variant readings? The significance of these questions extends beyond specific readings. As Reymond argues, the answers imply that the text of Sirach continued to be copied and transmitted through the first millennium CE and was frequently changed during the process of transmission. In his essay “Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach,” Jean-Sébastien Rey examines the phenomenon of repetitions of two or more synonymous or semantically similar readings in the textual tradition of Sirach. He concludes that doublets result from multiple phenomena, such as scribal conflation of divergent traditions, synonymous readings, and stylistic creativity. As Rey argues, such an analysis demonstrates that transmitters are not mere copyists who introduce changes only accidentally, but can be understood as “authors” in their own right. This shows that texts are perpetually moving, a point he relates to Paul Zumthor’s concept of mouvance, a notion inherent to the very idea of text. Thus, textual development and textual transmission are intricately related. The essays in Part 3, “Sages and their Contexts: Hellenism, Hymns, and Pedagogy,” examine various contexts of the sage Ben Sira, which modern scholars create for him, whether they be textual, pedagogical, or historical. Samuel Adams poses the puzzling question of Ezra’s absence from Ben Sira’s famous encomium in his essay “Where is Ezra? Ben Sira’s Surprising Omission and the Selective Presentation in the Praise of the Ancestors.” From our vantage point, Ezra seems as important—or even more important—than other figures included in the Praise of the Ancestors, such as Jeshua and Zerubbabel. Adams notes that many modern commentators assume that the omission of Ezra is either an intentional slight based on ideological reasons or, alternatively, a strategic exclusion since Ezra doesn’t fit the categories of chapter 49. After reviewing a number of scholarly proposals, he argues for a much simpler and likelier explanation: by Ben Sira’s time, the figure of Ezra had not yet achieved sufficient status in the popular imagination to warrant inclusion. As evidence for his thesis, Adams notes that the ancient sources which promote Ezra date to after the time period of Ben Sira. In his essay “Sages as Singers in Sirach and the Second Temple Period,” David Skelton investigates the role of musical training in the education of ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman scribes, in order to better understand the pedagogical model envisioned by the book of Sirach. Noting that several hymnic passages in Sirach invite readers to sing or play music, and even assume that its

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts

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audience has undertaken musical training, Skelton compares the musical role of the scribe in Sirach to the singing Levitical teachers of Chronicles and the maskil in the Dead Sea Scrolls and argues these in turn rest on older traditions of using music for instruction. He shows that for students songs functioned as mnemonic devices and that their performative nature fostered the embodiment of a sage’s teachings, and that for teachers a strong musical performance established a sage’s credentials and helped him recruit students. James Aitken attends to the historical contexts of Sirach assumed by interpreters during the 20th century in his essay “Sirach and Imperial History: A Reassessment.” He notes that during the 20th century scholarship located Sirach primarily in relationship to a poorly defined Hellenism, and that Ben Sira’s supposed anti-Hellenism has remained an unquestioned assumption among many Sirach scholars to this day. More recently, scholars have used postcolonialism and discourse about empire in order to understand Sirach. While more sophisticated than the simple anti-Hellenism readings, and therefore a welcome shift, these new readings do not adequately dismantle the older historiographical model of previous scholarship. All historical contextualizations, Aitken observes, are products of the interpreter’s own time and place. He calls for Sirach scholars to attend to new sources, such as documentary papyri and state inscriptions, and more sophisticated reconstructions of Hellenism as they locate Sirach in this historical period. For example, evidence from Greek and Egyptian sources suggests that relations between kings and subjects were fluid and negotiable. Aitken applies this more nuanced historiographic model to a reading of imperial administration in Sir 9:17–10:18. The final set of essays in Part 4, “The Reception of the Book and Figure of Ben Sira in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” examines how the textual tradition of the book and its central figure were received by specific communities at various moments in history. Ben Wright and Eva Mroczek, in their essay “Ben Sira’s Pseudo-Pseudepigraphy: Idealizations from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,” explore what the attribution of individual authorship to the book of Sirach means, the first such attribution in Jewish history. Prior Jewish texts were either anonymous or pseudonymous. Scholars have generally thought that Ben Sira’s revelation of his own name was prompted by authorial practices of self-identification among non-Jewish Hellenistic writers. Noting that Ben Sira’s self-identification shares much in common with Jewish practices of pseudonymity, Wright and Mroczek argue that we should not understand Ben Sira as an author in the modern sense of claiming ownership over one’s work. Rather, Ben Sira’s selfidentification represents a development of earlier Jewish pseudepigraphic practices, a phenomenon they call “pseudo-pseudepigraphy.” In the same way

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that Jewish pseudepigraphic practices sought to idealize and memorialize a figure and secure that figure’s connections to a text, Ben Sira claims authorship in order to take his place among the famous men he praises in Sirach 44–49. Wright and Mroczek conclude that this way of conceptualizing Ben Sira’s selfidentification helps us, in turn, better understand the motivations of classical Greek authors, who also are not authors in a modern sense, but rather like Ben Sira seek to make an enduring name for themselves. In his essay “The Act of Reading Ben Sira as a Generative Context for Jewish Liturgical Poetry and the Book of Ben Sira Itself,” Matthew Goff argues that the Hymn of Divine Names (Sir 51:12a–o) is reasonably understood as a poetic creation that emerged out of the piyyut tradition and was inspired by the Amidah. The poem, which is only attested in the medieval B manuscript of Sirach, is likely a relatively late addition to the composition. He critiques Roth’s thesis that Avodah poetry can be traced back to a primitive source in the mishnaic tractate Yoma and Sirach 50. Goff argues that while it is better not to think of Yoma and Sirach 50 as Urtexts, Roth’s work helpfully highlights parallels between Sirach and the piyyut. Examining the Hymn of Divine Names in the later context of Jewish piyyut poetry highlights the role played by the book of Sirach and the figure of Ben Sira in rabbinic Judaism. The later tradition probably understood the Hymn to be the kind of blessing the High Priest pronounced in the Temple. Hence, rabbinic Judaism considered Ben Sira to be a biblical sage who transmitted hymns from the Second Temple. Goff notes that not only did Sirach become a source for later Jewish liturgical poetry, but also that later Jews altered the book of Sirach itself, due to their association of the figure Ben Sira with hymnic material. For this reason, he argues that we can consider the Hymn of Divine Names to be a type of piyyut, a product of payyetanim, whose literary movement flourished in late antique Palestine. In the final essay, “Ben Sira in Ethiopia: The Andǝmta Commentary on Sirach 1 and 24,” Yonatan Binyam examines the little studied andǝmta of Sirach, part of the Ethiopian tradition of biblical commentary, with the biblical text in Geʿez followed by commentary in Amharic. Binyam provides a translation of the andǝmta of chapters 1 and 24 of Sirach. Binyam observes that the andǝmta on Sirach 24 is often Christological in its presentation of wisdom, a common theme in the andǝmta tradition, which it derives from John 1. Binyam’s examination of Sirach and its interpretation within the context of the Ethiopian Bible commentary tradition raise intriguing questions for future scholarship. How does this text fit into the development of Ethiopian doctrines of Christ and of the Trinity? The citations of the Ascension of Isaiah in the andǝmta on Sirach 1 and 24 also merit further study, in terms of both how they shed light on conceptions of authoritative writings in Ethiopian Christianity and the largely forgotten Nachleben of this composition in Ethiopia.

Introduction: Sirach and Its Contexts

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The present volume could not have been possible without the efforts of numerous persons and the generous support of various institutions. Thanks to Karina Martin Hogan and René Bloch, editors of Brill’s Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series, for accepting the volume in the series. We are grateful to the excellent and efficient work of the production staff at Brill for bringing the project to fruition. The editors are grateful to Dean Ken McFayden and President Brian Blount for hosting the symposium at Union Presbyterian Seminary for the Richmond portion. At the University of Virginia, Jessica Aquilina and Mick Watson handled admirably the financial aspects, Liz Smith and Jenni Via helped me hire student assistants, Naomi Worth found and booked suitable rooms, and Philip Wood made a myriad of logistical details fall into place magically behind the scenes. Thanks also to our graduate students, Abigail Emerson and Megan Strollo, who brought the essays into conformity with Brill's requirements, and Blake Jurgens and Douglas Hippe, who created the indexes. Finally, generous financial resources that supported the July 2017 symposium in Virginia came from Union Presbyterian Seminary (Richmond, VA), as well as from the following entities at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA): the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Vice President for Research, the Virginia Center for the Study of Religion and the Department of Religious Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, the Department of Classics, and the Ancient History Fund. To all of these persons and institutions the editors express their profound gratitude. Bibliography Goering, Greg Schmidt. “Mr. Deuterocanonical Literature (1546–2013): A Brief Vita of a Controversial Religious Figure.” Pages 261–63 in Canonicity, Setting, Wisdom in the Deuterocanonicals: Papers of the Jubilee Meeting of the International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books. Ed. Géza G. Xeravits, József Zsengellér and Xavér Szabó. DCLS 22. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Mroczek, Eva. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Rey, Jean-Sébastien, and Jan Joosten, eds. The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira: Transmission and Interpretation. JSJSup 150. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Skehan, Patrick W., and Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira. AB 39. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987.

part 1 The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Contexts, Categories, and Approaches

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chapter 2

Wisdom as Genre and as Tradition in the Book of Sirach John J. Collins 2.1

Introduction

It is a commonplace to say that the book of Sirach belongs to the category of wisdom literature. The category of “wisdom literature” is not identified as such in the biblical canon, but it is very old.1 Augustine of Hippo associated the books of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) and Wisdom of Solomon with the “Solomonic” books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) and Canticles, although he realized that they were not written by Solomon.2 The Council of Carthage, in 397 CE, recognized five books of Solomon as canonical, including Sirach and Wisdom, although Sirach makes no claim to Solomonic authorship. Neither Augustine nor the Council was engaging in systematic genre analysis, but both perceived significant similarity between Sirach, on the one hand, and Proverbs and Qoheleth, on the other. The epithet “sapiential” is attested for Proverbs and Qoheleth (but also for Psalms and Canticles) in the sixteenth century, and the closely related “sapiental” (also including Job) in the Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers in 1728.3 With the rise of modern biblical criticism in the 19th century, the term became standard.4 In recent years, however, the validity or usefulness of this category has been challenged several times. Mark Sneed asks, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?”5 Stuart Weeks questions whether “Wisdom Literature” is a useful category.6 Will Kynes even announces an obituary for the category.7 Even before the recent spate of publications, the distinction between wisdom and

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Weeks, “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ a Useful Category?”, 4–5. Augustine, De Civitate Dei 17.20. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, art. “sapiental.” Kynes, “The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings,” 83–108. Sneed, “Is the Wisdom Tradition a Tradition?” 50–71. Weeks, “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ a Useful Category?” 3–23. Kynes, An Obituary for “Wisdom Literature”.

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apocalypticism was questioned by Richard A. Horsley in the SBL Wisdom and Apocalypticism seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature.8 The objections to the category are of various kinds. Kynes argues that the identification of the category depends on circular reasoning. So he takes an article by Benjamin Wright9 as a clear example of the ex post facto justification of wisdom that characterizes the current discussion. Beginning with the scholarly consensus on the contents of the genre, he looks for a means of explaining it … What the field lacks is an analysis that reaches back before the wisdom category became a fact to the origins of this grouping that scholars must go to such lengths to justify.10 But discussions of wisdom are no more circular than any other line of argument in the humanities. It is simply a matter of checking a hypothesis against the evidence. This does not require an a priori commitment to the status quo. It is quite possible to argue that the conventional view of the core sapiential texts requires revision, e.g., that Job does not qualify,11 or that the proposed points of coherence do not hold. Kynes seems to assume that the traditional identification of the wisdom books was arbitrary. Similarly, he notes that Egyptologists and Assyriologists adopted the category “wisdom literature” from biblical studies and argues that “this means that appeals to ancient Near Eastern parallels to justify the category run into significant problems of circularity.”12 He does not stop to consider why Egyptologists adopted the category, or whether the similarity between the Egyptian and biblical corpora is compelling. The issue here is not whether one starts from the consensus, but whether the consensus holds up when it is checked against the evidence. To “reach back before the wisdom category became a fact” is to reach back to an era of pre-critical scholarship, which had its own biases and assumptions. Other questions are more substantial. One question is whether wisdom is properly considered a genre. Another is whether the core wisdom texts can be said to share a worldview, or a view of reality that is distinctive in the context 8 9 10 11 12

Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries and the Politics of Second Temple Judea, 3–6; Horsley and Tiller, After Apocalyptic and Wisdom, 163–7. Wright, “Joining the Club,” 260–85. Kynes, “The Modern Scholarly Wisdom Tradition and the Threat of Pan-Sapientialism,” 22. So Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature, 147; idem, “Deciding the Boundaries of ‘Wisdom’,” 154–5. Kynes, “The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings,” 85.

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of ancient Israel and Judah. Related to this is the question of social setting, and the question of historical change in an ongoing tradition. 2.2

Genre

Many scholars have been reluctant to speak of wisdom as a genre. In the volume on wisdom literature in the Forms of Old Testament Literature series, Roland Murphy wrote that “Wisdom Literature is not a form-critical term; it is merely a term of convenience, derived apparently from ecclesiastical usage.”13 I myself wrote twenty years ago that “there is universal agreement that wisdom does not constitute a literary genre, and that it can find expression in various literary forms.”14 Wright, however, has argued that we can talk about wisdom as a genre: “scholars have identified a group of texts that they almost universally agree can be called wisdom books.”15 In part, the problem here is the lack of agreement as to what we mean by a genre. At the most basic level, a genre is a group of texts that are deemed to constitute the same kind of literature. Scholars use the term in different ways. Murphy, for example, speaks of sayings and of commands and prohibitions as “basic wisdom genres.”16 Other scholars might speak of these as “forms” and reserve “genre” for larger units or macrogenres. It is clear enough that wisdom books can include different literary forms. Whether this means that they include different literary genres depends on how we use the term.17 Sneed, following Kenton Sparks, distinguishes between generic realism and generic nominalism.18 Generic realism “posits that texts are uniquely and intrinsically related to the generic categories in which we place them.”19 Sneed claims that those who subscribe to this view see genres as static and genre analysis as a matter of taxonomy.20 Generic nominalism, in contrast, assumes that “there is a flexible and partially arbitrary character to all classifications … Generic categories are essentially taxonomic inventions.”21 The static character 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 3. It should be noted that Ruth and Esther were grouped here with the wisdom books simply as a matter of convenience. Collins, “Wisdom Reconsidered, in Light of the Scrolls,” 265. Wright, “Joining the Club,” 269. Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 4. Sneed, “Grasping after the Wind,” 41, prefers to speak of wisdom as a mode of literature rather than as a genre. Ibid., 40; following Sparks, Ancient Texts, 6. Sparks, Ancient Texts, 6. Sneed, “Grasping after the Wind,” 40. Sparks, Ancient Texts, 6.

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of form-critical analyses is perhaps exaggerated. No one has ever denied that forms change over time, and neither has anyone ever claimed that a text that belongs to one genre may not also be related to texts that are not. Nonetheless, there has undoubtedly been a shift of emphasis in recent years, and a growing recognition of the nominalist character of genre recognition. A more helpful distinction can be made between emic and etic categories. Emic categories were recognized by the ancient authors. Etic categories are invented by modern scholars, but may nonetheless by apt and helpful. Most, if not all, form-critical categories are etic, devised by modern scholars for their purposes. There was very little formal literary analysis in ancient Israel or Judah, and such generic designations as we find (e.g., mashal for proverb) are not very helpful. (A mashal can also be an allegory or a parable.) Nonetheless, it is clear that affinities between some texts were recognized and deemed important in antiquity, and that this was the case with at least some of the texts that are now classified as wisdom literature. 2.2.1 Prototype Theory Any discussion of genre must of necessity recognize some common features in the texts that are grouped together. Nonetheless, there is widespread resistance in recent discussions to precise classification and definition.22 In part, this is due to the appreciation of the fact that many texts have affinities with more than one genre, and also that each text is in some way distinctive. Consequently, the tendency in more recent criticism has been towards emphasizing generic fluidity and fuzzy boundaries. Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblance is often invoked.23 This approach to the study of genre was popularized by Alistair Fowler, who argued that “literary genre seems to be just the sort of concept with blurred edges that is suited to such an approach.”24 Fowler allowed that texts could belong to the same genre without having any single feature shared in common by all. This kind of approach, however, is not very satisfactory. As another literary critic, John Swales, put it: “family resemblance theory can make anything resemble anything,”25 because it can be extended indefinitely.

22 23 24 25

See the helpful review of genre theory by Newsom, “Spying Out the Land,” 437–50. See also my essay, “Introduction,” in Collins, Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 1–20. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 31–2. Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 41–2. Swales, Genre Analysis, 51.

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A more promising line of approach is provided by prototype theory. This approach is developed from cognitive psychology and is described as follows by John Frow: The postulate is that we understand categories (such as bird) through a very concrete logic of typicality. We take a robin or a sparrow to be more central to that category than an ostrich, and a kitchen chair to be more typical of the class of chairs than a throne or a piano stool. Rather than having clear boundaries, essential components, and shared and uniform properties, classes defined by prototypes have a common core and then fade into fuzziness at the edges. This is to say that we classify easily at the level of prototypes, and with more difficulty—extending features of the prototype by metaphor and analogy to take account of non-typical features—as we diverge from them.26 This approach to generic classification is increasingly invoked in biblical and related studies. Carol Newsom has suggested its relevance to the genre “apocalypse.”27 Benjamin Wright has proposed that it might be helpful in understanding the coherence of wisdom literature.28 In fact, some scholars who speak of “family resemblance” seem to have something more like prototype theory in mind. So, for example Katharine Dell accepts the idea of family resemblance, but still insists on a wisdom core, represented by Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.29 Michael Fox speaks of a family of texts, characterized by clusters of features: “The more of them a work has, the more clearly it belongs to the family.”30 If we approach the wisdom literature from this perspective, the prototypical text is Proverbs. Other wisdom texts are so identified because of their similarity to Proverbs. The similarity is primarily formal. Proverbs is instructional literature. Much of the book, in chapters 10–30, consists of proverbial sayings. The first nine chapters contain longer discourses. All of this material consists of either direct speech or declarative sentences. This style of presentation is distinctive within the biblical corpus. Narrative elements play a minor role. The prophetic books also use direct address extensively, but the tone is very different from that of Proverbs, and prophetic speech differs in its reliance 26 27 28 29 30

Frow, Genre, 54. Newsom, “Spying out the Land,” 443. Wright, “Joining the Club,” 268–79. Dell, “Deciding the Boundaries,” 154. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 17.

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on divine authority. Even when the sayings in Proverbs are couched as imperatives, they do not have the force of law. Proverbial sayings can, of course, be found in prophetic and narrative books,31 but they do not determine the character of these other genres. Like Proverbs, Qoheleth consists entirely of declarative sentences and direct address, and mixes longer instructions with collections of sayings. It does not correspond to Proverbs in all details. There is no counterpart to the speech of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 or the reflection on the capable wife in Proverbs 31. But Qoheleth is clearly closer to Proverbs in its style and manner of presentation than to any other book in the biblical corpus. Similarly, the common perception of continuity between Egyptian instructional literature and Proverbs rests primarily on the manner of presentation, although more specific points of contact may also be noted. So, for example, Nili Shupak writes that Egyptian wisdom consists of two subgenres, didactic and speculative. Other elements, such as the reign of a future ideal king, play a subordinate role.32 Insofar as the book of Job is a dialogue with a narrative framework, it is more distant from Proverbs, but the speeches of Job’s friends are essentially wisdom instructions. We can recognize generic affinity while also recognizing divergence, and affinities with other genres such as the lament, in the case of some of the speeches of Job. When genre is viewed in this way, we can readily agree with Stuart Weeks that it is “impossible to insist that genres are mutually exclusive, let alone that any given text must belong to a single genre.”33 But this in no way invalidates the recognition of a genre such as wisdom. It simply requires that we recognize that other members of the genre may resemble the prototype to different degrees. From this perspective, a genre is a literary tradition, whose works are related to each other in significant ways, but may also have their own distinctive individuality. Also useful here is the idea of a discourse, which engages and reconfigures a received tradition.34 In short, a genre is not necessarily a clearly bounded entity, but a tradition with a clear core but fuzzy edges. I agree, then, with Michael Fox, when he says that Sneed’s question, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?,” must be answered in the affirmative, and

31 32 33 34

See especially Fontaine, Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament, 1982. Shupak, “The Contribution of Egyptian Wisdom the Study of Biblical Wisdom Literature,” 266. Weeks, “Wisdom, Form and Genre,” 163. Compare Najman, Seconding Sinai, 12–17. Najman speaks of “discourse tied to a founder.” Wisdom literature is often associated with Solomon, but this is not necessarily always the case. See also Goff, “Qumran Wisdom Literature and the Problem of Genre,” 286–306, esp. 299.

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that the tradition is self-aware and self-reflective in both Egypt and the Hebrew Bible.35 When we turn to Sirach, the similarity to Proverbs, and to the Egyptian instructional literature, is obvious. Here again, most of the book consists of declarative sentences or direct instructional address. The poem on wisdom in Sirach 24 evokes Proverbs 8 (although it also evokes other texts, such as the aretalogies of Isis). Ben Sira certainly goes beyond Proverbs in his praise of the works of the Creator (39:16–35; 42:15–43:33) and breaks new ground with the “Praise of the Fathers” in chapters 44–50. As Matt Goff has argued: It is obvious to anyone who reads this composition that Ben Sira is a teacher who offers instruction to students and that his teaching is shaped by his own education in an older didactic tradition that is well represented by Proverbs. It is thus reasonable to state that his instruction is part of a wisdom tradition. Ben Sira, however, does not simply repeat Proverbs.36 The tradition undergoes further transformation in the Dead Sea Scrolls,37 and in the Hellenistic Diaspora.38 2.3

A Sapiential Worldview?

Thus far, I accept the view of scholars such as Wright and Goff that wisdom literature is a valid and helpful category, whether we call it a genre, tradition, or discourse. The recognition of this category is based on formal considerations: wisdom literature is instructional literature presented, predominantly, in the form of declaratory statements and direct monitory address. In the biblical context, the prototypical instance is the book of Proverbs. In the words of Michael Fox: A wisdom book purports to discover and teach insights about the ethical and successful life (including the limitations on attaining it). It meditates on and teaches about such matters as the moral relation between deed and consequence and the efficacy of moral rules. It thinks about 35 36 37 38

Fox, “Three Theses on Wisdom,” 81. Goff, “Qumran Wisdom Literature,” 299–300. Goff, Discerning Wisdom. One of the distinguishing formal marks of wisdom in the Scrolls is the decline in the prominence of proverbs. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, 133–221.

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the powers and validity of wisdom itself. And all this without appealing to revelation or laws.39 Many scholars, however, have assumed that the genre also entails a distinctive worldview. James Crenshaw famously wrote that “where a marriage between form and content exists, there is wisdom literature.”40 The content entailed A way of looking at things (that) begins with humans as the fundamental point of orientation. It asks what is good for men and women. And it believes that all essential answers can be learned in experience, pregnant with signs about reality itself … The one God embedded truth within all of reality. The human responsibility is to search for that insight and thus to learn to live in harmony with the cosmos.41 Job and Qoheleth question the viability of this quest for wisdom, but it still frames the discussion of wisdom in these books. Crenshaw’s account of the sapiential way of looking at things, however, requires modification if we apply it to the wisdom texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which often regard wisdom as a mystery, only fully revealed beyond this life.42 The Wisdom of Solomon, written in Greek in the Diaspora around the turn of the era, also speaks of “the mysteries of God,” and looks for salvation beyond this world (Wis 2:22).43 Sneed has argued vigorously that literary genres do not entail distinct worldviews.44 In this he is surely right.45 A wisdom instruction can draw on whatever worldview happens to be prevalent. Consequently, 4QInstruction from Qumran speaks of “mystery” and reward and punishment after death in a way that would have been incomprehensible to the sages of Proverbs. The fact remains that the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible— Proverbs, Qoheleth and Job—are quite consistent in their worldview. This is a view of a world where consequences follow acts (even if the connection can sometimes be questioned), where any form of reward or punishment after death is rejected, and where there is no question of divine intervention to alter the course of events. These assumptions no longer hold in the wisdom 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Fox, “Three Theses on Wisdom,” 82. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, 11. Ibid., 10. Collins, “Wisdom Reconsidered”; Goff, “Qumran Wisdom Literature,” 300–1. See Collins, “The Mysteries of God,” 287–306. Sneed, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ A Tradition?” 59. See already Collins, “Wisdom Reconsidered,” 280.

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literature of the Scrolls or of the Hellenistic Diaspora, so they cannot be equated with “the sapiential worldview” tout court. In their time, however, these books are distinctive in their lack of appeal to divine revelation or to divine intervention. Should we assume, with Crenshaw and others, that they reflect the view of a distinct class within Israel, or should we assume that the apparently distinctive worldview is only a matter of genre, and that the same sages might have written or copied laws, psalms, or oracles on other occasions? Sneed argues that the idea that wisdom was a distinct tradition with a worldview that differed from that of the priests and the prophets arose only in the late nineteenth century, under the influence of Gunkel’s form criticism. “Before Gunkel,” writes Sneed, “German scholars held to what I call the complementary approach to the Hebrew wisdom literature. This is the view that this corpus complements and supplements the other types of literature in the Hebrew Bible and that it should not be isolated from them.”46 Kynes traces the isolation of wisdom farther back, to the work of J. F. Bruch in 1851,47 and suggests that the category was invented to find a basis for universalism in the Hebrew Bible, to contrast with Jewish particularism. But one might also argue that it was only in the nineteenth century that scholars began to appreciate the diversity of thought in ancient Israel, and to question the uniformity of the canon, and indeed that modern attempts to reverse this trend in scholarship have their own theological bias in favor of canonical unity. It is plausible enough to argue that the collections of proverbs that make up most of Proverbs 10–31 are just that—collections of sayings that could also be used in other contexts. Moreover, as David Carr has argued, it is also plausible to suppose that much of this material was collected before the emphasis on the Torah of Moses, or even before prophetic oracles became dominant.48 The relation of Proverbs 1–9, Job, and Qoheleth to the rest of the biblical tradition is more controversial. Weeks argues that “it is difficult to read Prov 1–9 … without rapidly becoming aware of its strong affinities with the language of Deuteronomy.”49 These affinities are undeniable. Prov 6:20 refers to the commandment of the father and the torah (“teaching”) of the mother, and similar echoes of Deuteronomy can be found in the wisdom instructions in Proverbs 3 and 7. Weeks continues, “early readers clearly believed that the instruction commended in Prov 1–9 should be identified with the Deuteronomic Torah, and it 46 47 48 49

Sneed, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ A Tradition?” 53. Kynes, “The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings,” 96; Bruch, Weisheitslehre der Hebräer, 1851. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 407. Weeks, “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ a Useful Category?” 14.

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is very likely … that the work itself intended such an identification.”50 Bernd Schipper makes a similar point more subtly: The crucial point is that, by this intertextual allusion, the ‫ מצוה‬of the father and the ‫ תורה‬of the mother comes close to the ‫ תורה‬and the ‫ מצוה‬of God. Even if they appear in the textual strategy of Proverbs as a parental instruction, this instruction refers to the will of YHWH.51 Wisdom, according to Schipper, is “a hermeneutic of Torah.” But in fact, Proverbs does not refer to the Torah of Moses, or of YHWH, but to the teaching and instructions of the parents and/or the sage. Its authority derives from human teachers. That authority may be enhanced by association with the Torah of Deuteronomy, but it does not derive from it. To be sure, this does not suggest any antagonism between the scribes of Deuteronomy and those of Proverbs, but it does attest to an enduring tradition of teaching that was not based on the Law of Moses.52 Similarly, many scholars recognize an allusion to Gen 3:19 in Qoh 3:20 (“all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again”), or to Deut 23:22–24 in Qoh 5:3–4, which warns that one should fulfill a vow without delay. But if Qoheleth cites Deuteronomy here, it is not because of the authority of Scripture, but because it is in accordance with the ethos of wisdom.53 Indeed, as Weeks himself has noted, Qoheleth shows no obvious interest in the Torah before the epilogue, which exhorts the reader to “fear God and keep his commandments.”54 This exhortation is quintessentially Deuteronomic, but it seems at odds with the rest of the book of Qoheleth. Even Michael Fox, who accepts it as part of the original composition, sees it as an attempt to win acceptance for the book by a nod to conventional piety.55 It is, of course, possible to read Qoheleth or Proverbs intertextually, and find points of coherence with other biblical books.56 But intertextual reading should not be mistaken for intentional allusion, or as a reliable guide to authorial intention. The absence of reference to the Torah of 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Ibid. Schipper, “When Wisdom is Not Enough,” 60; compare idem, Hermeneutik der Tora, 297. Compare also Harris, Proverbs 1–9, 1995. See further the discussion in Collins, The Invention of Judaism, 66–8, and idem, “Wisdom and Torah,” 63–65. Levinson, A More Perfect Torah, 56. Weeks, “Fear God and Keep His Commandments,” 101–18. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up, 373–4. See Dell and Kynes, Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually; Barbour, The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet.

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Moses, or to the history of Israel, in Proverbs, Job, and Qoheleth (except for allusions to Solomon in 1:1; 2:12), remains striking. This absence cannot be circumvented by arguing that “the scribes” were responsible for all the literature of ancient Israel. No doubt, scribes were by definition responsible for everything that is written down. But not all scribes were alike, and it is entirely gratuitous to suppose that the scribes who wrote Proverbs and Qoheleth were also responsible for Leviticus and Ezekiel. If Proverbs and Qoheleth shared a worldview that was distinctive in its lack of attention to the Torah and the Prophets, it does not follow that this was the worldview of all scribes. We know very little about the social locations of scribes in ancient Israel, but it is surely obvious that there was some diversity among them. Proverbs, Qoheleth, and Job represent a literary tradition that was distinctive in some respects in ancient Israel. The claim of scholars such as Crenshaw that there was a distinctive sapiential worldview, then, is not without foundation.57 It only becomes untenable if one denies that it could ever change, or that this worldview was inherently bound to the literary genre of instruction. 2.4

Sirach

The book of Sirach brings an interesting perspective to this question. Sirach is distinguished from earlier Hebrew wisdom books by its veneration of the book of the law of Moses, expressed most eloquently in chapter 24. It is further distinguished by the long section on the Praise of the Fathers in chapters 44–49, the first section in a Hebrew wisdom book to pay significant attention to the history of Israel. Finally, it is distinctive in its admiration for the High Priest, Simon, son of Onias, in chapter 50.58 Ben Sira does not cite material from the Torah explicitly, and he regards the Torah as only one of many sources of wisdom.59 Yet he shows clearly that a wisdom teacher could make use of the traditions of Israel, and do so in a way that is quite unambiguous. The same is true of some of the sapiential compositions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The explicit use of older Scripture in these writings shows the implausibility 57 58 59

Compare Annette Schellenberg, “Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater,” 115–43. I leave aside here the question of the authenticity of the prayer in Sirach 36, “crush the heads of the hostile rulers,” which is endlessly debated. See Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, 109–11. Admittedly, Sir 24:23 uses the wording of Deut 33:4; Sir 45:22 borrows phraseology from Num 18:20; and Sir 45:23–24 employs wording from Num 25:11–13.

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of searching for hidden allusions to the Torah or other Scriptures in the older wisdom books. As Moshe Weinfeld and others have noted, there were considerable affinities between traditional wisdom teaching and the book of Deuteronomy.60 These affinities become more pronounced in Ben Sira, who acknowledges the election and special status of Israel, in a way the older wisdom books did not.61 His view of life remains resolutely this-worldly, with no anticipation of reward or punishment in the hereafter: “Whether life lasts for ten years or a hundred or a thousand, there are no questions asked in Hades” (Sir 41:4). His appropriation of the history of Israel gives it a decidedly sapiential cast. The great figures of that history are recast as examples of wisdom in action. In the later Wisdom of Solomon, the whole history of Israel is taken as a series of illustrations of the workings of God in the cosmos. This kind of pedagogical use of the history of Israel can also be found in Psalms (78, 105, 106) and in 4Q185 from Qumran.62 The increased attention to the law of Moses and the history of Israel in Sirach was most probably influenced by his social location. His admiration for the High Priest Simon suggests that he was a retainer, who depended on the patronage of the Temple, and accordingly paid attention to traditions associated with the Temple.63 This does not seem to have been the case with Qoheleth, or with the authors of Proverbs. After Ben Sira, however, the Scriptures of Israel seem to have been accepted as part of the sapiential repertoire regardless of social location (e.g., in the case of the wisdom texts in the Scrolls). 2.4.1 Was Ben Sira Distinctive in His Time? If Ben Sira integrated the traditions of Israel into his teaching, was his wisdom no longer distinctive in relation to other Jewish literature? The era of Ben Sira was notable for the emergence of another genre that was novel and distinctive in Jewish tradition, the apocalypse. In many ways, this genre was the antithesis of the tradition of instructional wisdom. Proverbs had taught that wisdom was not to be sought in heaven: “Who has ascended to heaven and come down?” (Prov 31:4). The earliest Jewish apocalypses had a ready answer: Enoch. Where the wisdom tradition was grounded in common human experience, apocalyptic literature was based on heavenly revelations that were by definition exceptional. In this regard Ben Sira stood squarely 60 61 62 63

Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 244–81. Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 9–14. Tooman, “Wisdom and Torah at Qumran,” 216. Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, 57. Horsley assumes that the situation of Ben Sira is that of all scribes in the period.

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within the wisdom tradition. He had no time for dreams or visions: “As one who catches at a shadow and pursues the wind, so is anyone who believes in dreams” (Sir 34:2). Nonetheless, for many years a seminar in the Society of Biblical Literature strove to show that there were no defined boundaries between wisdom and apocalypticism.64 Richard Horsley especially polemicized against the dichotomy of wisdom and apocalypticism. All these texts were the work of scribes, and were motivated primarily by social concerns.65 Sirach and the Enochic book of the Watchers should be read as complementary rather than as contradictory alternatives.66 Sirach and the book of the Watchers are indeed roughly contemporary texts, and they share many motifs and interests.67 George Nickelsburg, who originally convened the Wisdom and Apocalypticism seminar with Horsley, saw the difference between them: For Ben Sira, the scribe looks for enlightenment in the tradition, which for him includes the Torah, the prophets, and the writings and traditions of the wise. Here the Enochic authors part company with him. Although in fact they draw on Scripture at many points, they do not acknowledge the fact. Instead they claim to have received a special revelation.68 There were other differences too. Enoch looked for a final judgment and salvation beyond death. For Ben Sira there was no inquiry about life in Sheol. To be sure, subsequent wisdom writers would fantasize about a final judgment, and emphasize the mystery of life. Apocalyptic writers would find ways to incorporate wisdom teachings in their revelation. Both wisdom and apocalypticism were traditions, which grew and changed as they went along. But at least in the time of Ben Sira, the differences were stark. Ben Sira still subscribed to much of the worldview of traditional wisdom, whereas the apocalypses had an entirely different basis. 2.4.2 Is Genre Important for Understanding Sirach? Genres are important because they shape the expectations with which we approach texts. Sneed puts the matter well: 64 65 66 67 68

Wright and Wills, eds., Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism, 2005; Horsley and Tiller, After Apocalyptic and Wisdom. Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, and Politics, 4–5. Horsley and Tiller, After Apocalyptic and Wisdom, 52. Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach, 1995. Nickelsburg, “Response to Sarah Tanzer,” 53.

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Collins

Genres are basically the universal, and this is what builds expectations in the reader, which are known as conventions. This is done by consciously or unconsciously categorizing a text or speech as like other texts/speeches. But the particular also has a part to play in this process. Every text/ speech, while it draws on a genre (or genres), in some way departs from it and forms the particular and the unique.69 In fact, generic expectations constitute a foil, which serves to highlight the specific character of an individual text insofar as it departs from them. But they also point the reader to the dominant character of a text, if its genre is recognized correctly. To say that Sirach is a wisdom text is to say that it is like Proverbs (especially) or Qoheleth. And indeed it is. Like Proverbs, it offers reflections on the nature of the world and advice on right conduct. It offers these as the fruit of human insight rather than of special revelation, such as we find in prophetic and apocalyptic literature, although he allows that the spirit of understanding comes from the Lord (39:6). And while genres can be adapted to different worldviews, the worldview of Sirach is still substantially in line with that of Proverbs and Qoheleth, especially in its denial of a meaningful afterlife. This is not to deny that Ben Sira’s book has its own distinctive character. His equation of wisdom and Torah, and his praise of his Judean ancestors, stand out against the discourse of traditional wisdom. Weeks and Kynes object that assigning a text to a wisdom genre unduly restricts the literary context in which it is read. “The danger in this sort of analysis,” writes Weeks, “lies in its capacity to squeeze out other ways of reading the material.”70 The speeches of Job may have more in common with Psalms than with Proverbs, and Ben Sira’s discourse on nature may be profitably compared with that of the Book of the Watchers. But no one ever said that texts should only be compared with texts of the same genre, and the fact that a text may have a significant parallel with another text does not mean that it is the same kind of text, viewed as a whole. “If a text resembles Proverbs,” writes Weeks, “let us be a little nominalist for a change, and say that it resembles Proverbs, not that it has been influenced by wisdom literature.”71 This is tantamount to saying, “If an object is a tree, let us say that it is a tree, not part of a forest.” Kynes denies that rejecting genre categorization means that we have to interpret

69 70 71

Sneed, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?” 55. Weeks, “Wisdom, Form and Genre,” 172. Weeks, “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ a Useful Category?” 23.

Wisdom as Genre and as Tradition in the Book of Sirach

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texts in isolation.72 But it does mean that we lose our sense of proportion, and fail to distinguish between incidental resemblance and a common Gestalt, between similarity in detail and similarity in kind. This, I submit, is regression in the scholarly enterprise of interpreting texts. 2.5

Conclusion

The book of Sirach, of course, has its own distinctive individuality. But that individuality must be seen in context. On the one hand, it must be seen against the background of the tradition of instructional literature in which it stands, and which it modifies in detail. On the other, it must be seen against the background of contemporary literature such as the books of Enoch, with which it stands in contrast, in terms of both literary form and worldview. Only when both its generic character and its distinctive innovations are kept in view can we appreciate its place in the rich tapestry of Second Temple Judaism. Bibliography Argall, Randall A. I Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation, and Judgment. Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and its Literature 8. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Barbour, Jennie. The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bruch, J. F. Weisheitslehre der Hebräer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie. Strasbourg: Von Treuttel & Würtz, 1851. Carr, David M. The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction. New York: Oxford, 2011. Chambers, Ephraim. “Sapiental.” In Vol. 2 of Cyclopaedia: Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. London, 1728. Collins, John J. The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. Collins, John J. “Wisdom and Torah.” In Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, edited by Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and Emma Wasserman, 59–80. Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and its Literature 41. Atlanta: SBL, 2017.

72

Kynes, “The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings,” 103.

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Collins, John J. Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy: On Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015. Collins, John J. “The Mysteries of God.” In Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Biblical Tradition, edited by Florentino García Martínez, 287–306. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 168. Leuven: Peeters, 2003. Collins, John J. Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Collins, John J. “Wisdom Reconsidered, in Light of the Scrolls.” Dead Sea Discoveries 4 (1997): 265–81. Crenshaw, James L. Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction. Rev. ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998. Dell, Katharine, and Will Kynes, eds. Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually. The Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 58. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2014. Dell, Katharine. “Deciding the Boundaries of ‘Wisdom’: Applying the Concept of Family Resemblances.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 145–77. Dell, Katharine. The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 197. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991. Fontaine, Carol R. Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament: A Contextual Study. Sheffield: Almond, 1982. Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Fox, Michael V. “Three Theses on Wisdom.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 69–86. Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 18A. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Fox, Michael V. A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Frow, John. Genre. London: Routledge, 2006. Goering, Greg Schmidt. Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series 139. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Goff, Matthew. “Qumran Wisdom Literature and the Problem of Genre.” Dead Sea Discoveries 17 (2010): 286–306. Goff, Matthew. Discerning Wisdom: The Sapiential Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Persian Periods Supplement Series 116. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Harris, Scott L. Proverbs 1–9: A Study of Inner-biblical Interpretation. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 150. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.

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Horsley, Richard A. Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea. Louisville: Westminster, 2007. Horsley, Richard A., and Patrick A. Tiller, eds. After Apocalyptic and Wisdom: Rethinking Texts in Context. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012. Kynes, Will. An Obituary for “Wisdom Literature”: The Birth, Death, and Intertextual Reintegration of a Biblical Corpus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Kynes, Will. “The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings of ‘Wisdom Literature,’ and its Twenty-First-Century End?” In Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, edited by John Jarick, 83–108. The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 618. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Kynes, Will. “The Modern Scholarly Wisdom Tradition and the Threat of PanSapientialism: A Case Report.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 11–38. Levinson, Bernard M. A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Murphy, Roland E. Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Esther. Forms of the Old Testament Literature 13. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981. Najman, Hindy. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Newsom, Carol A. “Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology.” In Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients, edited by R. L. Troxel, K. G. Friebel, and D. R. Magary, 437– 50. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005. Nickelsburg, George W. E. “Response to Sarah Tanzer.” In Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism, edited by Benjamin G. Wright III and Lawrence M. Wills, 51–54. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 35. Atlanta: SBL, 2005. Schellenberg, Annette. “Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater: On the Distinctness of the Sapiential Understanding of the World.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 115–43. Schipper, Bernd U., and D. Andrew Teeter, eds. Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of “Torah” in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series 163. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Schipper, Bernd U. “When Wisdom is Not Enough! The Discourse on Wisdom and Torah and the Composition of the Book of Proverbs.” In Wisdom and Torah, 55–79. Schipper, Bernd U. Hermeneutik der Tora: Studien zur Traditionsgeschichte von Prov 2 und zur Komposition von Prov 1–9. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 432. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Shupak, Nili. “The Contribution of Egyptian Wisdom to the Study of Biblical Wisdom Literature.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 265–304. Sneed, Mark S., ed. Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies. Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Israel and its Literature 23. Atlanta: SBL, 2015.

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Sneed, Mark S. “Is the Wisdom Tradition a Tradition?” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 73 (2011): 50–71. Sneed, Mark S. “‘Grasping After the Wind’: The Elusive Attempt to Define and Delimit Wisdom.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 39–67. Spark, Kenton L. Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005. Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Tooman, William. “Wisdom and Torah at Qumran: Evidence from the Sapiential Texts.” In Wisdom and Torah, 203–32. Weeks, Stuart. “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ a Useful Category?” In Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism, edited by Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, 3–23. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series 174. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Weeks, Stuart. “Wisdom, Form and Genre.” In Sneed, Was There a Wisdom Tradition?, 161–77. Weeks, Stuart. “‘Fear God and Keep His Commandments’: Could Qoheleth Have Said This.” In Wisdom and Torah, 101–18. Weinfeld, Moshe. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “Joining the Club: A Suggestion about Genre in Early Jewish Texts. Dead Sea Discoveries 17 (2010): 260–85. Wright, Benjamin G., III, and Lawrence M. Wills., eds. Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 35. Atlanta: SBL, 2005.

chapter 3

Wisdom in Transmission: Rethinking Sirach and Proverbs Jacqueline Vayntrub In the introductory essays to the Anchor Bible commentary on Sirach, Alexander Di Lella schematizes the biblical wisdom genre, outlining two different kinds of wisdom literature: pretheoretical wisdom and theoretical wisdom.1 He describes the first category, pretheoretical wisdom, as “recipe wisdom,” and explains that it is a discourse that “deals with the everyday arts and skills of living fully and well, and with basic attitudes toward God and the world.”2 According to Di Lella, the book of Proverbs and Sirach belong to pretheoretical wisdom literature.3 By contrast, the category Di Lella identifies as “theoretical” wisdom, which he also calls “existential” wisdom, is a discourse that considers meaning in the face of human mortality. This second category encompasses Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Solomon.4 This basic scheme leads Di Lella to conclude that: Ben Sira … was not a creative thinker like the authors of Job and Qoheleth or a master stylist like the author of The Wisdom of Solomon. Nor was he an innovator in literary genres. In composing his book, he simply employed the forms of expression and literary styles he found ready-made in the Scriptures, especially the Wisdom literature, of which the book of Proverbs was his overwhelming favorite.5 While scholarship has, in certain respects, moved beyond Di Lella’s work, the broader contours of this framework have remained in place in the study of biblical wisdom literature. Sirach has long been studied as related to—or even 1 Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 32. This is also discussed in Vayntrub, “Advice: Wisdom, Skill, and Success,” 18–19. 2 Ibid., 23. 3 “Though found to some degree in all the Wisdom books of the OT, recipe wisdom is found in largest supply in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Ben Sira.” Ibid., 32. 4 “Though present in all the Wisdom books to some extent, [existential wisdom] is found in large measure in Job, Qoheleth, and The Wisdom of Solomon.” Ibid., 33. 5 Ibid., 21. Quoted also in Vayntrub, “Advice: Wisdom, Skill, and Success,” 18–19.

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a commentary on—Proverbs.6 For example, one need only consider its placement alongside Proverbs in versions of the Greek Bible. John Barton notes that “the additional books are similar in character to the books of the Hebrew Bible and are generally placed next to those they most resemble (Tobit and Judith next to Esther, Wisdom and Sirach next to Proverbs).”7 Even in its reception in antiquity, Sirach was understood to be related, in some way, to Proverbs. In this essay, I will focus on how Di Lella’s division of wisdom traditions into “pretheoretical” and “theoretical” applies a developmental or evolutionary framework, and how this framework continues to determine such a reading of Sirach within the biblical wisdom tradition, obscuring other significant themes and intertexts. After demonstrating the developmental framework in scholarly configurations of wisdom literature, I will turn to aspects of these texts that this framework has obscured, specifically, their focus on survival from one generation to the next. 3.1

The Developmental Framework in the Study of Biblical Wisdom

The developmental framework entails that one can chronologically trace the development of literary forms from a simple, short utterance—a proverb—to a longer, more complex, but still prosodic utterance—a poem—to finally a more complex prose piece. This diachronic scheme is not limited to literary form. It also associates form with the development of concepts as they are expressed in these forms. As we can see from the chart produced by Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs in their 2003 work, Voices of Modernity, the short, early utterance is also simple, repetitive, and a language of common life and common sense.8 The developed utterance, by contrast, is deemed longer, learned, enlightened, the language of philosophy and science, and so on. Di Lella’s “pretheoretical” and “theoretical” binary of wisdom literature is easily mapped onto the distinct categories outlined by Bauman and Briggs. Di Lella’s pretheoretical, or “recipe wisdom,” is characterized by its greater antiquity than theoretical wisdom. The category of pretheoretical wisdom traces its origins to an oral provenance, its style is simple, clear, and repetitive, and is easy to commit to memory. In this scheme, the pretheoretical is exemplified by 6 Jeremy Corley, for example, writes, “What is of interest is not merely the fact of Ben Sira’s allusions to Proverbs, but also his method of using that book,” “An Intertextual Study,” 157. 7 Barton, “The Old Testament Canons,” 145–64. Emphasis mine. 8 Seth L. Sanders brings attention to the work of Bauman and Briggs in light of biblical studies in The Invention of Hebrew, 15. Bauman and Briggs, Voices of Modernity. I also reproduce the chart of Bauman and Briggs in Beyond Orality, 22. See Vayntrub, “Advice,” 19, where Di Lella’s scheme and its correspondence to Bauman and Briggs is also discussed.

35

Wisdom in Transmission table 3.1

Distinctive characteristics of “oral” and “written” cultures delineated by Wood in Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1775), schematized by Bauman and Briggs (2003)

Orality

Literacy

Antiquity Performance Passion Language of nature Nature as basis for social relations Language of common life Memory Simplicity, clarity, repetition

Modernity Writing Understanding Language of compact Compact as basis for social relations Language of philosophy and science Learned and enlightened knowledge Involved periods, embarrassed stylea

a The use of the term “embarrassed” here reflects an archaic meaning of the word, denoting excessively obscure or intricate writing (OED).

the brief prosodic utterances found in Proverbs 10–29 while the theoretical is exemplified by the longer contemplative prose of Ecclesiastes, or, in the words of Bauman and Briggs, “learned and enlightened knowledge” and “involved periods.” Di Lella is far from the only scholar to have conceptualized biblical literature within this scheme, though he is one of the few to have provided a clear and programmatic outline of it. But much of the scholarship on biblical wisdom literature continues to assume such a framework. In the following, I provide a survey of how the assumptions of a developmental framework manifest variously in studies of biblical wisdom literature. In this literature, Proverbs is identified as the biblical exemplum of the earliest and least developed—and therefore basic and fundamental—form of wisdom. This is not to say that scholarly views on Proverbs in a historical-critical framework are by any means uniform. If we are to reduce scholarly positions into two camps, we might identify one view in which Proverbs reflects an oral provenance, and that this provenance should be assumed when performing a form-critically oriented, diachronic study of how the compositions in Proverbs came to their present form.9 Similar to Di Lella, Claus Westermann

9 I outline these two views in Vayntrub, “The Book of Proverbs,” 100 n. 13, citing Golka, The Leopard’s Spots and Westermann, Wurzeln der Weisheit (ET: Roots of Wisdom), for the oralorigins view of Proverbs.

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emphasizes the following aspects of wisdom literature: “The earliest proverbial form is the short, self-contained, single-verse saying,” the provenance of these forms is oral, and “the wisdom writings outside of the book of Proverbs belong to the postdevelopmental stage of proverbs … characterized as hybrids.”10 Westermann’s views fall into this first camp. A second, opposing perspective can be identified, in which Proverbs is seen to derive from the literary traditions of a wisdom school, influenced largely by Egyptian instruction literary traditions, themselves written texts.11 But regardless of the provenance of the compositions found in the biblical text—oral or written—in both perspectives, Proverbs is understood to have collected various stages of the development of the mashal. The Biblical Hebrew term mashal, normally translated “proverb” in English, is the genre term found in plural construct in the title heading the book of Proverbs in 1:1 and heading two other sections in the book as well, in 10:1 and 25:1: ‫“ מ לי למה‬The proverbs of Solomon.” The term mashal is, however, more frequently found heading other compositions outside of the “wisdom” books—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. For example, mashal is the term that designates Balaam’s addresses in Numbers 23–24, and the phrase can also indicate speeches in Isaiah and Ezekiel.12 The mashal is widely assumed, even outside of a strictly form-critical approach to these texts, as the basic, originally oral, wisdom form.13 And while only a handful of scholars would now profess a form-critical approach to their treatment of biblical wisdom literature, many are still working from its foundational assumptions—namely, that literary forms begin as brief and simple oral compositions, anchored to a real-life context, and through incorporation in a literary corpus, develop in length and complexity over time. Two connected assumptions lie at the heart of this ubiquitous form-critical scheme: (1) the book of Proverbs is wisdom’s paradigmatic text and (2) the mashal—a brief, oral, prosodic composition—is its paradigmatic literary form. The scholarly positioning of Proverbs as the biblical wisdom text against which all other texts should be measured—lexically, formally, thematically—stands apart from these other debates on how Proverbs in its constituent elements came into its present form. Indeed, this assumption shapes and determines 10 11 12 13

Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 109. See, e.g., von Rad, Weisheit in Israel; ET: Wisdom in Israel, trans. James D. Martin; and Hermisson, Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit. See Vayntrub, “The Book of Proverbs,” 100 n. 14. For an in-depth treatment of the mashal in scholarship on biblical poetry and wisdom and close reading of these biblical texts see Vayntrub, Beyond Orality. See Schmidt, Studien zur Stilistik, which McKane cites in the opening of his commentary. A similar discussion is presented in Vayntrub, “Mashal (Proverb).”

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37

the entirety of the wisdom concept such that Proverbs—particularly in its “older” collections in chapters 10–29—cannot be seen to deviate from any underlying biblical wisdom tradition because these texts are the texts where a “basic” wisdom tradition is to be located. For example, William McKane’s commentary on Proverbs demonstrates the persistence of a developmental framework in characterizations of biblical wisdom literature. Although McKane imagines the texts to have their origins in literary circles, he explicitly argues for the developmental concept wherein short, originally oral proverbs precede longer compositions, a scheme upon which he maps the respective periods of composition of the book of Proverbs itself. He claims that “it is certain that the single-verse and multi-verse sayings are temporally prior to all greater units.”14 More explicitly, he states that “at the beginning stands the one-limbed, single verse saying which has a popular character and was, in the first place, transmitted orally.”15 For McKane, the mashal as a “two-limbed verse … is the basic literary form of the wisdom sentence.”16 Similar to the other scholars discussed above, Roland Murphy’s characterization of biblical wisdom texts assumes a developmental framework. In his commentary on Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, Murphy outlines a division between the earlier, oral provenance of Proverbs and the later, literary origins of Ecclesiastes and Job: “Prov. 10–31 is probably largely preexilic,” and “while there is an oral stage to be presumed in the handing down of the collections that came to be assembled in the book of Proverbs, the rest of the works,” that is, Job and Ecclesiastes, “are literary compositions.”17 The scheme in which literary forms develop over time from short, oral proverb to longer, literary prose is not only explicitly associated with various biblical works and their proposed relative dates but is also deployed with a corresponding evaluation of the content contained within these literary forms. Older, shorter proverbs of oral provenance are viewed as both aesthetically and conceptually simpler than their prose descendants. These literary forms concern themselves with conventional ideas of a meritocratic system of reward and punishment, whereas the longer prose compositions of literary origins that follow in their wake take up complex metaphysical concerns and challenge simple binaries assumed by divine retribution.

14 15 16 17

McKane, Proverbs, 3. Emphasis mine. A longer discussion of this appears in Vayntrub, Beyond Orality, 75–79. McKane, Proverbs, 3. Emphasis mine. Ibid. Murphy, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, 1.

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Norbert Lohfink, for example, in his introduction to a commentary on Ecclesiastes, places biblical wisdom works in such a developmental trajectory and even imagines these works as a succession of increasingly advanced textbooks in a wisdom school. He writes that “the former school textbooks— Proverbs with its various collections, and possibly the Song of Songs—came from Solomon or other wise kings of old,” and concludes that “most likely Proverbs continued to be used as a first-level text, and then Qoheleth for higher grades.”18 The evidence for this, Lohfink argues, is in the titles of the works: “Proverbs with its various collections … came from Solomon or other wise kings of old,” and a similar title was given to Ecclesiastes so as to replace the former.19 For Lohfink, Ben Sira “already reflected a whole new phase of development, for it … intended to replace Proverbs and Qoheleth in one stroke.”20 The important point here is that for Lohfink, the developmental scheme determines not only the relative age of wisdom compositions, it also places the literary culture itself on this trajectory—with Sirach as a direct comment to these works. The developmental scheme, therefore, not only has implications for how biblical wisdom literature is conceptualized in scholarship in the broader sense, but also fixes Sirach formally and conceptually in relation to these earlier works. Although a number of these scholars might deny a form-critical approach, the developmental assumptions at the heart of form-criticism persist in the characterization of wisdom literature. In “Wisdom, Form and Genre,” Stuart Weeks makes a similar point, that while neither the work of McKane nor R. N. Whybray would claim to be form-critical, their methods betray formcritical assumptions: “When Whybray and McKane both try to impose more rigid structural (and in McKane’s case, syntactical) definitions … they are arguably still working in a way that is not strictly form-critical, although the influence of form critical analysis is clearly perceptible.”21 The form-critical roots of the assumption that the basic form of wisdom is the “proverb,” the mashal, is deeply embedded in biblical scholarship. Otto Eissfeldt’s earliest published work, Der Maschal im Alten Testament, traced the development of the mashal in biblical literature. There one finds a clear articulation of developmental assumptions in a form-critical approach to biblical wisdom.22 In his later, programmatic introduction to the Old Testament, likely more widely read than his work on the mashal, Eissfeldt 18 19 20 21 22

Lohfink, Qoheleth, 12. Ibid. Ibid. Weeks, “Wisdom, Form, Genre,” 166. Eissfeldt, Der Maschal im Alten Testament.

Wisdom in Transmission

39

maintains the assumptions that characterized his earlier work: “The popular type of the riddle, and above all of the much more important popular proverb, were developed later … into the artistic wisdom saying.”23 For Eissfeldt, this was the case for all wisdom poetry, including Proverbs, Sirach, and Job, as well as select psalms. He explains, “These wisdom poems derive from the circles of the wise, who go here beyond the form of the wisdom saying which is really their original province.”24 In his view, the wisdom texts bridge the primitive period of this literature’s origins with its incorporation into developed “literature,” namely, that while the literary forms found in Proverbs and Sirach “had to be learned by heart” by its readers, by the time of Sirach “we are … in a period of purely literary activity.”25 Nevertheless, for Eissfeldt, the origin point of literature is oral, real-life context, and so he concludes that while Sirach comes about in a period of “purely literary activity,” “it is nevertheless still true that practical life produces new forms, which only subsequently become ‘literature.’”26 What we learn from scholars who work explicitly within a form-critical scheme, such as Eissfeldt and Westermann, as well as from others who purport to work outside of this approach but maintain its basic working assumptions, such as McKane and Whybray, is that at the heart of the form-critical approach is literary evolutionism—the development of literary forms from simple oral proverb to complex written prose. 3.2

Ben Sira and Proverbs in the Developmental Framework

A framework like Di Lella’s naturalizes the presentation of the development of ‫“ חכמה‬wisdom” in the overarching biblical narrative running from Genesis to Kings. In the overarching story of Israel, “wisdom” itself develops conceptually: from concrete skill to basic advice to finally complex rumination on mortality and meaning. If one follows the storyline uncritically, one first encounters ‫ חכמה‬in the Pentateuch as Bezalel’s concrete skills as an artisan, and then encounters wisdom as the practical, list-making wisdom of Solomon’s mashal, whose collection is narrated in 1 Kgs 5:12 and whose example is seemingly found in the book of Proverbs. Finally, following this storyline, wisdom is “reimagined” in Ecclesiastes in a crisis of faith in an aging Solomonic voice. 23 24 25 26

Eissfeldt, The Old Testament, 86. Ibid., 124. Emphasis mine. Ibid., 87. Ibid.

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Understandably, following this developmental framework and its implications for dating biblical texts means that, as Murphy writes, “Job is difficult to date.”27 More to the point, this framework ensures that Sirach will always be evaluated through the lens of Proverbs. Proverbs is understood to be paradigmatic of the “pretheoretical” traditional literary form of discursive wisdom, and Sirach, aesthetically, maybe even thematically, can never be anything more than a throwback. In his study of Ecclesiastes, Robert Gordis makes this claim explicitly. He first argues that the basic form of wisdom is the proverb, the mashal, and that this literary form—originally oral, and now committed to writing—is concerned with the skill of living, Di Lella’s “pretheoretical,” or “recipe,” category. Gordis argues that oral wisdom, “concerned … with the arts of living,” lies in the ancient background of the biblical wisdom texts, and what remained was “its literary incarnation.”28 The basic literary form in which wisdom “convey[s] its truths” is the mashal, “brief, picturesque, unforgettable …”29 The “major documents” of the “main school of Wisdom,” according to Gordis, are Proverbs and Sirach.30 Each work is “conventional in its methods and goals.”31 In this framework, Sirach finds its natural point of comparison with Proverbs, not Ecclesiastes. James Crenshaw likewise appears to evaluate Ecclesiastes against Proverbs. He argues, “Qohelet owed an enormous debt to the wisdom tradition, despite his attack upon it … His speech forms and method of arriving at the truth derive from the sages whose optimism he undermines.”32 By “wisdom tradition” and its “speech forms,” Crenshaw envisions Proverbs in general—or perhaps the forms found in Proverbs specifically—as the paradigmatic example of biblical wisdom. Citing James Kugel, Crenshaw suggests that the speaker’s use of colloquial prose, mixed with quotation of “traditional” proverbial poetry, “may derive from a desire to debunk the proper speech of the sages.”33 What we find from these generalizing statements found in commentaries of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach is a developmental trajectory. In this trajectory, Proverbs is at the beginning and Sirach is closer to the end. But importantly, Sirach is not seen as a development in the manner of Ecclesiastes. Rather, the work is viewed as a response to challenges posed to “traditional wisdom” in Ecclesiastes, or signifies a throwback to Proverbs and 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Murphy, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, 1. Gordis, Koheleth, 18. Ibid. Ibid., 26. Ibid. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, 38. Ibid., 31.

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41

its “earlier” and “traditional” formulations. This is what Eissfeldt seems to say when he writes that Sirach “has much in common with the book of Proverbs,” itself a collection of “traditional material centuries old.”34 “Traditional” works are, in Eissfeldt’s view, “often very similar to one another,” and for this reason, Eissfeldt can keep his comments on Sirach short: “We need not therefore repeat here what was said with regard to Proverbs.”35 In this litany of examples, however, it should be noted that Weeks stands as an exception. In addition to cautioning us about taking texts out of context, Weeks specifically references the problematic place of privilege granted to Proverbs in the construction of the wisdom category. While noting that Proverbs “consists … of sayings which originated as proverbs, or at least imitate the style of proverbs,” he cautions against “describ[ing] proverbs themselves as ‘wisdom.’”36 Setting aside the reductive—not to mention Romantic and colonialist— nature of a conceptual scheme that identifies short and oral utterances as “primitive” literary forms, we might observe that the assumption of Proverbs as a paradigmatic wisdom text is highly circular, since other biblical texts are evaluated against Proverbs to determine how closely they follow wisdom vocabulary, themes, and literary forms. When we remove our reading of Sirach from the yoke of “traditional” wisdom as found in Proverbs—and indeed, when we cease to imagine Proverbs itself as the paradigm of biblical wisdom—we are free to observe other aspects of the participation of Sirach in a broader literary tradition of instruction. Beyond a response to the literary forms of Proverbs, other, previously obscured dimensions of the use of instruction in Sirach come into view. Sirach, particularly in its concluding praise to the ancestors, comments upon and reshapes concepts at the heart of the “instruction” form: the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next and thus survival beyond individual death. 3.3

Beyond Proverbs as a Paradigmatic Text

The scholarly position that views the development of wisdom from pretheoretical to theoretical—with Proverbs at the beginning and Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon at the end—implicitly assumes that Sirach is merely a throwback. Consider Di Lella’s description, which I quoted in full in the 34 35 36

Eissfeldt, The Old Testament, 598. Ibid. Weeks, An Introduction, 141.

42

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introduction to this essay: “Ben Sira … was not a creative thinker like the authors of Job and Qoheleth … [H]e simply employed the forms of expression and literary styles he found ready-made in the Scriptures, especially the Wisdom literature, of which the book of Proverbs was his overwhelming favorite.”37 Di Lella was far from the first to suggest Ben Sira’s lack of creativity, and to link this lack of creativity to the work’s conformity to more “primitive” literary forms and epistemologies—as those found in Proverbs. R. H. Charles in his introduction to Sirach in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament states that “[wisdom] literature represents the development of the crude philosophy of more ancient times … by means of proverbs and fables.”38 In his view, “Ben Sira exhibits no great signs of originality,” though he admits “plenty of individuality” in his appeal to authoritative texts.39 According to Charles, the earlier wisdom to which Ben Sira appeals in his not greatly original work is to be characterized as a development of “crude philosophy.” Revisiting the chart by Bauman and Briggs, we can observe that the same framework that categorizes wisdom literature into pretheoretical and theoretical, as Di Lella outlined, creates sharp distinctions between what is more ancient and what is less, distinguishing primitive, illogical poetic expression from more advanced, logical, prose. It is the same scheme that interprets earlier expressions to be concrete and abstract expression to be a later, more developed idea. Such readings are not objective observations of the texts, but rather reflect an interpretive framework silently operating in modern scholarship. This view conceptualizes Proverbs as the aesthetic, thematic, and even lexical paradigm of wisdom literature and subsequently evaluates all other works in diachronic relation. From this perspective, any given literary work to be evaluated for its inclusion in the biblical “wisdom” corpus is examined for its similarity to the literary forms and themes found in Proverbs. Even more pointedly, a work considered to be included within the “wisdom” category— including the evaluation of earlier collections constituting Proverbs itself—is examined for its verisimilitude to an idealized, original literary form, the simple mashal, “proverb.” In his study, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” Kugel makes this argument explicit, claiming that “the one-line mashal” was “the vehicle of wisdom, the accepted form by which wisdom insights were expressed … Wisdom meant the mashal.”40 Similarly, Georg Sauer’s more recent commentary on 37 38 39 40

Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 21. Emphasis mine. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 269. Emphasis mine. Ibid. Emphasis mine. Kugel, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” 17.

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Sirach claims that the literary forms used in Sirach are not those only of “canonical” wisdom, but that they all derive from the same basic, two-line literary form: “Die Grundform der Aussage ist der Maschal, der aus zwei Halbzeilen besteht, wobei zumeist das alte Gesetz des Parallelismus membrorum wiederzufinden ist.”41 But only within a narrow, form-critical perspective can Proverbs—and the mashal—function as the “ideal form” for the wisdom genre. This sort of evaluation of Proverbs as the paradigmatic wisdom text becomes circular, since characteristic words and formal features that derive from Proverbs itself are then used to identify Proverbs as a wisdom text.42 Certain portions of Proverbs must then be seen as developments or deviations from the basic literary form, and those certain portions must then be necessarily designated as more recent than others—with no diagnostic criteria other than three organizing assumptions: 1) that the basic form of Proverbs is the mashal; 2) that the mashal is one or two lines long in its “pristine” original form; 3) and that longer poems deviate in their development. And, of course, there is the implicit assumption that such a literary development would be preserved and on display in the book of Proverbs itself. This is not to say productive comparisons between Sirach and Proverbs are not possible. First, it should be acknowledged that the author of Sirach most likely had access to a version of Proverbs and knew this work.43 The caution I offer here in the many examples of scholarship that evince an underlying developmental framework is that the character of the relationship between Proverbs and Sirach, and the range of conceptual innovation possible in Sirach, is determined by this framework. As a result, a number of interpretive avenues may be foreclosed. But if we look beyond a developmental framework, we are better able to observe the rich shared inter-generational social dynamics of instruction in biblical and ancient Near Eastern wisdom texts.

41 42

43

Sauer, Jesus Sirach/Ben Sira, 28. See references also in Vayntrub, Beyond Orality, 92, n 19. Texts whose theme centers around a central set of concerns that typify the wisdom discourse (for example, the “act-consequence nexus”), whose form resembles any one of the numerous forms of Proverbs, Job, or Qohelet, and whose lexical range is determined to be similar, are often identified as wisdom. As I have pointed out previously, Michael Fox struggles to outline the bounds of wisdom literature. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 17. A version of this discussion appears in Vayntrub, Beyond Orality, 74, and 92, n 21, and 93, n 27. See Corley, “Intertextual Study,” 156. See also scholarly literature, going back over a century, that has been produced on parallels between Proverbs and Ben Sira that Corley cites in his study. Both Adams, Wisdom in Transition, 153, and Weeks, Introduction, 92, cite Corley as an authority on this.

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Wisdom in Transmission

Outside a developmental model which posits an original, idealized literary form, embodied in (sections of) Proverbs, we can see how a broad category that includes works like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach, alongside others, can help us draw comparisons between these texts and draw out shared literary and intellectual values. These texts, in various ways, draw upon and relate to the ancient Near Eastern literary modes of father-to-son instruction. The shared aim of transmitting knowledge—particularly the knowledge pertinent to avoiding dangers, achieving longer life and material wealth, and successfully reproducing in order to pass on one’s accumulated rewards and knowledge— is characteristic of these texts. Beyond shared vocabulary and literary form, as Klaus Koch outlined in his classic essay, the “act-consequence nexus” has also functioned as a framework through which to understand the various texts we assign to the wisdom category.44 Yet this thematic framework, alongside literary form, has also contributed to a history of the wisdom canon in its development.45 Koch maintained that the doctrine of retribution was central to the wisdom category, and proof of this centrality was that he could identify the doctrine in the “oldest” biblical wisdom texts—the collection of sayings in Proverbs 25–29.46 Yet we find collections of sayings framed as teacher-to-student instruction in both earlier and later periods. Ahiqar—a collection of instructions from Esarhaddon’s advisor Ahiqar to his nephew, Nadin, framed by the tale of the uncle’s instruction of his nephew and his nephew’s failure to succeed him—is a good example of a “late” collection of instructions. All of the manuscripts of the text in its various iterations date from the Persian period and beyond. The attested versions of Ahiqar are, of course, much later than our earliest framed instruction texts, the Sumerian Instructions of Shuruppak, and certainly later than the Egyptian instruction texts. Moreover, the idea of “late” wisdom being those discourses that challenge “conventional” assumptions in the father-to-son instruction form—anxieties surrounding mortality and 44 45 46

Koch, “Is There a Doctrine,” 57–87. See, e.g., Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, 11. “According to B. Gemser, retribution is practically the fundamental doctrine of Israelite wisdom, and P. Volz points out that the subject of retribution received major emphasis in education and was one of the chief reasons for instruction. The validity of this assertion can be checked by referring to what is recognized as the oldest section of the book of Proverbs, chs. 25–29.” Koch, “Is There a Doctrine,” 58. However, for Fox, Proverbs 10–31, 499, “no distinctions of date or setting” can be drawn among the four proverbial collections he finds in Proverbs 10–29.

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45

succession across generational lines—is likewise upended by the existence of “early” texts. The Ugaritic tale of Aqhat—already argued by Greenstein to be a wisdom narrative—is an example of such a text exploring challenges to stable transmission, reversing conventional patterns of succession, transmission, and power along the lines of gender and mortality.47 Those texts which scholars have identified as wisdom all demonstrate, on some level, a concern for the transmission of knowledge across generational lines. The centrality of intergenerational transmission to wisdom literature is obscured by a developmental framework which draws conceptual distinctions between “earlier” and “later” wisdom. The developmental scheme assumes that wisdom begins with a naïve concept of a system of reward and punishment, where reward is a form of life and punishment is early death. On this point, Crenshaw notes: According to the fundamental premise of the wise, the orderliness of creation, … wisdom leads to life, folly to death. In a word, wisdom secures one’s being, granting wealth and happiness. The significance of this profound faith cannot be exaggerated for the entire wisdom corpus, even if it functions as a foil for Ecclesiastes.48 Following this view, when wisdom authors think through the implications of a cosmic meritocracy, the concerns of these authors develop towards questions of theodicy. These questions are, then, a direct result of their evolving awareness of problems inherent to this cosmic system of reward and punishment.49 But the problems inherent to a cosmic system of reward and punishment were conventionally resolved by trans-generational succession. Specifically, the problem that an individual was not, in fact, rewarded or punished immediately or even in one’s lifetime was resolved by viewing the system as functioning across generations, with the son’s replacement of the father. According to the developmental view, earlier authors have a naïve worldview of reward and punishment, observed in pithy proverbs, and later authors demonstrate challenges to this naïveté through prose writings that challenge the father-son transmission of power and knowledge. But we need only consider the Ugaritic tale of Aqhat to observe how, already in an “early” period, questions of transmission 47 48 49

See similar discussions of this in Vayntrub, “Like Father, Like Son,” 512, and “Transmission and Mortal Anxiety” forthcoming. See Greenstein, “Wisdom in Ugaritic,” 69–89. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, 49–50. Crenshaw describes this as “the human responsibility to search for insight and thus to learn to live in harmony with the cosmos,” that “the sage knows the right time for a specific word or deed,” and “that wisdom is based on optimism about predictability.” Ibid., 11.

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and the specific father-son type of trans-generational survival were critiqued and alternative possibilities were offered. While Aqhat is a narrative, not an instruction, Edward Greenstein argues compellingly that we should read Aqhat as wisdom: Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible is often characterized by stark contrasts between the righteous, who are wise, and the wicked, who are foolish or even roguish … the dramatis personae in the Aqhat epic are aligned in a similar fashion, as we meet with two gendered pairs, in each of which one member represents the wise and the other the fool or the rogue … it seems almost certain that in the end, the sensible (Danel and Pughat) succeed, whereas the petulant (Aqhat and Anath) fail.50 The problems of father-to-son transmission and the limitations of transgenerational survival for overcoming individual death are central to the tale of Aqhat. The story’s patriarch, Danʾel, struggles to produce a son and heir. When Danʾel finally does, he passes a cherished object—a bow—to Aqhat, his only son and heir. Aqhat retains his inherited bow even when the goddess Anat offers him immortality in exchange. The son’s refusal to relinquish the transmitted object paradoxically results in his own death before being able to produce an heir of his own. I am not the first to identify trans-generational survival as a central concern of wisdom. Crenshaw in Old Testament Wisdom has also identified a similar reflex in these texts: Human survival depends upon an ability to study the complexity of human relationships and to cope with reality as it presents itself in the ordinary circumstances of daily existence. Generation after generation acquired fundamental insights … The suffering of innocent individuals has posed a vexing problem from time immemorial.51 Crenshaw identifies the theme of “survival” in his view of the formation of wisdom texts, the product of “generation after generation.” By contrast, I locate “survival” in the pragmatics of the instructions themselves—in their represented social mechanics. Without making any assumptions about the formation of these texts, in their presentation, instructions are configured as life-improving and potentially life-saving advice passed from father to son. 50 51

Greenstein, “Wisdom in Ugaritic,” 77. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, 7.

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47

This configuration, in itself, considers the limits of human mortality: insight and advice, unless passed to the next generation, only sees its rewards in the lifetime of a single individual. But when this advice is passed on, it allows for the survival of the wisdom. Therefore instruction not only allows for survival through its content—that the advice itself may improve and save the lives of those who receive it—it also allows for survival through its form, insofar as the advice itself passes from one generation to the next. In Wisdom in Transition, Samuel Adams helpfully notes that “an important corrective to the original proposal [of an act-consequence nexus] is that Koch did not adequately emphasize the social aspect of ancient Near Eastern instructions.”52 A central dimension of the instruction is its relational character: its self-presented purpose to connect one generation—that of the father— to the next—that of the son. Correcting for the represented “social aspect” of instruction, we might observe that Sirach shares a number of elements with Ecclesiastes that it does not share with Proverbs—notably, a concern for the stable transmission of knowledge. There are some important differences between the positions taken by these works on the stability of transmission and the memory of tradents: in naming himself, Ben Sira explicitly argues for the perpetuity of his memory through his name and the stable transmission of his advice, while in Ecclesiastes, the voice of Qoheleth and its frame systematically resist stable identification. As Thomas Bolin has recently shown, this systematic resistance to the identification of the speaker—Qoheleth as not-quiteSolomon—is precisely the message communicated by the work’s frame and its final form.53 The frustrated identification of Qoheleth as Solomon exposes conceptual challenges lying at the heart of the instruction form: is anonymous instruction reliable, or must it be tied to the enduring material achievements of a legendary speaker? Despite the distinct positions taken by Ecclesiastes and Sirach on the identity of the sage, both works address (1) the trans-generational quality of instruction and (2) the post-mortem survival of one’s name as their central virtue and/ or problematic. First, the frames of both of these works share these qualities. Instruction frames, either preceding the instruction or concluding it, are crucially important because this is where the represented social context of the instruction is established. In Egyptian and Mesopotamian instruction texts, the speakers are always named—and presumably known—addressing their otherwise decontextualized and loosely-organized bits of wisdom to their sons.

52 53

Adams, Wisdom in Transition, 3. Bolin, Ecclesiastes, 41–44.

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table 3.2

Personages named in frames to ancient Near Eastern instruction texts

Instructions of Šuruppak Šimâ Milka Instruction of Prince Hardjedef Instruction addressed to Kagemni Instruction of Ptahhotep Instruction of King Amenemhet I The Satire of the Trades Instruction of Any

Speaker

Audience

Šuruppak Šūpê-amēli Prince Hardjedef Kagemni Ptahhotep King Amenemhet I Dua-khety Any

his son, Ziusudra “my son” his son, Au-ib-re the children of the vizier his son his son, Sesostris I Pepi his son, Khonshotep

Such is not the case with Proverbs in its many collections and their frames. While Solomon is named, he does not explicitly speak in instruction from the frames in Prov 1:1, 10:1, or 25:1. Moreover, no other individual delivering spoken instruction to the next generation seems to be meaningfully identifiable from Israel’s legendary past—neither the unspecified ‫חכמים‬, “wise men” (24:23), nor the mother of King Lemuel (31:1). Ecclesiastes opens with a title similar to that found in Prov 1:1: “The words of Qoheleth, son of David, king in Jerusalem,” but unlike Proverbs, a speaker named Qoheleth—identified by the frame speaker in 1:2, 7:27, and in the conclusion in chapter 12, and declared by the speaker himself in 1:12—is the clear speaker of the framed discourse throughout. We might not know who exactly this Qoheleth is, or nail down his identity as a former king in Jerusalem over Israel; one might argue that generating this frustrated identification with the legendary speaker is a commentary on the very purpose of the instruction genre: to establish an enduring reputation through one’s identifiable words of wisdom. While Sirach is not framed at the outset as an instruction from father to son, two components of the work demonstrate its engagement with (1) the transgenerational aspect of instruction and (2) the central concern for the persistence of the speaker’s name after his death. The first of these components is part of its received form in the Septuagint: the prologue to the work, in the voice of Ben Sira’s grandson, who identifies his grandfather by name, speaks of the beneficial contents of the work, and attests to his translation of it for the benefit of future readers.54 Along with the prologue, the book’s lengthy 54

Scholarship tends to focus more on the references made to the canon in the prologue, and less on the intergenerational character of the prologue and how this links to major

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49

concluding section recounts the legendary works of Israel’s past heroes in chapters 44–50, engages the discourse of wisdom and its rewards transmitted across the generations.55 The Praise of the Ancestors is, notably, concluded by the speaker’s self-identification by name (Sir 50:27). And unlike Proverbs, both Sirach and Ecclesiastes, in presenting a sustained meditation of the speaker, frequently in the first-person voice of this speaker, engage the reality of their inevitable silence—by death. Qoheleth the speaker alludes to this reality several times before his concluding statements. In 1:12 he claims he had become been king over Israel in Jerusalem, but his reference to his royal activities in the past create some ambiguity as to whether he is speaking from his present position or in retrospect. Had he formerly been king, or did he become king—however the verb there is interpreted, the point is that an interpretive crux is generated by its presence.56 Indeed, kings do not “retire” from their position, and the work is not explicitly set in the voice of the speaker from the grave, though he speaks abstractly of inevitable death throughout the work and specifically at the conclusion of his remarks in 12:1–7. In 2:16, the speaker laments that wisdom cannot, in the end, save one from death and, ultimately, from being forgotten: ‫“ כי אין כרון לחכם הכל נשכח‬There is no memory for the wise man … everything is forgotten.” Similarly in chapter 9, where the dead experience nothing, and even the memory of them has ceased: ‫כי נשכח כרם‬ (v. 5b). In 7:1a, the speaker prattles off what sounds prosodically to be a common saying, ‫[“ וב שם משמן וב‬One’s] name is better than fine oil,” that is, one’s reputation, through the persistence of one’s name and corresponding deeds, is paramount. But he continues with this logic to the conclusion that, if this is the case, then one should only seek death, since it is only at the time of death that one seals one’s reputation (7:1b): ‫“ ויום המות מיום הולדו‬And the day of [one’s] death [is better] than the day of his birth.” This conclusion is not the speaker’s evaluation of death, but rather, part of his program to systematically expose the incoherence of values at the heart of the instruction discourse: that the instructions are life-giving and life-saving, not only to the audience but to the posterity of the speaker himself, through the persistence of his name attached to his great works. Qoheleth ends his meditations, in chapter 12, with extended imagery of the body’s inevitable failures leading to death. Sirach concludes with a poem in the first person voice, praising God for saving the speaker from death (51:1–12).

55 56

themes in the work’s conclusion. See Orlinsky, “Some Terms,” 483–90, and Beckwith, “Formation of the Hebrew Bible,” 51–52. For the Praise of the Ancestors, see the essay by Adams in the present volume. See Krüger, Qoheleth, 56.

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The orientation of both Ecclesiastes and Sirach as the acquired wisdom of the speaker-as-instructor puts these works into contrast with Proverbs, whose advice is given by anonymous or non-human figures such as personified Wisdom—their advice does not rely on the experience of an identifiable first person speaker who can draw upon their name and reputation. While Ben Sira is not a known figure from lore, the placement of his name at the end of the lengthy Praise of the Ancestors generates such an effect: this teacher, now a name to be associated with Israel’s heroes, speaks from the wisdom of reputation. Trans-generational survival is a concern which is rarely present in Proverbs in any form, but seems to structure the framing and presentation of the material in Sirach.57 Specifically, we observe this not only in the forward looking aspirations for Ben Sira’s survival through his name and reputation, but in the pragmatic link of the memory of Ben Sira’s own name to the memory of Israel’s named-and-famed predecessors at the end of the work. Chapters 44–50 constitute a lengthy rehearsal of Israel’s history in the form of praise of Israel’s ancestors. This section opens in 44:1–16 with a summary description of the importance of trans-generational survival, centered on the importance of the survival of one’s name and, by extension, one’s accomplishments, words, and personhood. There58 were among them (those who)59 left behind a name, to bring their legacy in view. There were those among them who leave no memory, they ceased as soon as they ceased. They are as if they had never been, and likewise, their children after them. Sir 44:8–960

Memory—and by extension, personhood—is secured, according to Ben Sira, in the survival of the name. Those who follow in Ben Sira’s praise are named, and as a result, their legacy is assured: ‫“ ד ולם י מד כרם … ושמם חי לדור ודור‬Their 57 58

59 60

Concern for memory and a name appears in Prov 10:7, while Prov 13:22 mentions a heritage for grandchildren. ‫יש מהם הניחו שם ⟧ ⟦ להשת נות >להשת ות< >להש ות< בנחלתם‬ ‫ויש מהם אשר אין לו כר ⟧ ⟦ וישבתו כאשר שבתו‬ ‫כאשר לא היו היו ⟧ ⟦ ובניהם מאחריהם‬ (B XIII verso: 11–13). See the precise valence of this sentiment in Eccl 2:18, “I hated all of my labors that I wrought under the sun, for I will leave it to the man who will come after me.” This translation generally follows Reymond, Innovations in Hebrew Poetry, 80.

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memory will stand forever … their name lives from generation to generation” (Sir 44:13–14). Names—reputations, material and textual productions—stand in the place of living individuals. The chapters that follow recount the successes of Noah, the patriarchs, Moses, Aaron, Phineas, Joshua, Caleb, Judges, Samuel, Nathan, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve, Simeon—the greatest hits of Israel told through the praises of named-and-famed men. The text returns to first person voicing in 50:25, with the effect of explicitly connecting this list of praised men with Ben Sira himself in v. 27. The concluding poem, which on the surface appears as a prayer of thanksgiving, promotes Ben Sira’s own credibility as a voice of wisdom: he praises God for having kept him from death (51:1–12), a calling card for students of wisdom. Because wisdom is a discourse of human survival— both during this life, and beyond one’s lifetime. 3.5

Transmission as Survival: Ancient Near Eastern Background

The “social” aspect of instruction is not solely concerned with human interaction and harmony, as Crenshaw indicated. The pragmatics of instruction involve the social relations necessary for survival beyond the limits of natural human life. On the most basic level, this social relation is that of the father and the son and, by analogy, the teacher-student relationship—a horizontal transmission of knowledge, accomplishment, and responsibility (reward and punishment) across natural human lifetimes. This does not remove the action-consequence nexus from the wisdom framework. Rather, the trans-generational dimension further entrenches the action-consequence nexus, since these texts involve themselves not only with individual retribution, but retribution—and reward—across generational lines. It is not that actions have consequences; rather the world does not exist for a single circumscribed human life. There is growth, there is incremental achievement—basically the opposite of the radical claim that Qoheleth makes. But such a system does not permit individual personhood, because if that is the case, that there are individual persons, then there is also the finality of death. What a wisdom framework allows is for sons to become their fathers, students to become their teachers, for the knowledge necessary to survive and thrive to actually endure. One claim made in scholarship about the Praise of the Ancestors is that this passage is unusual, both within Sirach and within a wisdom work.61 But 61

Weeks, An Introduction, 90–91: “With chapter 44, the book suddenly takes a very different turn, as Ben Sira declares ‘let us now praise famous men, and our forefathers by generation’. (44.1) … Two appendices follow … the first (51.1–12) is essentially a psalm of

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how unusual is this passage, conceptually speaking, for wisdom literature? A New Kingdom Egyptian text, the “Immortality of Writers” presents a striking parallel.62 Introducing her translation, Miriam Lichtheim observes that the “Immortality of Writers” emphasizes how “[bodies] decay but books last, and they alone perpetuate the names of their authors. To make his point, the scribe enumerates the famous authors of the past.”63 The text makes a claim for the persistence of one’s written works over any other form of afterlife. And notably, these written works are not any written works, but specifically, instructions. The authors find everlasting life in their written instructions which future students will study; thereby the sages’ names will be remembered:64 They did not make for themselves tombs of copper, With stelae of metal from heaven. They knew not how to leave heirs, Children [of theirs] to pronounce their names; They made heirs for themselves of books, Of Instructions they had composed. They gave themselves [the scroll as lector]-priest, The writing-board as loving son. Instructions are their tombs, The reed pen is their child, The stone-surface their wife. People great and small Are given them as children, For the scribe, he is their leader. … Man decays, his corpse is dust, All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered Through the mouth of its reciter. Better is a book than a well-built house, Than tomb-chapels in the west; Better than a solid mansion, Than a stela in the temple!

62 63 64

thanksgiving, which praises God for saving the writer from death and danger … Its authenticity is questionable, and its pertinence to the rest of the book obscure.” P. Chester Beatty IV= P. BM 10684. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2.176. Translation quoted from ibid., 176–78.

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These statements are followed by a list of named-and-famed sages, whose wisdom survived the ravages of time and the erosion of human memory: “Is there another like Ptahhotep?” the writer asks. The work concludes with a statement that “death made their names forgotten, but books made them remembered.” But it is not writing specifically that saves one from inevitable oblivion, but the repetition of their words in the mouths of future readers, who serve as their own heirs: “The children of others are given to them, To be heirs as their own children,” and in the section preceding the list of names quoted above, “But a book makes him remembered, Through the mouth of its reciter.” As we can see from the significance given to named-and-famed speakers of wisdom, and their succession in ancient Near Eastern instruction texts, wisdom authors were always engaged in questions of the limits of individual life and trans-generational continuation of reward, punishment, responsibility, and ultimately, personhood. This concern is not a “later development” out of a conventional discourse of act and consequence. The instruction discourse, in its advice and in the trans-generational configuration of its frame, concerns itself with the inherent limitations to human mortality. The instruction offered possibilities, both in form and content, for survival beyond one’s own individual lifetime. Proverbs might be an unusual exception to this, but Sirach is firmly within this literary thought-world, as is Ecclesiastes. If we are able to see past Proverbs as the paradigmatic wisdom text and outside of a developmental framework, shared concerns at the heart of the ancient Near Eastern instruction may come into greater relief. Bibliography Adams, Samuel L. Wisdom in Transition: Act and Consequence in Second Temple Instructions. JSJSup 125. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Barton, John. “The Old Testament Canons.” Pages 145–64 in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to 600. Ed. James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Beckwith, Roger T. “Formation of the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 39–86 in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Ed. Martin Jan Mulder and Harry Sysling. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. Bolin, Thomas M. Ecclesiastes and the Riddle of Authorship. New York: Routledge, 2017. Corley, Jeremy. “An Intertextual Study of Proverbs and Ben Sira.” Pages 155–82 in Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit: Essays in Honor of Alexander A. Di Lella,

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O. F. M. Ed. Jeremy Corley, Vincent T. M. Skemp, and Alexander A. Di Lella. CBQMS 38. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2004. Crenshaw, James L. Ecclesiastes: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Crenshaw, James L. Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction. Rev. ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998. Eissfeldt, Otto. Der Maschal im Alten Testament: eine wortgeschichtliche Untersuchung nebst einer literargeschichtlichen Untersuchung der ‫ מ ל‬genannten Gattungen “Volkssprichwort” und “Spottlied.” BZAW 24. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1913. Eissfeldt, Otto. The Old Testament: An Introduction, Including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Also the Works of Similar Type from Qumran; the History of the Formation of the Old Testament. Trans. Peter Ackroyd. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965. Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 18A. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 10–31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AYB 18B. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Golka, Friedemann W. The Leopard’s Spots: Biblical and African Wisdom in Proverbs. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993. Gordis, Robert. Koheleth—the Man and His World: A Study of Ecclesiastes. 3rd augmented ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Hermisson, Hans-Jürgen. Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit. WMANT 28. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1968. Koch, Klaus. “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?” ZTK 52, no. 1 (1955): 1–42. Koch, Klaus. “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?” Pages 57–87 in Theodicy in the Old Testament. Ed. James L. Crenshaw. Trans. Thomas H. Trapp. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Krüger, Thomas. Qoheleth. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. Lohfink, Norbert. Qoheleth: A Continental Commentary. Trans. Sean McEvenue. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. McKane, William. Proverbs: A New Approach. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970. Murphy, Roland E., and Elizabeth Huwiler. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. NIBC 12. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999. Orlinsky, Harry M. “Some Terms in the Prologue to Ben Sira and the Hebrew Canon.” JBL 110 (1991): 483–90. von Rad, Gerhard. Weisheit in Israel. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970. von Rad, Gerhard. Wisdom in Israel. Trans. James D. Martin. London: SCM Press, 1972. Reymond, Eric D. Innovations in Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach. Atlanta: SBL, 2004.

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Sanders, Seth L. The Invention of Hebrew. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Sauer, Georg. Jesus Sirach/Ben Sira. Alte Testament Deutsch Apokryphen 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Schmidt, Johannes. Studien zur Stilistik der alttestamentlichen Spruchliteratur. Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorffschen Buchdruckerei, 1936. Skehan, Patrick W., and Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Vayntrub, Jacqueline. Beyond Orality: Biblical Orality on its Own Terms. New York: Routledge, 2019. Vayntrub, Jacqueline. “The Book of Proverbs and the Idea of Ancient Israelite Education.” ZAW 128 (2016): 96–114. Vayntrub, Jacqueline. “Transmission and Mortal Anxiety in the Tale of Aqhat.” Like ʾIlu Are You Wise: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literature in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee. Ed. H. H. Hardy, J. Lam, and E. Reymond. Chicago: Oriental Institute Publications, Forthcoming. Vayntrub, Jacqueline. “Mashal (Proverb),” 1258–1260 in Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception (EBR). Vol. 17: Lotus-Masrekah, ed. Christine Helmer et. al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). Vayntrub, Jacqueline. “Advice: Wisdom, Skill, and Success,” 17–28 in The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and The Bible, ed. Will Kynes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Weeks, Stuart. An Introduction to the Study of Wisdom Literature. London: T&T Clark, 2010. Weeks, Stuart. “Wisdom, Form and Genre.” Pages 161–77 in Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies. Ed. Mark R. Sneed. SBLAIL 23. Atlanta: SBL, 2015. Westermann, Claus. Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples. Trans. J. Daryl Charles. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995. Westermann, Claus. Wurzeln der Weisheit: die ältesten Sprüche Israels und anderer Völker. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990.

chapter 4

Appearance versus Reality and the Personification of Wisdom: Sirach’s Place in the Early Jewish Sapiential Tradition Bradley C. Gregory 4.1

Introduction: Appearance versus Reality in Proverbs1

In a tradition focused on the cultivation of knowledge and the acquisition of wisdom, the question of how sages come to know what they know is of central importance. Related to this is the issue of the nature, quality, and use of the acquired knowledge and wisdom.2 The evidence of the book of Proverbs suggests that for those trained in the wisdom tradition of Israel there were multiple sources of knowledge.3 Based on the conviction that Wisdom’s characteristics were imprinted on creation, the sages believed that people could grow in 1 My thanks to Samuel Boyd and Jeremy Corley for reading and commenting on an earlier form of this paper and to the participants in the conference for their valuable feedback. 2 An overview of the problem may be found in Perdue, “Revelation,” 201–22. 3 Currently there is a vigorous debate concerning whether there was an identifiable wisdom tradition that was distinct from other Israelite/Jewish traditions in both genre and sociology and, related, what if anything qualifies a work as “wisdom literature.” Most of the key participants in this debate and defenses of their views may be found in Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition?. My own position, which forms the framework for this discussion, is that there was a conceptual/theological wisdom tradition in Israel but this was not isolated from, or in competition with, other traditions within Israel. Correlatively, our present understanding of scribal culture makes it highly unlikely that the wisdom literature is to be correlated with a distinct sociological group that was independent of, or in competition with, other sociological groups such as priests or prophets. Rather, the scribal apparatus of ancient Jerusalem was responsible for the production and transmission of a variety of genres and texts, one of which was “wisdom literature.” Further, there is an identifiable group of texts that can be classified as “wisdom literature,” though I agree that there are no set generic features that unequivocally include books such as Proverbs, Job, and Qoheleth while excluding other works. Rather, it is fair to approach genre as fluid, constructed, and typical, such that Proverbs is taken as a defensible reference point for Israelite/Jewish wisdom literature and books such as Job, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon, and 4QInstruction are understood as texts that reflect a sufficiently strong generic similarity to Proverbs to be categorized as “wisdom literature.” In the present volume, see the essay by Collins. Therefore, I take it as legitimate and productive to compare this corpus of texts in terms of their understandings of topics such as epistemology, the search for wisdom, and ethics.

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understanding through careful observation of the natural world and human interactions.4 Yet, the fact that this approach was based on logically prior beliefs about the nature of the world highlights that these sages did not hold to a pure empiricism as the foundation of knowledge. In fact, as both Michael Fox and Stuart Weeks have observed, Proverbs contains many claims to knowledge that could not have been derived from empirical observation but must have been accepted from the received tradition of the sages (e.g., claims as to how God interacts with the world or the moral underpinnings of the created order). Further, there is a strong sense in Proverbs that without training in the tradition, one is liable to misinterpret what is observed empirically. While this accepted tradition must have included the various texts held to be authoritative in the tradition of the sages, there is, importantly, little in Proverbs to suggest that divine revelation is the main vehicle of this non-empirical knowledge.5 It is proper training in the received tradition that enables the students to observe and interpret their world correctly. For example, Proverbs 9 presents two parallel vignettes of Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly, both of whom are, importantly, presented as teachers who offer instruction.6 Both have a house (9:1, 14), offer sustenance (9:5, 17), and address the student with the same summons (9:4, 16); yet the pursuit of one or the other leads to drastically different destinations. While Woman Wisdom leads to nourishment, life, and true understanding (9:6), those who follow Woman Folly are unknowingly walking into their own graves (9:18; cf. 7:22–23). The logic of the parallel portraits of these two personified women in Proverbs 9 operates on the conviction that on the surface both women seem good, but the wise person perceives that only Woman Wisdom’s offer is truly good, leading to life (9:6), while Woman Folly’s offer merely appears good. She is, in fact, a counterfeit leading to death (9:18; cf. 14:12; 16:25).7 One important pedagogical advantage of this construct is that it provides an explanation for why people choose foolishness when the consequences are both harmful and consistently predictable: their ignorance or naiveté can make them susceptible to being seduced by Folly, because they are unable to perceive what is really going on.8 4 Cf. Perdue, Wisdom & Creation, 77–122. 5 Fox, Proverbs 10–31, 946–50, 963–76; Weeks, “Place and Limits,” 15–17. The closest Proverbs comes to such a notion is the idea that God is the (ultimate) source of wisdom and understanding (e.g., 2:6). 6 Noted by Goff, “Personification,” 133. 7 Notably, LXX has an expanded text which reworks Woman Folly into a caution about the danger of gentile culture and thought. See the different interpretations by Cook, Septuagint of Proverbs, 266–86; Fox, “Strange Woman,” 31–44; and Goff, “Hellish Females,” 41–44. 8 Fox, “Ethics and Wisdom,” 82–83.

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The transparency of Wisdom is even clearer in chapter 3. There the instructor catalogs the traditional rewards of wisdom: blessing, understanding, profit, long life, riches, and honor (3:13–16). But then he notes that: Her roads are pleasant roads and all her paths are peace She is a tree of life to those who seize her and those who grasp her are blessed. (3:17–18) Here the student is reassured that not only are the rewards of Wisdom appealing but the journey or pursuit itself is better than the alternative. While “her roads” and “her paths” admit of multiple possible interpretations, the context suggests that Wisdom will treat well those who follow in her footsteps and that this is generally recognized.9 Even if discipline may be unpleasant at times, the wise readily accept it, even love it, and they know it is still worse for the foolish (Prov 6:23; 12:1; 15:10). Thus, in Proverbs Wisdom is utterly transparent and those who choose folly do so because they incorrectly believe that Folly is also transparent and really can deliver on her promises. For this reason, while Wisdom is indeed pictured as appearing as she is, the ability to distinguish between appearances and reality, particularly in how present choices lead to future consequences, is gained through the ongoing cultivation of this wisdom.10 4.2

Appearance versus Reality in Other Second Temple Wisdom Texts

During the Second Temple period, personified Wisdom and Folly also appear in ways that indicate different understandings of the relationship between appearance and reality. As has often been noted, several texts view wisdom as less accessible than what is portrayed in Proverbs. Job, for example, places greater emphasis on the hiddenness and unattainability of wisdom, accenting that ultimate understanding is located beyond the reach of all humans.11 In chapter 28 the poet contrasts the ingenuity of humans in finding precious jewels with their inability to find wisdom. The point is that the difficulty in finding 9 10 11

Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 157. Noted by von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 124–28. Importantly, while Qoheleth likewise claims to a substantial degree that wisdom is inaccessible (1:12–18; 8:10–17), thereby precluding any firm knowledge about the future or outcomes of events, he largely eschews his received tradition and grounds his epistemology more thoroughly in, and limits it to, what he has personally witnessed. See Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, 23–25.

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wisdom is not due to a lack of desire or tactical skill on the part of humans but to something inherent with the “location” of wisdom itself. The author raises the questions “Where can wisdom be found?” and “Where does wisdom come from?” and answers that while humans do not know the way to it, God does (Job 28:12–13, 20–23). Although here wisdom is more of a concept than a personification per se, it is nevertheless one whose spatio-temporal location can be contemplated, at least metaphorically, and is viewed as ultimately off-limits to finite humans.12 The seriousness of the challenge of wisdom’s inaccessibility in Job 28 is evident by the fact that subsequent Jewish authors (including Ben Sira) took up the issue and at times engaged Job 28 directly. In the wisdom poem in Bar 3:9– 4:4, the author raises the same question about wisdom’s location as in Job 28 (3:15; cf. Job 28:12, 20) and concedes Job’s point that no one knows the way to her except God (3:31–32; Job 28:23–27). But in identifying wisdom with the “book of the commandments of God” (4:1–4), which was given to Israel, the author tries to solve the problem through the category of election by consigning the ignorance of wisdom’s location to the gentile nations. To a degree this sidesteps the problem of wisdom’s hiddenness in a way that has minimal consequences for the appearance-versus-reality dynamic compared to Proverbs. Instead, the challenge of Job 28 is transformed in Baruch into an affirmation of God’s generosity by accenting Israel’s privilege in receiving the law.13 A contrary approach to the challenge of Job 28 is evident in apocalyptic literature. In particular, texts that blend wisdom and apocalyptic features often introduce a distinction between perception and reality that is aligned with a dualistic understanding of the earthly and heavenly realms.14 For example, the book of Daniel portrays the character Daniel as a mantic sage gifted in dream interpretation, who also receives divine revelation regarding the cosmic drama behind the geo-political events of the Hellenistic period. Here wisdom has become so occluded that she “vanishes,” and no personification even appears.15 Similarly, 4QInstruction locates true understanding in the ability to grasp the ‫ר נהיה‬, “the mystery that is to be.” And Wisdom of Solomon exhorts the reader to look beyond the immediate circumstances of suffering to grasp the real value of virtue in light of God’s eschatological judgment.16 But within 12 13 14 15 16

See Greenstein, “Poem on Wisdom,” 258–80. Hogan, “Elusive Wisdom,” 145–59; Goff, “Personification,” 140–41. Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, 275, 291–92. On the relationship between “wisdom” and “apocalyptic” see Müller, “Mantische Weisheit,” 268–93; VanderKam, “Prophetic-Sapiential Origins,” 241–54; Nickelsburg, “Wisdom and Apocalypticism,” 17–37. Burkes Pinette, “Lady Vanishes,” 160–72. For an overview see Goff, “Recent Trends,” 380–86.

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apocalyptic texts the clearest connection to Job 28 is found in the Similitudes of Enoch. Here, in a development of the perspective of Job that seems designed to counter the alignment of wisdom and Torah found in texts like Baruch and Sirach, the author claims that the figure of Wisdom could not find anywhere on earth to dwell and so returned to reside in heaven (1 En. 42:1–2). This, of course, uses the hiddenness of wisdom as leverage to buttress the authority of the apocalyptic visionary, who alone has been granted a point of access to the heavenly realm.17 Strikingly, as Matthew Goff has pointed out, 1 Enoch 42 is one of the rare cases of personified Folly in Second Temple Judaism. There she goes by the name “Iniquity” and in contrast to Wisdom is able to take up residence among humans.18 The other possible instance of personified Folly is in the Qumran text “The Evil Seductress” (= “Wiles of the Wicked Woman” [4Q184]). While bearing the strongest similarity to the strange woman of Proverbs, the Evil Seductress is less sexual and more overtly related to immorality and death.19 As such, she is also similar to Woman Folly in that “her ways are the ways of death, her roads are paths of sin, and her gates are the gates of death” (4Q184 I.9–10).20 Yet this is masked by a seductive appearance and a resolute determination to trip the righteous (I.12–14) and to seduce people with smooth speech (I.17), especially through ambush. Given that earlier her words are described as futile, depraved, and nonsense, Goff justifiably wonders how frequently the righteous would have been seduced by her words.21 Yet, this seductive power to turn aside the strong and righteous man seems to be a personified attempt to explain why people choose the wicked when this is inherently bad for them (at least in the long run). If “The Evil Seductress” is indeed a blending of Woman Folly and the strange woman, then it is the clearest case in addition to Proverbs of the contrast between false appearance and dangerous reality within Second Temple literature. In sum, beyond Proverbs several Second Temple Jewish authors reflect a sense that wisdom is more difficult to access, and they meet that challenge in different ways. Some seek to access it through the Torah, while others seek new revelatory access to wisdom hidden in the heavenly realm. Yet, if wisdom 17 18 19 20 21

Goff, “Personification,” 141–42. Ibid., 142–43. Goff, “Hellish Females,” 37–38; Goff, “Personification,” 148–50. Contra Crawford, who considers it “beyond doubt” that 4Q184 concerns Woman Folly but a more sexualized and demonic version than in Proverbs (“Lady Wisdom,” 360–61). Goff notes that the author of 4Q184 may be conflating Woman Folly and the strange woman, though the strongest connections are with Proverbs 7 (“Personification,” 150). Goff, “Hellish Females,” 38.

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is considered not as accessible and transparent as the portrait found in Prov 9:1–6, there is not as much need for a personified Folly, who seduces people from the obvious path of Wisdom. Rather, the search for wisdom is viewed as arduous enough to explain the difficulty of finding success in life, the challenge of making sense of the irregularities of experience, or the reasons why people make foolish choices. This idea of wisdom as hidden lends itself quite easily to a strong distinction between what appears to be true and what is really true. Importantly, however, 1 Enoch 42 makes clear that the eclipse of personified Folly and the inaccessibility of wisdom do not necessarily entail each other logically; but these two conceptual moves can nevertheless facilitate one another. It is within these broad trends regarding appearance and reality in personifications of Wisdom that Ben Sira’s unique approach stands out. 4.2.1 Is Wisdom Accessible or Inaccessible for Ben Sira? Ben Sira, as part of the sapiential tradition and as a sage who was living in the context of these various developments in sapiential thought, develops his own unique approach to the problem posed by Job 28. In line with the view found in Proverbs, Ben Sira believes the created order and lived experience are sources of knowledge and understanding because of Wisdom’s active role in designing and ordering the world (Sir 24:1–22). Additionally, he accepts many earlier sacred writings of Israel, especially the Mosaic Torah, as sources of understanding, or even revelation.22 Yet, Ben Sira was apparently aware both of the epistemological problem of accessing wisdom and of the problem presented by competing claims to wisdom among different Jewish groups who all attempted to ground their epistemology in many of the same sources of creation, authoritative texts, and/ or experience. In order to negotiate this problem Ben Sira also works with a strong distinction between appearance and reality, but it is configured differently from other wisdom texts.23 In Ben Sira’s opening poem on wisdom in 1:1–10, he explores the topic of the origin and the preeminence of wisdom. While it is widely recognized that this is conceptually indebted to Proverbs 8, both Corley and Beentjes have made a compelling case that the poem departs from Proverbs in ways that deliberately echo and respond to Job 28. In fact, the whole poem can be read as Ben Sira’s answer to the questions, “Where can wisdom be found?” and “Where does wisdom come from?” in Job 28:12,

22 23

Wright, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy,” 157–86. Regarding Ben Sira’s awareness of the problem, see von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 247–50.

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20.24 In this way, Ben Sira tries to appropriate the role of personified Wisdom in Proverbs while engaging the challenge of wisdom’s inaccessibility in Job. His answer is that on the one hand, full knowledge of wisdom belongs only to God and is as inaccessible to humans as the quantity or extent of aspects of creation (1:2–4; cf. 42:16–17; 43:32–33), a tactic designed to undercut (in part) contemporary apocalyptic epistemology.25 On the other hand, Ben Sira sides with Proverbs against Job in seeing wisdom as still in some sense profoundly immanent in the created world and therefore at least partially accessible (1:9–10a). Further, he believes God has especially lavished her upon those who love God, namely Israel (1:10b).26 The same vision of the immanence of Wisdom in creation is developed later in chapter 24, where Wisdom comes forth from God and covers the earth like a mist (24:3). But then Ben Sira argues that Wisdom took up specific residence in Jerusalem and can be found in concrete form in the Mosaic Torah (24:11–12, 23). Thus, as Goering has shown, Ben Sira is convinced that in a very real sense Wisdom remains accessible in a general way through creation and in a more specific, and correlative way, in the revelation of the Torah.27 4.3

Appearance versus Reality and the Personification of Wisdom in Ben Sira

Given the position staked out in his first wisdom poem, the question arises as to how Ben Sira’s subsequent portraits of Woman Wisdom reveal an attempt to deal with the challenge of the difficulty of obtaining wisdom and the fact that some people choose folly even though it is bad for them. One might expect personified Folly to make an entrance as the one who propagates confusion and deception, but in line with the general trend in Second Temple Judaism, personified Folly is completely absent from Sirach.28 Instead, the epistemological move Ben Sira makes is to dispense with the notion in Proverbs that Woman 24 25 26 27 28

Corley, “Wisdom versus Apocalyptic,” 269–85; Beentjes, “Full Wisdom,” 29–33. So also Balla, Ben Sira on Family, 171. Corley, “Wisdom versus Apocalyptic,” 285. Here I follow the reading of Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 21–24. Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 3–9. Parallel to this is the fact that even the Strange Woman of Proverbs makes no appearance in abstract or symbolic form, but only in concretized dangers of specific kinds of women (Sir 9:1–9). These dangerous women are the inverse of personified Wisdom in that they appear delightful but are in reality destructive. See the discussion of Camp, Ben Sira and the Men Who Handle Books, 126–27.

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Wisdom is transparent (i.e., her appearance matches her reality) and to introduce a distinction between appearance and reality to personified Woman Wisdom herself, not just to the world or the operations of justice. As such, he effectively takes the dynamic that characterized Woman Folly in Proverbs and inverts it in order to characterize Woman Wisdom. In Proverbs both Wisdom and Folly appeared to be good, but only Wisdom was truly good. In Sirach, however, Woman Wisdom can appear to be harmful, even bad, but, Ben Sira assures his students, is in reality good. This new dynamic and its implications for Ben Sira’s pedagogy emerge clearly in the second and third wisdom poems and thus supplement his answer in the first wisdom poem (1:1–10) to the challenge of Job 28. As will be seen, this new reconfiguration of Woman Wisdom also intersects with his attempts to counter alternative epistemologies, especially those of apocalyptic groups. In 4:11–19, Ben Sira provides a poem about the teaching methods of Woman Wisdom. Several features of this pericope suggest that Proverbs 8–9 serve as the conceptual background: the unusual use of the plural ‫ חכמות‬for Wisdom in v. 11 as in Prov 9:1; the reciprocal love in vv. 12 and 14, which echoes Prov 8:17 and 35; the blessings of life, honor, and wealth in vv. 12–14 as in Prov 8:12–21; and the image of Wisdom’s inner chambers in v. 15, which also recalls Prov 9:1.29 And indeed vv. 11–16 are largely consistent with the presentation of personified Wisdom in Proverbs. The relationship between Wisdom and her students is portrayed as one of mutual interest. Wisdom shows affection for the well-being of her students who are characterized here as “her children” (4:11).30 Wisdom is practically synonymous with life (4:12), and those who seek her are guaranteed the traditional rewards of wisdom: life, divine favor, honor, blessing, God’s love, and authority (4:12–15). Perhaps most importantly, those who seek her are assured of obtaining her (4:13, 16).31 Yet, given earlier portraits of wisdom, the poem takes an unexpected turn in vv. 17–19.32 29 30 31 32

Crenshaw, “Sirach,” 667; Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel, 100–101; Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 171–72; Smend, Weisheit, 38–40. Ueberschaer, Weisheit aus der Begegnung, 284. So also Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 171. Verse 16 is absent from MS A of the Hebrew (= HA) but it is found in both the Greek and the Syriac and is surely original. Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen, 38. These three verses are text-critically very difficult but there is no dispute about v. 17a which is most significant for the discussion here. Verse 19 in HA contains a doublet (so also Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 170) with 19a, d being most similar to the Greek. For v. 17 I have followed HA and the Syriac for 17ab. The line for 17c is missing in HA but is found in the Syriac and the Greek, though in the latter it is transposed with 17b. The reading in 17d again follows HA. The Greek and the Syriac have an extra colon, each in a different location, that appears to be a doublet of 17b. My decisions for 17a–c are the

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17For in disguise I will walk with him, and at first I will test him with trials.33 Fear and dread I will bring upon him until the time when his heart is filled with me.34 18I will return, and I will again place him on a straight way35 and reveal to him my secrets. 19If he turns aside, I will turn away from him, and I will hand him over to destroyers. (4:17–19) In v. 17a Wisdom says that at first she will walk with him “in disguise” (the Greek has διεστραµµένως, i.e., in a distorted or contorted manner). The Hithpael of ‫נכר‬ means to act as, or pretend to be, a stranger, as Joseph does with his brothers (Gen 42:7; also cf. 1 Kgs 14:5–6). This story is particularly relevant background for Sirach 4 because of the parallel between disguise and testing.36 The brothers’ failure to recognize Joseph was essential to the tests to which he subjected them to see whether they would betray their brother or whether their character had improved, since they betrayed him years ago.37 Similarly in Sirach 4, it is during this time when Wisdom is not recognized as Wisdom that she subjects her kin to trials and even fear and dread. This should not surprise the pious who were already told in chapter 2 that God subjects the faithful to tests but never abandons them (2:1–6).38 Further, according to Deuteronomy, a key

33 34 35 36

37 38

same as Box & Oesterley (“Sirach,” 330) and Rickenbacher (Weisheitsperikopen, 39), but they include a colon both before and after 17d to produce 6 cola for v. 17. A reconstruction with four cola seems more likely than one with six, since this produces a pericope with 10 bicola rather than 11 (assuming v. 16 is original and the doublet in v. 19 should be omitted), which seems to me more likely (though by no means decisive) given how frequently Ben Sira’s pericopae have 10, 12, 20, or 22 bicola. Commentators mostly agree that HA’s third person ‫ יבחרנו‬must be emended to the first person ‫אבחרנו‬. Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen, 39. The Greek’s “trust” (ἐµπιστεύσῃ) may reflect confusion between ‫ ימלא‬and ‫( יאמן‬cf. Box & Oesterley “Sirach,” 330). For HA’s “place him on a straight way” (‫)אאשרנו‬, the Greek has “gladden him,” interpreting ‫ אשר‬with its other meaning. Both Balla (Ben Sira on Family, 180) and Crenshaw (“Sirach,” 660) think that this word choice evokes the strange woman in Proverbs, thereby evoking seductiveness. However, Wisdom is not seductive in 4:17–19, and the end of the passage seems to suggest the impulse is to flee her rather than be drawn to her. Further, while Proverbs does speak of the foreign woman (‫ )נכריה‬in 2:16; 5:10; 6:24; and 7:5, Ben Sira’s description in 4:17–19 is somewhat different. Cf. Corley, “Joseph as Exemplar,” 157–58. This passage also parallels Ben Sira’s advice to trust friends only after testing them (6:6–13). Irwin, “Fear of God,” 558; Corley, Ben Sira’s Teaching on Friendship, 45.

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component of the wilderness journey was the testing of Israel by God to see what was in their hearts (Deut 8:2).39 Only when their character is sufficiently shaped to be full of wisdom does her presence all along become clear. Should they fail to pass the test and depart from her, even though they do not recognize her presence, she will abandon them to destroyers. The appearance versus reality dynamic in this passage is striking. While the harshness of the experience of testing is taken for granted, its meaning is different from what it seems. Wisdom is hidden not in the heavens, as in Job and various apocalypses, but in her self-presentation. She is actually near, accompanying her students, but unrecognized. She appears to be a tormenter but in reality has her students’ best interests at heart.40 But, one might ask, why couldn’t Wisdom test the disciple through life’s circumstances while presenting herself as she is? The answer must be, as Calduch-Benages has observed, that the disguise is essential to the pedagogical strategy of Wisdom.41 Somehow the altered external appearance of Wisdom allows the cultivation of her within the disciple, according to v. 17d.42 Only when this process is complete is the disguise removed, and Wisdom reveals both her presence and her secrets. The language of “Wisdom’s secrets” is almost certainly intended as a true, reliable alternative to apocalyptic speculations that Ben Sira warns his students about elsewhere (3:21–24; 34:1–6).43 However, given the essential role of the disguise, there is a potential paradox in this wisdom poem since Wisdom, speaking in the first person, discloses her method ahead of time.44 Does this “spoiler” undermine the effectiveness of the disguise? Maybe in part, but there is a pedagogical goal that overcomes this drawback. By outlining Wisdom’s method in advance, Ben Sira positions himself as the mediator of Wisdom’s discourse and, by extension, the authorized interpreter of her hidden actions, whose true significance will remain unperceived by the students. In other words, the distinction between appearance and reality in this personification of Wisdom constructs an epistemological barrier that the sage himself is uniquely privileged to traverse. As such, it 39 40 41 42 43 44

Rickenbacher (Weisheitsperikopen, 53–54) argues that the testing motif in Sirach 4 is drawn from Deuteronomy 8. Crenshaw (“Sirach,” 660) observes, “The difficult experiences in classrooms probably inspired this talk about trials, for the life of students included numerous unpleasantries ranging from harsh whippings to painful thinking.” Calduch-Benages, “La sabiduría,” 47. So Liesen, Full of Praise, 158. Note that this takes the ‫ ב‬as one of essence rather than instrument (i.e., “filled by me”). So Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel, 102–3; Calduch-Benages, “La sabiduría,” 47. Aitken, “Apocalyptic Revelation,” 189–90. Noted by Calduch-Benages, “Trial Motif,” 141.

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is structurally similar to the epistemology of the apocalyptic opponents he is countering in that the sage constitutes the key to accessing some hidden aspect of Wisdom.45 But in contrast to those opponents, Wisdom is not distant, merely unrecognized. The same elements of epistemology and authority are found in the third wisdom poem in 6:18–31, but there is a sharper contrast between how the foolish and the wise respond to her deceptive appearance. At the beginning of the poem Ben Sira uses the agricultural imagery of sowing and reaping to impress upon his students that seeking wisdom involves work and delayed reward (6:18–19).46 Ben Sira then describes how Wisdom is repugnant to the foolish: she is “rugged ground” (‫ ; קובה‬cf. Isa 40:4) and unable to be grasped (6:20). Later Ben Sira will describe the same road as level for the righteous but rugged for the arrogant (39:24, 27), i.e., the same reality is experienced differently depending on the person’s character.47 In v. 21 he uses an additional analogy to demonstrate the misperception of wisdom by the foolish. To them she is like a stone that they cast away because it appears to be a burden; they do not see the reality of her value.48 Thus, in vv. 18–21 the disconnect between wisdom’s appearance and reality might be in terms of mistaking who she is or in failing to appreciate the eventual reward she will bring, either of which finds a parallel in 4:17–19. In v. 22 an explanation is provided: “For Discipline is like her name; she is not straightforward to many.”49 The substitution of “Discipline” for “Wisdom” allows Ben Sira to make the well-known word play that takes ‫ מוסר‬as the Hophal participle of ‫סור‬, i.e., “withdrawn” or “not obvious.”50 Elaborating this, v. 22b says that she is not “straightforward” (‫)נכוחה‬, which is an exact reversal of what 45 46

47 48 49 50

Similarly Aitken, “Apocalyptic Revelation,” 189–92; Wright, “Sage as Exemplar,” 173. Marböck highlights the fact that mentioning both youth and old age in v. 18 implies that the quest for wisdom is a life-long pursuit (Jesus Sirach 1–23, 119). This delay of attaining wisdom in old age is counterbalanced by Ben Sira’s assurance that the labor will be light and the rewards will be soon. Presumably, these rewards are intermediate and keep the student motivated throughout the long quest for wisdom. Liesen, Full of Praise, 255. Jeremy Corley (personal communication) further suggests that this is a pun on the meaning of ‫ קוב‬as “deceitful, tricky.” The meaning is probably that the stone is precious in some sense that is overlooked by the foolish. For other interpretations, see Crenshaw, “Sirach,” 688; Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 119. Slight emendation of HA is required, but is generally agreed upon. See Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 191. Calduch-Benages, “Wordplay,” 13–26. This is the majority interpretation, but Snaith suggests that the name plays upon môsēr, “bond,” which provides a connection with vv. 24–25. Snaith, Ecclesiasticus, 39.

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Proverbs 8 claims Woman Wisdom is to the discerning (Prov 8:8–9).51 Together, the two lines of this bicolon mirror Ben Sira’s claim in 4:17 that Wisdom is not necessarily what she appears to be, with one important difference. Here Ben Sira says that she is not straightforward (or “evident”/“visible” in the Greek) to many (‫ ;לרבים‬πολλοῖς). Whereas 4:17–19 seemed to imply that even for the wise, Woman Wisdom would appear in disguise during a time of testing, here Ben Sira implies that there are some who do perceive Wisdom as she is. This allows v. 22 to function as a Janus-faced verse: it explains why the foolish and immoral fail to grasp the nature of Wisdom, and it allows Ben Sira in vv. 23–25 to introduce his mediatorial role in authoritatively interpreting his students’ own experience.52 Whereas in 4:17–19 Ben Sira merely warned that Wisdom would subject the students to tests incognito, here he exhorts them to follow his instruction by embracing the harsh treatment of Wisdom, which naturally conflates his own regimen of training with the operations of Woman Wisdom herself. By advising them to subject their “feet” to her net as well as their “neck” to her cords, he employs a merism for the subjection of their whole selves to Wisdom.53 In conjunction with nets and cords, v. 25 admonishes the student to accept Wisdom’s yoke. The cleverness of using these images for training is that they admit of multiple associations.54 They could invoke the scenario in which a person is captured and subjected to slavery (or possibly imprisonment).55 Yet, as Marböck notes, it could also bring to mind the covenantal description of the Torah as a yoke that provides direction and guidance, the departure from which leads to disaster (Jer 2:20; Hos 11:4; cf. Pirkei Avot 3:6; b. Erubin 54a; Matt 11:29).56 Those who view Wisdom as merely the former, a harsh enslaver, will be unwilling to subject themselves and will cast her off and abandon her (4:19; 6:20–21; cf. 21:19). But those who trust Ben Sira’s perspective on their harsh experience will undergo two transformations. First, they will find these very instruments of subjugation transformed into adornments of glory: the net becomes a majestic throne; the cords, gold clothing; the yoke and straps, gold and blue (or perhaps purple) adornments. As nearly all interpreters point out, while the use of clothing was a common metaphor in the ancient world for the cultivation of moral character, these garments in particular are befitting royalty and priests, 51 52 53 54 55 56

Balla, Ben Sira on Family, 185. Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 193–94. Verses 23–24 are missing from HA but are widely accepted, since they are found in both the Greek and Syriac. Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 120. See Ueberschaer, Weisheit aus der Begegnung, 337–45. Calduch-Benages, “Trial Motif,” 144–45; Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 120–21. Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 120. Similarly, Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 194.

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unmistakable signs of power, wealth, and importance.57 Yet, it is highly significant that these garments do not replace the yoke and bonds; instead they are the realization of the instruments’ true nature, because they were not merely external burdens, as they might appear, but in reality have been shapers of internal character, a perspective reminiscent of 4:17d.58 Second, and also similarly to 4:17–19, Wisdom herself eventually will be transformed for them, from a taskmaster into a delight (6:28). Given the kind of transformation involved with her pedagogical instruments, Ben Sira likely means not that Wisdom herself is transformed into something else, but that the students’ understanding of her character as pedagogue is transformed, so that they see her as she really is. As Crenshaw explains, “Now at last those students who persisted realize that wisdom only seemed harsh but was actually acting in their best interests … worthy students see wisdom as she truly is and as she has always been.”59 Having now once again introduced a sharp distinction between appearance and reality regarding Woman Wisdom in 6:18–31 and preliminarily placed himself as the one who can provide insight into the “reality” (6:22), Ben Sira follows the promise of future glory from training in Wisdom with a reassurance that the attainability of this reality hinged only on the student’s willingness to seek it. In 6:32–36 Ben Sira says that all that is required is for his students to seek out a sage and diligently apply themselves to do everything that sage instructs. As when Joseph advised Pharaoh to choose a wise and discerning person to place over all of Egypt (Gen 41:33), there can be no doubt who Ben Sira has in mind. In fact, as Wright has shown, it is a conspicuous feature of the book that the epistemological challenges of seeking and grasping Wisdom serve to accentuate Ben Sira’s own importance as the exemplary sage.60 He positions himself as the one who can navigate the boundaries of proper knowledge (3:21–24) and perceive the reality behind the appearance of what is going on (4:17–19; 6:18–31). Further, while Wisdom is accessible in Israel in the form of the Torah (24:23), she is by no means completely transparent and self-interpreting. What is needed, once again, is an authoritative, even inspired, guide, and consistently throughout the second half of the book Ben Sira juxtaposes a description of the importance of Wisdom and instruction with a self-presentation of himself as just such an inspired guide (24:30–33; 33:16–19; 39:1–11; 51:13–25).61 57 58 59 60 61

Cf. Crenshaw, “Sirach,” 688–89; Skehan & Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 194. Burkes Pinette, “Lady Vanishes,” 162–63. Crenshaw, “Sirach,” 688–89 (emphasis original). Wright, “Sage as Exemplar,” especially 171–81; cf. the discussions of Goff, “Personification,” 139–40; Camp, Ben Sira and the Men Who Handle Books, 159–67. Jessie Rogers (“Where is Wisdom,” 94) observes that while in Proverbs the students are told to listen both to the teacher and to Wisdom (directly), in Ben Sira the students are told to listen almost exclusively to the sage.

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69

Summary and Conclusions

There is a general sense across the wisdom literature that appearances and reality can be quite different, leaving students susceptible to misunderstanding what they observe. In Proverbs this is expressed in the contrast between Woman Wisdom, who is transparent, and Woman Folly, who falsely mimics Woman Wisdom. Both figures appear good, but only Wisdom is really good. The role of discernment is in distinguishing between the two Women by seeing behind Folly’s appearance. Those who choose folly do so because they fail to understand her true nature and so compare her favorably to Woman Wisdom. Outside of Proverbs 1–9, personified Folly appears infrequently in the Second Temple period and there is a strong trend, seen especially in Job, of viewing Wisdom as substantially inaccessible or incomprehensible. While Baruch tries to incorporate this challenge into a framework of election that minimally problematizes the tension between appearance and reality, apocalyptic works routinely exploit the hiddenness of Wisdom. By means of a dualism between the heavenly and earthly realms, the accessibility of Wisdom is restricted to the privileged role of the apocalyptic visionary and therefore is aligned as much with new revelation as with a received tradition. Within this context, Ben Sira’s first three wisdom poems in 1:1–10; 4:11–19; and 6:18–31 progressively outline his response to the problem of the relation of appearance and reality in the figure of Wisdom. In the first wisdom poem he claims that while a comprehensive grasp of wisdom is impossible and aspects of wisdom are indeed hidden from human perception, wisdom is also sufficiently, truly accessible through creation and the Torah. In order to navigate the epistemological problem this entails, Ben Sira sets forth a unique approach to personified Wisdom in chapters 4 and 6. In these passages he applies a form of the appearance-versus-reality distinction to Woman Wisdom that is the inverse of that of Woman Folly in Proverbs 9. This allows him to explain why some people reject her: it is not so much that they are seduced by Folly as that they fail to distinguish properly between Wisdom’s appearance (harsh) and her reality (affectionate pedagogue). In addition, Ben Sira is able to address the challenge of wisdom’s elusiveness and inaccessibility: she is merely wearing a disguise or appearing as a taskmaster for a time, but this will all turn out to the persevering students’ benefit.62 How should this portrait of Woman Wisdom as “not what she seems” be explained? It seems likely that this dynamic arose in part as an extrapolation from the conviction that the workings of retributive justice were difficult to 62

The end of the book of Job may have suggested this to Ben Sira (Jeremy Corley, personal communication).

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trace in life’s experience,63 but other approaches were also available to account for this (e.g., Job and Baruch), and so to explain the full dynamic it is necessary to account for the deeper epistemology and authority structures that are at work. By introducing a barrier between Wisdom’s true nature and her appearance, Ben Sira creates an epistemological boundary that mirrors those of his apocalyptic rivals and establishes himself as the authorized mediator of both Wisdom and the intelligibility of his students’ experience. In this way the portrait of Wisdom presented in the first three wisdom poems of the book makes an essential contribution to Ben Sira’s conceptual framework for the instruction found throughout the book.64 Bibliography Aitken, James K. “Apocalyptic Revelation and Early Jewish Wisdom Literature.” Pages 181–93 in New Heaven and New Earth—Prophecy and the Millennium: Essays in Honor of Anthony Gelston. Ed. P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward. VTSup 77. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Balla, Ibolya. Ben Sira on Family, Gender, and Sexuality. DCLS 8. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Beentjes, Pancratius C. “‘Full Wisdom is from the LORD’: Sir 1,1–10 and its Place in Israel’s Wisdom Tradition.” Pages 19–34 in “Happy the One who Meditates on Wisdom” (SIR. 14,20): Collected Essays on the Book of Ben Sira. CBET 43. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Box, G. H. & W. O. E. Oesterley. “Sirach.” Pages 268–517 in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Volume 1. Ed. R. H. Charles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1913. Calduch-Benages, Nuría. “La sabiduría y la prueba en Sir 4,11–19.” EstBíb 49 (1991): 25–48. Calduch-Benages, Nuría. “Trial Motif in the Book of Ben Sira with Special Reference to Sir 2,1–6.” Pages 135–51 in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research. Ed. Pancratius C. Beentjes. BZAW 255. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997.

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Burkes Pinette, “Lady Vanishes,” 161–62; cf. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 247–50. While the argument in this article primarily concerns an oral context of instruction in which Ben Sira engages with his students directly, this authority dynamic would be reconfigured in the written work that endured after Ben Sira himself. The placement of this teaching in writing can be understood in terms of Ben Sira’s own perception of his work as part of an ongoing tradition rather than as independent. At the level of the written teaching, the argument broadens out to be an exhortation to continue in the authoritative tradition which is passed on through legitimate sages rather than abandoning this tradition in light of one’s own experiences.

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Calduch-Benages, Nuría. “A Wordplay on the Term mûsar (Sir 6:22).” Pages 13–26 in Weisheit als Lebensgrundlage: Festschrift Friedrich Reiterer. Ed. R. Egger-Wenzel, K. Schöpflin, and J. F. Diehl. DCLS 15. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. Camp, Claudia V. Ben Sira and the Men Who Handle Books: Gender and the Rise of Canon-Consciousness. HBM 50. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Cook, Johann. The Septuagint of Proverbs: Jewish and/or Hellenistic Proverbs? VTSup 69. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Corley, Jeremy. Ben Sira’s Teaching on Friendship. BJS 316. Providence: Brown University Press, 2002. Corley, Jeremy. “Joseph as Exemplar of Wisdom: A Hidden Allusion in Sirach 21:11–21.” Pages 157–78 in The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert. Hayward. Ed. Timothy McLay. LSTS 83. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. Corley, Jeremy. “Wisdom versus Apocalyptic and Science in Sirach 1,1–10.” Pages 269– 85 in Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical Tradition. Ed. F. García Martínez. BETL 168. Leuven: Peeters, 2003. Crawford, Sidnie White. “Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly at Qumran.” DSD 5 (1998): 355–66. Crenshaw, James L. Ecclesiastes: A Commentary. OTL. London: SCM Press, 1987. Crenshaw, James L. “Sirach.” Pages 601–867 in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume V. Ed. Leander E. Keck. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997. Fox, Michael V. “Ethics and Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs.” Hebrew Studies 48 (2007): 75–88. Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 18A. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 10–31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 18B. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Fox, Michael V. “The Strange Woman in Septuagint Proverbs.” JNSL 22 (1996): 31–44. Goering, Greg Schmidt. Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel. JSJSup 139. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Goff, Matthew. “Hellish Females: The Strange Woman of Septuagint Proverbs and 4QWiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184).” JSJ 39 (2008): 20–45. Goff, Matthew. “The Personification of Wisdom and Folly in Ancient Judaism.” Pages 128–54 in Religion and Female Body in Ancient Judaism and Its Environments. Ed. Géza Xeravits. DCLS 28. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015. Goff, Matthew. “Recent Trends in the Study of Early Jewish Wisdom Literature: the Contribution of 4QInstruction and other Qumran texts.” CBR 7 (2009): 376–416. Greenstein, E. “The Poem on Wisdom in Job 28 in Its Conceptual and Literary Contexts.” Pages 258–80 in Job 28: Cognition in Context. Ed. E. van Wolde. Biblical Interpretation Series 64. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

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Hogan, Karina Martin. “Elusive Wisdom and the Other Nations in Baruch.” Pages 145– 59 in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in Honor of John J. Collins. Ed. Daniel Harlow, Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and Joel S. Kaminsky. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Irwin, William H. “Fear of God, the Analogy of Friendship and Ben Sira’s Theodicy.” Biblica 76 (1995): 551–59. Liesen, Jan. Full of Praise: An Exegetical Study of Sir 39,12–35. JSJSup 64. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Marböck, Johannes. Jesus Sirach 1–23. HThKAT. Freiburg: Herder, 2010. Marböck, Johannes. Weisheit im Wandel: Untersuchungen zur Weisheitstheologie bei Ben Sira. BBB 37. Bonn: Hanstein, 1971. Müller, Hans-Peter. “Mantische Weisheit und Apokalyptik.” Pages 268–93 in Congress Volume: Uppsala 1971. Ed. P. A. H. Boer. VTSup 22. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Nickelsburg, George W. E. “Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism: Some Points for Discussion.” Pages 17–37 in Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism. Ed. Benjamin G. Wright III and Lawrence M. Wills. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. Perdue, Leo G. “Revelation and the Problem of the Hidden God in Second Temple Wisdom Literature.” Pages 201–22 in Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do What is Right?: Studies on the Nature of God in Tribute to James L. Crenshaw. Ed. D. Penchansky and P. Redditt. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000. Perdue, Leo G. Wisdom & Creation: The Theology of Wisdom Literature. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994. Pinette, Shannon Burkes. “The Lady Vanishes: Wisdom in Ben Sira and Daniel.” Pages 160–72 in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in Honor of John J. Collins. Ed. Daniel Harlow, Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and Joel S. Kaminsky. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Portier-Young, Anathea E. Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. von Rad, Gerhard. Wisdom in Israel. Translated by James D. Martin. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972. Rickenbacher, O. Weisheitsperikopen bei Ben Sira. OBO 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. Rogers, Jessie. “Where is Wisdom to be Found and How do We Apprehend Her?” Pages 84–98 in Septuagint, Sages, and Scripture: Studies in Honour of Johann Cook. Ed. Randall X. Gauthier, Gideon R. Kotzé, and Gert J. Steyn. VTSup 172. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Skehan, Patrick W. & Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes, Introduction and Commentary. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach erklärt. Berlin: Reimer, 1906.

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Snaith, John. Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Sneed, Mark R. (ed.). Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Perspectives in Israelite Wisdom Studies. SBLAIL 23. Atlanta: SBL, 2015. Ueberschaer, Frank. Weisheit aus der Begegnung: Bildung nach dem Buch Ben Sira. BZAW 379. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007. VanderKam, James C. “The Prophetic-Sapiential Origins of Apocalyptic Thought.” Pages 241–54 in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature. JSJSup 62. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Weeks, Stuart. “The Place and Limits of Wisdom Revisited.” Pages 3–23 in Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar. Ed. John Jarick. LHBOTS 618. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. Wright, Benjamin G. “The Sage as Exemplar.” Pages 164–82 in Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint. JSJSup 131. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Wright, Benjamin G. “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy in the Book of Ben Sira.” Pages 157–86 in Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of ‘Torah’ in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period. Ed. Bernd Schipper and D. Andrew Teeter. JSJSup 163. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

chapter 5

Ben Sira’s Tour of the Cosmos: Sir 42:15–43:33 as Ekphrastic Wisdom A. Jordan Schmidt In the Hymn to the Creator (Sir 42:15–43:33), Ben Sira intently focuses upon the visual experience of the created world, a fact made clear by his use of various verbs of sight (‫ראה‬, ‫נב‬, ‫)ח ה‬, the presence of many terms that may be described as belonging to an “aesthetic” word field (‫כבוד‬, ‫תואר‬/‫תאר‬, ‫נורא‬, ‫)הדר‬, and the sheer amount of space devoted to visual aspects of created works ranging from the sun in the sky to the frost on the face of the earth. At the same time, Ben Sira fits this visually charged language into an overtly pedagogical context; in 42:15 Ben Sira commences the hymn with a first person statement that we might dub a “call to learn” (“Now I will recall God’s works, what I have seen, I will describe”). In addition, the last line of v. 15 contains a reference to God’s instruction (‫)לקחו‬.1 On my reading of Sir 42:15, the fact that God’s instruction comes through the doing of his will (‫ ) ל רצונו‬means that the created works themselves can communicate God’s instruction to human beings; that is, people encounter God’s instruction when they observe created works doing God’s will.2 Given Ben Sira’s intense concentration on visual imagery within this pedagogical context, there is good reason to examine this hymn in light of the ancient rhetorical and pedagogical technique called ekphrasis (sometimes spelled ecphrasis). In this paper, I will proceed with such an examination in 1 The Hebrew of Sir 42:15d, which is found in MSS M and B, reads ‫ו ל רצנו לקחו‬. As Reymond (Innovations in Hebrew Poetry, 60, n. 108) notes, there are difficulties with the Hebrew of v. 15d, and it is best to construe the line as a nominal sentence with ‫ ל‬and ‫ רצון‬in construct relationship. Cf. also Yadin, “Ben Sira Scroll from Masada,” 184–85 and 221. Cf. Skehan and Di Lella (Wisdom of Ben Sira, 484) who point ‫ לקחו‬as a verb (i.e., lāqāḥȗ), and translate “they [the works of v. 15c] accept the doing of his will.” Cf. also Morla, Los manuscritos hebreos de Ben Sira, 265. 2 As Sauer ( Jesus Sirach, 292) aptly describes this, “Mit dieser Schöpfungstat beginnt das Werk Gottes, das für Ben Sira gleichzeitig lehrhaften Charakter hat. Nicht nur durch das Wort lehrt Gott. Wer recht zu verstehen weiß, wird auch durch die Werke Gottes belehrt.” Cf. idem, “Hintergrund,” 70; Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel, 146. This reading of 42:15 resonates with Ben Sira’s description of the heavenly bodies in 16:26–30 and also the created elements treated in 39:22–30.

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four sections: first, I will analyze the definition of ekphrasis that is found in the Sophist textbooks of the first and second centuries CE; second, I will consider the ways in which Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator meets the criteria presented by the ancient definition of ekphrasis; third, I will examine a few points of contact between Ben Sira’s hymn and texts that are generally agreed to be good illustrations of ekphrasis; fourth and finally, I will discuss the purpose of Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator as it relates to the commonly identified goal of ekphrasis. 5.1

Ancient Definitions of Ekphrasis, Epistemology, and Language

Although the technique of ekphrasis was certainly employed in various ways since the time of Homer, the only direct descriptions of it are found in Sophist textbooks of the 1st through 4th centuries CE.3 As is plainly visible in the definitions of Theon (probably 1st cent.),4 Pseudo-Hermogenes (2nd cent.),5 and Aphthonios (4th cent.),6 something of a standard and stable definition of ekphrasis had emerged by the first centuries CE. It seems advisable, then, to take Theon’s definition as a starting point for this study: “Ekphrasis is a descriptive speech which vividly brings the subject before the eyes.” Following the insights of Ruth Webb and Sandra Dubel, the definition can be parsed into three elements: first, ekphrasis is “speech that leads around” (λόγος περιηγηµατικός); second, ekphrasis focuses on the production of enargeia, or “vividness” (ἐνάργεια); and third, ekphrasis brings the subject before the eyes.7 The first element of the definition of ekphrasis is that it is descriptive speech, that is, a λόγος περιηγηµατικός, (lit. “speech that leads around”). To appreciate the significance of the adjective in this expression, one must, as Dubel explains, take account of the underlying verb, periêgeisthai, which “peut essentiellement se comprendre comme « faire le tour de quelque chose (accusatif) 3 Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 197–211. Cf. also Heffernan, Museum of Words, 1–10; Zeitlin, “Figure: Ekphrasis,” 17–21; Zanker, “Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry,” 307; and Friedländer, Johannes von Gaza, 1–103. 4 Theon defines ekphrasis as a λόγος περιηγηµατικὸς ἐναργῶς ὑπ᾽ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούµενον. Patillon, ed., Aelius Theon: Progymnasmata, 66. 5 Ps.-Hermogenes describes ekphrasis as a λόγος περιηγηµατικός, ὥς φασιν, ἐναργὴς καί ὑπ᾽ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούµενον. Rabe, ed., Hermogenes: Opera, 22. 6 Aphthonios indicates that ekphrasis is a λόγος περιηγηµατικὸς ὑπ᾽ὄψιν ἄγων ἐναργῶς τὸ δηλούµενον. Rabe, ed., Aphthonios: Progymnasmata, 36. 7 Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 201–2; Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 253–54. Cf. also Webb, “Mémoire et imagination,” 229–48. According to Webb, it is this last element— bringing the subject before the eyes—that is the essence of ekphrasis.

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avec quelqu’un (datif), pour le lui faire voire ».”8 This verb has both a spatial, concrete sense as well as one that is discursive; the former sense is to be understood as physically making a tour of a place according to a “course” (parcours), while the latter refers to an act of verbal description of something that also follows a path (discours).9 The speaker of the ekphrasis can thus be understood to function in a manner akin to a tour guide whose audience is composed of “tourists” to whom he points out the important aspects of the thing being described. This provides a further characteristic of the vivid description contained in ekphrastic discourse, which is that it does not convey information statically or all at once; instead, the description “déploierait dans le mouvement d’un regard.”10 The second element of ekphrasis is that it employs enargeia, a rhetorical technique which is designed “to make the audience ‘see’ situations in their minds,” often with the intention of eliciting an emotive response from the listener.11 Enargeia is thus based on an ancient epistemology according to which the speaker was thought first to create a mental image in the speaker’s own mind, and then to convey that image through a vivid description to listeners who, upon receiving the image in their mind, could “see” it (cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1455a; De memoria 450a; De anima 429a).12 It should be noted that the listener is not passive in this process; rather, the vivid description is an occasion that sparks the creation of a mental image in the listener’s mind. This consideration of the epistemological foundations of enargeia provides a segue to the third element of the definition of ekphrasis, namely that it is speech that brings the object described before the eyes. As Pseudo-Hermogenes expounds on this aspect of the definition, “The virtues of ekphrasis are above all clarity and vividness (enargeia). For the proclamation must bring about seeing through hearing.”13 Ekphrasis is, therefore, a matter of “transmitting 8 9

10 11 12 13

Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 255. The related verb ekdiêgeisthai (tell in detail) occurs three times in the poem’s Greek version (Sir 42:15, 17; 43:31). As Dubel (ibid., 256) explains: “En effet, le verbe et ses dérivés possèdent un sens spatial, concret, et un sens intellectuel, discursif, renvoyant à une activité d’énonciation; mais ils superposent le plus souvent ces deux sens, dans une association quasi systématique du parcours et du discours: le parcours semble toujours commenté, ou le discours semble toujours fondé sur un parcours, voire semble fonder ce parcours.” Ibid, 255–58. Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 112; eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 93–105. Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 96–97; eadem, “Mémoire et imagination,” 234–37. The Greek reads: ἀρεταὶ δὲ ἐκφράσεως µάλιστα µὲν σαφήνεια καὶ ἐνάργεια. δεῖ γὰρ τὴν ἑρµηνείαν διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς σχεδὸν τὴν ὄψιν µηχανᾶσθαι. Rabe, ed., Hermogenes: Opera, 23.

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an internal impression from one mind to the other,” such that what ekphrasis seeks “to imitate is not so much an object, or scene, or person in itself, but the effect of seeing that thing.”14 The goal of ekphrastic speech, then, is not to communicate information in the most efficient way possible, but rather to communicate information in a way that recreates the experience of seeing.15 As Jaś Elsner points out, this goal of ekphrasis may thus be considered to be one of substitution: the visual object (i.e., the visible physical object “out there” seen and described by the speaker) is replaced by the verbal object (i.e., the vivid description of an object that is communicated to an audience, enabling them to see it).16 Further, when the speaker is successful in substituting a verbal object for a visual object, the speaker is bound to the listener and is able to impel him or her to undertake a desired action.17 One important ramification of this substitutive role of ekphrasis is that it enables a speaker or author to bring before the eyes of the audience an object of which they have no direct experience.18 The foregoing discussion of the definition and epistemological framework of ekphrasis reveals that ekphrastic texts are to be found in a wide variety of genres. In fact, Theon makes precisely this point in his Progymnasmata, noting that “an ekphrasis may be of persons, and events and places and times,” (γίνεται δὲ ἔκφρασις προσώπων τε καὶ πραγµάτων καὶ τόπων καὶ χρόνων), before enumerating examples from epic poems like the Iliad and Odyssey as well as from the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides.19 Therefore, as Webb observes, “each 14

15

16 17 18

19

Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 114 and 127. She (ibid., 103–4 and 127–28) explains this imitation of seeing with reference to ancient epistemological conventions: “[by] activating the images already stored in the listener’s mind, the speaker creates a feeling like that of direct perception, a simulacrum of perception itself. It is the act of seeing that is simulated, not the object itself, by the creation of a phantasia that is like the result of a direct perception.” See also Goldhill, “What is Ekphrasis for?” 5–6; Watson, Phantasia in Classical Thought, 25; Schofield, “Aristotle on the Imagination,” 249–77. Webb (Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 105) articulates this succinctly when she writes, “Enargeia is therefore far more than a figure of speech, or a purely linguistic phenomenon. It is a quality of language that derives from something beyond words: the capacity to visualize a scene. And its effect also goes beyond words in that it sparks a corresponding image, with corresponding emotional associations, in the mind of the listener.” Elsner, “Seeing and Saying,” 159–63. Ibid., 162–63. Schouler, La tradition hellénique, 124: “il est piquant de voir apparaître, dans toutes les définitions de l’ekphrasis, une référence aux récits de voyages … il s’agit bien de mettre à la portée du lecteur des spectacles éloignés de lui dans l’espace ou dans le temps et qu’en conséquence il n’a pas eu la possibilité de contempler.” Cf. Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 116–20; Aristotle, De memoria 450a 25; Ps.-Longinus, On the Sublime 15.1. Patillon, ed., Aelius Theon, 66; Rabe, ed., Hermogenes: Opera, 22.

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case needs to be studied in its context to reveal its particular qualities and its function, and what is true of one ekphrasis will not necessarily be true of another. Where the unity is to be found is in the underlying ideas and the wider conceptions of reading, or the individual’s relation to the word, and of the interaction between language, memory and imagination.”20 5.2

The Hymn to the Creator as an Ekphrasis

On the basis of the foregoing brief description of the technique of ekphrasis, it is possible to conclude that Ben Sira’s poetic description of God’s created works in his Hymn to the Creator (see 43:1–26) qualifies as ekphrasis. First of all, Ben Sira’s description of the created world in this hymn is a λόγος περιηγηµατικός: Ben Sira acts as a sapiential tour guide who leads his students through the created world—beginning with the beauty of the firmament and concluding with the awesome power of the sea—while pausing at various works to offer vivid descriptions of them. Second, Ben Sira’s treatments of the created works at which he pauses constitute vivid descriptions (ἐνάργεια) in that they have the power to convey a visual image of the thing being described. Third and finally, Ben Sira’s description of the created works in 43:1–26, I would argue, brings the created world before the eyes of his students in a way that imitates an act of seeing.21 Further, Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator, I would suggest, reflects an understanding of language that is commensurate with ekphrasis. Within his hymn there are two epistemological boundaries: the firmament and the sea. On the one hand Ben Sira describes things beyond the pale of human experience in 20

21

Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 195. Cf. also Zeitlin, “Figure: Ekphrasis,” 17–21; Heffernan, Museum of Words, 1–10; Friedländer, Johannes von Gaza, 1–103; Zanker, “Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry,” 307; and Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 253–54. These parallels are conceptual and somewhat general in nature, which is to be expected given the distance between the texts as well as the flexibility of the technique of ekphrasis, which both frustrates any easy definition of it and prevents it from being ossified in any rigid form. As Webb (Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 195) notes, “The ancient definition may seem frustratingly vague and elusive, but its interest lies precisely in this lack of formal precision.” This means that a detailed, form-critical analysis of Sir 43:1–26 and a typical ekphrastic text is not possible. Cf. also the summaries of the development of ekphrasis by: Zeitlin, “Figure: Ekphrasis,” 17–21; Heffernan, Museum of Words, 1–10; Friedländer, Johannes von Gaza, 1–103; Zanker, “Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry,” 307; and Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 253–54.

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42:16–25, including what may be called the attributes of God and universal truths about all of God’s works.22 In a similar manner, the sea is a border marking off the limit of human experience.23 While it is possible to inquire into how much direct experience Ben Sira had with the sea, it seems clear from 43:23–25 that he is again drawing on the shared religious traditions of Israel to describe it (see especially ‫“[ תהום‬the abyss”] and ‫“[ רהב גבורות‬the might of Rahab”]).24 Thus, in spite of the fact that Ben Sira begins the hymn with the statement that “he will describe what he has seen,” he begins and ends the hymn with things that he has not seen.25 Yet, in addition to functioning as a rhetorical strategy, I would suggest that this indicates that Ben Sira thinks of language as having the ability to allow someone to “see” that which is described without having a direct experience of it, and this would further qualify his hymn as ekphrasis.26 Finally, it is worth noting that Ben Sira’s description of the created works in the cosmos is designed to engage his students, at least to some degree, on an emotional level, so as to motivate them to give praise to God (cf. 43:11, 30). The goal of Ben Sira’s hymn is thus quite similar to that of any ekphrasis, that is, to convey a vivid mental image in order to elicit a desired, predictable response.27

22 23

24 25

26 27

Reiterer, “‘Alles hat nämlich der Herr gemacht’,” 122–23. Cf. also Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach, 144; Calduch-Benages, “The Hymn to Creation,” 126; eadem, “L’inno al creato,” 57–58; Kaiser, Des Menschen Glück, 160; Minissale, La versione greca, 116–17. Sauer, “Hintergrund,” 76. Different is Alonso Schökel (Proverbios y Eclesiástico, 304) who suggests that it is possible that Ben Sira could have taken some kind of sea voyage, and thus could be speaking about his own experience here. On the theme of travel in the book of Sirach in general, see Calduch-Benages, “Elementos de inculturación helenistica,” 289–98. Zapff, Jesus Sirach 25–51, 311; Sauer, Jesus Sirach, 299; idem, “Hintergrund,” 76; CalduchBenages, “L’Inno al creato,” 64. This is not unlike that which Herodotus does in his history: he has no direct experience of some of the places, people, and animals that he vividly brings before the eyes of his readers, even though his description implies that he has (cf. Hist. 2.29.1). Cf. Wright, Sage as Exemplar, 176; Aitken, “Apocalyptic Revelation,” 189–90. Cf. Schouler, La tradition hellénique, 124; Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 116–20. Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 114–17; Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 254–57; Pedrick and Rabinowitz, “Audience-Oriented Criticism and the Classics,” 107; Webb (Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 110) refers to a degree of cultural competence required by both the speaker and listener if the ekphrasis is to be successful. A high degree of cultural competence could certainly be attributed to both Ben Sira and his students.

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Comparable Features of Ancient Ekphrases and Ben Sira’s “Ekphrasis”

Having considered the way in which the Hymn to the Creator meets the essential criteria of the definition of ekphrasis, a rough comparison between Sir 43:1–26 and other examples of ekphrases can be made. The purpose here is not to compare two texts directly with one another in a thoroughgoing manner, but rather to consider commonly identified examples of ekphrastic elements in various ancient texts as well as whether similar elements can be seen in Sir 43:1–26. One common feature of ancient ekphrases, particularly poetic ekphrases, is the use of metaphor and simile in the vivid description of an object under consideration. In his analysis of the Iliad and the Aeneid, Steven Lonsdale observes that simile is like the technique of ekphrasis, because in both cases “the poet appeals to the listeners’ visual sense and persuades listeners to become, as it were, spectators.”28 Typically, the primary function of similes can “be related to the aim of fashioning in a more or less concrete way a familiar, vivid, or otherwise arresting visual image.”29 One of the many examples found in epic poetry occurs in the eleventh book of the Iliad where Agamemnon’s slaughter of retreating warriors is likened to a lion chasing down a heifer, breaking its neck, and consuming its blood (Il. 11.172–76). As Andrew Becker points out, the similes used in the Iliad and elsewhere in epic poetry tend to be lengthy and can contain “cause and effect, prior and subsequent events, reactions of characters … and movement.”30 Epic simile is, therefore, “a technique of expansion, a means of creating a pause in the forward movement of the narrative.”31 A further aspect of epic simile is that it includes a mention of “the amazement or pleasure inspired by contemplating the object presented” so as to reinforce the visual nature of the phenomenon, and this is particularly common with objects of artifice.32 The description of the shield of Achilles is a good example of this since it is repeatedly referred to as a θαῦµα or “wonder” (e.g., Il. 18:377, 548, 549). Finally, it is important to note that a series of similes may be fitted into the framework of an ekphrastic description of an object or mimetic spectacle that spans many lines of a text, as is the case with the descriptions of the shield of Achilles (Il. 18.478–608) and the facade of the temple of Juno 28 29 30 31 32

Lonsdale, “Simile and Ecphrasis,” 9. Ibid., 9. Becker, Shield of Achilles, 49. Edwards, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, 109. Cf. also Marshall, “Similes and Delay,” 233–36; Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, 77–78. Lonsdale, “Simile and Ecphrasis,” 9–13.

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(Aen. 1.453–93). In this way, “simile and ecphrasis can be significantly coordinated,” such that the meaning of the individual simile is dependent upon the wider context of ekphrastic description.33 This use of simile, then, has the effect of turning a vivid description into a λόγος περιηγηµατικός, leading the listener around the object being described, and perhaps more importantly, allowing the description to unfold in a manner similar to the movement of a gaze.34 Simile is thus a figure of speech that contributes to ekphrasis by helping to “invite the audience to step back and observe, as one would a work of art, the visual narrative from a panoramic perspective.”35 Sir 43:1–26 contains several similes and metaphors that operate in a manner analogous to those present in the descriptions of the shield of Achilles and the facade of the temple of Juno. While the use of simile within Sir 43:1–26 may be distinguished from that of the Iliad and Aeneid on the basis that its similes are briefer and do not contain elaborate sequences of events, the effect is similar. Ben Sira’s use of simile in the body of the hymn qualifies as “a technique of expansion,” whereby a pause in the forward movement of the text is created, thus transforming his vivid description of the cosmos into speech that leads around (λόγος περιηγηµατικός).36 Just as epic similes slow the narrative of a story to allow for reflection, the similes in the body of the Hymn to the Creator provide a pause in the theological consideration of God’s works that allows for reflection on the general principles about God’s creation that Ben Sira articulates in 43:22–25. The Hymn to the Creator can, therefore, be thought of as an ekphrastic description of the cosmos to which the series of metaphors and similes contribute. Each comparison depends upon the larger framework and appeals to the visual sense of his students through vivid and arresting visual imagery. A good example of this is the description of the heavens in Sir 43:1–12. At the very outset, Ben Sira describes the heavenly firmament: “[the] beautiful form of the height and of the firmament is for purity // heaven itself [looks upon] its splendor.”37 The sun, the moon, and the rainbow are, in some sense, parts of the edifice of the firmament, and as such, the description of each of these created 33 34 35 36 37

Ibid., 10–12, citation from 12. Cf. also Becker, Shield of Achilles, 87–150; Putnam, “Dido’s Murals and Virgilian Ekphrasis,” 243–75. Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 255–58. Lonsdale, “Simile and Ecphrasis,” 29. Cf. also Edwards, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, 109–10; Becker, Shield of Achilles, 49–50. Cf. Edwards, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, 109–10; Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 253–55. Yadin, “Ben Sira Scroll from Masada,” 186, 221; Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 485. Compare Smend, Weisheit, 76; Peters, Jesus Sirach, 401; and Reymond, Innovations in Hebrew Poetry, 64, n. 116.

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works both depends upon and contributes to his description of the firmament in v. 1. For example, when the sun is compared to a breathing furnace that is capable of making cast works (Sir 43:4), this vivid metaphor furnishes the general statement on the beauty and splendor of the firmament with a concrete image.38 In addition, this particular image invites the audience to contemplate the multifaceted nature of the beauty and splendor of the firmament, which far outstrips the human capacity to perceive it; it includes not only the beauty of the moon and the rainbow but also the terrible power of the sun.39 Ben Sira reinforces the figurative comparisons used to describe the sun, moon, and rainbow (Sir 43:1–12) with references to these objects as wonders that bring about amazement and pleasure in the one contemplating them: the heavens in general and the moon in particular have a “beautiful appearance” (‫תואר‬/‫;)תאר‬ the sun and moon are described as “awesome” (‫ ;)נורא‬the term “splendor” (‫)הדר‬ is also applied to the moon; and the rainbow displays “majestic glory” (‫נהדרה‬ ‫ )בכבוד‬that encompasses the sky.40 Further, the Greek translation is noteworthy here since it uses variations of the root θαυµάζω—corresponding to the noun θαῦµα, which was used to describe the Shield of Achilles by Homer—to translate the descriptions of the sun and moon (Sir 43:2, 8). 5.4

The Goals of Ben Sira’s Hymn & Ekphrasis

To conclude this study, I would like to consider how the hymn’s ekphrastic qualities relate to its purpose. As succinctly articulated by Alonso Schökel, the main purpose is religious in nature: the hymn is a means by which Ben Sira sought to motivate his students to engage in the praise of God (see Sir 43:11; 30–33).41 The trajectory of the hymn moves from the created works to God, such that the glory, power, beauty, and majesty of God’s works point to God’s own glory, power, beauty, and majesty. 38 39

40 41

Cf. Zapff, Jesus Sirach 25–51, 304; Peters, Jesus Sirach, 401; and Segal, Complete Book of Ben Sira, 288. Ben Sira employs the same techniques in his descriptions of the weather elements, each of which qualifies as enargeia; i.e., Ben Sira vividly describes each with similes and metaphors so as to evoke emotions such as awe and fear. Cf. Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia,” 253–54; Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 113–17; eadem, “Mémoire et imagination,” 238, 244–46; Sauer, Jesus Sirach, 295; Zapff, Jesus Sirach 25–51, 310. See Wischmeyer, Kultur des Buches Jesus Sirach, 87–88; Calduch-Benages, “L’inno al creato,” 60–61; Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 493–95. Cf. also Zapff, Jesus Sirach 25– 51, 305 and 313–14; Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 82–83. Alonso Schökel, Proverbios y Eclesiástico, 304. Cf. also Calduch-Benages, “God, Creator,” 89; and Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 44.

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Beyond the religious purpose of the hymn, however, I would like to suggest that there is also a pedagogical one: namely, that the hymn served as something like an ekphrastic exercise for his students. If it is true that Ben Sira knew Greek and was himself educated in the Greek curriculum, which has been convincingly argued by Benjamin Wright,42 then it is entirely possible that Sir 42:15–43:33 is a reflection of that education, especially given its similarities to ancient ekphrases. By employing a descriptive technique resembling ekphrasis in his Hymn to the Creator, then, Ben Sira ultimately transformed a foreign mode of instruction into a Jewish one.43 On the one hand, Ben Sira’s ekphrastic hymn would have enabled his students to “see” all of God’s created works simultaneously,44 even while still remaining within his bet midrash,45 42

43

44

45

Wright (“Ben Sira and Hellenistic Literature,” 86–87) marshals convincing evidence of the widespread use of Greek language and literature in Judea and its environs in the late third and early second centuries BCE and also identifies several strong possibilities of parallels between Ben Sira’s instruction and that of the Greek gnomic poet Theognis. Having considered this evidence, Wright hypothesizes that Ben Sira not only had facility in Greek, which would have been necessary for him as a retainer-class scribe to facilitate relations between the Judean temple-state and Seleucid empire, but also had likely received Greek-style education. For Ben Sira’s historical context see also the essay in the present volume by Aitken. In considering why Ben Sira chose to write his instruction in Hebrew when his students, like himself, would have known Greek, Wright (“Ben Sira and Hellenistic Literature,” 87– 88) suggests that Ben Sira saw the Hebrew language as an essential part of Jewish identity, and thus composing his instruction in Hebrew was an opportunity to reassert Jewish identity in the midst of the structure of the Seleucid imperial administration. He (ibid., 88) concludes that “Ben Sira was able to take the wisdom of all the ancients—Theognis, for example—as well as his own Israelite national literature, and teach that wisdom in a language that transformed the wisdom of foreign nations into the language and wisdom of Israel.” In this connection, it is important to note that as a verbal object, the Hymn to the Creator substitutes for the created world; in this hymn of instruction, Ben Sira does not simply enable his students to “see” the created world, but to see it in the way that he wants them to see it. Cf. Elsner, “Seeing and Saying,” 159–63; Schouler, La tradition hellénique, 124; Webb, “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion,” 116–20. Scholars who have argued that the phrase ‫ בבית מדרשי‬in Sir 51:23 indicates that Ben Sira was the head of a school include Perdue, Sword and the Stylus, 277–79; Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 192; Stone, “Ideal Figures and Social Context,” 259–70; Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 12; Harrington, Jesus Ben Sira of Jerusalem, 6–7. Different is Wischmeyer (Kultur des Buches Jesus Sirach, 175–76) who argues that this is a metaphorical expression referring to his book, and therefore, cannot be adduced as evidence of a school run by him. So also Bickerman, Jews in the Greek Age, 170; Peters, Jesus Sirach, 450–51. In response to Wischmeyer, Collins (Jewish Wisdom, 36) points out that “even the metaphor of a house of instruction, however, assumes that the phenomenon was familiar to the reader. Even if the poem was not Sirach’s own composition, it must be taken to reflect the realities of the time.” Cf. also Zapff, Jesus Sirach 25–51, 398. On the existence

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and on the other hand, the hymn could be repeated and recited by his students, much like an exercise. Therefore, Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator not only was a means by which he taught his students about the wisdom of God’s works but also constituted a means by which his students could practice describing the wisdom of God’s works. In this way, Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator can be said to have functioned as an ekphrastic model for his students’ observation of and reflection upon the created world; with it, they could repeat his tour of the cosmos, going back and forth between the visual object of the world and the verbal object of Ben Sira’s instruction so as to grow in wisdom. Bibliography Aitken, James K. “Apocalyptic Revelation and Early Jewish Wisdom Literature.” Pages 181–93 in New Heaven and New Earth, Prophecy and the Millennium: Essays in Honour of Anthony Gelston. Ed. P. Harland and R. Hayward. VTSup 77. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Alonso Schökel, Luis. Proverbios y Eclesiástico. LiSa 8.1. Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1968. Argall, Randal. 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and Judgment. SBLEJL 8. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1995. Becker, Andrew. The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995. Bickerman, Elias. The Jews in the Greek Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Boccaccini, Gabriele. Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 BCE to 200 CE. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. Calduch-Benages, Nuria. “Elementos de inculturación helenistica en el libro de Ben Sira: los viajes.” EstBib 54 (1996): 289–98.

and function of scribal schools in ancient Israel, see Lemaire, Les écoles et la formation de la Bible; Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 85–114 and 281–83. See also Skehan and Di Lella (Wisdom of Ben Sira, 575 and 578) who advocate reading the Hebrew as ‫בבית מוסר‬ instead of ‫( בבית מדרשי‬the reading of MS B) on the basis of the Greek and the Syriac as well as poetic considerations. Because the reading ‫ בבית מדרשי‬is only attested in MS B, which is a medieval manuscript, it is plausible that a scribe could have changed ‫מוסר‬ to ‫ מדרשי‬in accordance with the rise of the bet midrash as an institution of education in Judaism during the mishnaic period. Cf. Efrati and Berenbaum, “Beth (Ha-)Midrash,” 537–38; Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen, 207–8.

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Calduch-Benages, Nuria. “God, Creator of All.” Pages 79–100 in Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference, Durham—Ushaw College 2001. Ed. R. Egger-Wenzel. BZAW 321. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002. Calduch-Benages, Nuria. “The Hymn to Creation (Sir 42:15–43:33): A Polemic Text?” Pages 119–38 in The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Studies on Tradition, Redaction, and Theology. Ed. A. Passaro and G. Bellia. DCLS 1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Calduch-Benages, Nuria. “L’inno al creato in Ben Sira (42:15–43:33).” PSV 44 (2001): 51–66. Collins, John. Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age. OTL. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Crenshaw, James. Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence. ABRL. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Dubel, Sandra. “Ekphrasis et enargeia: La description antique comme parcours.” Pages 249–64 in Dire l’evidence: philosophie et rhetorique antiques: actes du colloque de Créteil et de Paris (24–25 mars 1995). Εd. C. Lévy and L. Pernot. Cahiers de Philosophie de L’Université de Paris XII 2. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997. Edwards, Mark. Homer, Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Efrati, N., and M. Berenbaum. “Beth (Ha-)Midrash.” EncJud 3 (2007): 537–38. Elsner, J. “Seeing and Saying: A Psychoanalytic Account of Ekphrasis.” Helios 31 (2004): 157–85. Friedländer, Paul. Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentiarius, und Kunstbeschreibung justinianischer Zeit. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912. Goering, Greg Schmidt. Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel. JSJSup 139. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Goldhill, Simon. “What is Ekphrasis for?” Classical Philology 102 (2007): 1–19. Harrington, Daniel. Jesus Ben Sira of Jerusalem: A Biblical Guide to Living Wisely. Interfaces. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005. Heffernan, James. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993. Kaiser, Otto. Des Menschen Glück und Gottes Gerechtigkeit: Studien zur biblischen Überlieferung im Kontext hellenistischer Philosophie. TrC 1. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Kirk, Geoffrey. The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Lemaire, André. Les écoles et la formation de la Bible dans l’ancien Israël. OBO 39. Fribourg: Editions universitaires; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981. Lonsdale, Steven. “Simile and Ecphrasis in Homer and Virgil: The Poet as Craftsman and Choreographer.” Vergilius 36 (1990): 7–30.

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Marböck, Johannes. Jesus Sirach 1–23. HThKAT. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2010. Marböck, Johannes. Weisheit im Wandel: Untersuchung zur Weisheitstheologie bei Ben Sira. 2nd ed. BZAW 272. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999. Marshall, David. “Similes and Delay.” Pages 233–36 in Modern Critical Views: Homer. Ed H. Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Minissale, Antonino. La versione greca del Siracide. AnBib 133. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1995. Morla, Victor. Los manuscritos hebreos de Ben Sira: Traducción y notas. ABETM 59. Estella, Spain: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2012. Patillon, Michel, ed. Aelius Theon: Progymnasmata. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997. Pedrick, Victoria, and Nancy Rabinowitz. “Audience-Oriented Criticism and the Classics.” Arethusa 19 (1986): 105–14. Perdue, Leo. The Sword and the Stylus: An Introduction to Wisdom in the Age of Empires. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008. Peters, Norbert. Das Buch Jesus Sirach oder Ecclesiasticus. EHAT 25. Münster: Aschendorff, 1913. Putnam, Michael. “Dido’s Murals and Virgilian Ekphrasis.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98 (1998): 243–75. Rabe, Hugo, ed. Aphthonios: Progymnasmata. Rhetores Graeci 10. Leipzig: Teubner, 1926. Rabe, Hugo, ed. Hermogenes: Opera. Rhetores Graeci 6. Leipzig: Teubner, 1913. Reiterer, Friedrich. “‘Alles hat nämlich der Herr gemacht’—Das Telos der Schöpfung bei Ben Sira.” Pages 95–136 in Theologies of Creation in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity. Ed. T. Nicklas and K. Zamfir. DCLS 6. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010. Reymond, Eric. Innovations in Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach. SBLStBL 9. Atlanta: SBL, 2004. Rickenbacher, Otto. Weisheitsperikopen bei Ben Sira. OBO 1. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. Sauer, Georg. Jesus Sirach / Ben Sira. ATD.A 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Sauer, Georg. “Der traditionsgeschichtliche Hintergrund von Ben Sira 42, 15–43, 33.” 67–78 in Studien zu Ben Sira. Ed. Georg Sauer. BZAW 440. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. Schofield, Malcolm. “Aristotle on the Imagination.” Pages 249–77 in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima. Ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Schouler, Bernard. La tradition hellénique chez Libanios. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984. Segal, Moshe. ‫ס ר בן סירא השלם‬/The Complete Book of Ben Sira. 3rd ed. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1977. Skehan, Patrick, and Alexander Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach erklärt. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1906.

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Stone, Michael. “Ideal Figures and Social Context: Priest and Sage in the Early Second Temple Age.” Pages 259–70 in Selected Studies in Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha: With Special Reference to the Armenian Tradition. Ed. M. Stone. SVTP 9. Leiden: Brill, 1991. Watson, Gerard. Phantasia in Classical Thought. Galway: Galway University Press, 1988. Webb, Ruth. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Webb, Ruth. “Imagination and the Arousal of Emotion in Greco-Roman Rhetoric.” Pages 112–27 in Passions in Roman Thought and Literature. Ed. S. Braund and C. Gill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Webb, Ruth. “Mémoire et imagination: les limites de l’enargeia dans la théorie grecque.” Pages 229–48 in Dire l’evidence: philosophie et rhetorique antiques: actes du colloque de Créteil et de Paris (24–25 mars 1995). Εd. C. Lévy and L. Pernot. Cahiers de Philosophie de L’Université de Paris XII 2. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997. Wischmeyer, Oda. Die Kultur des Buches Jesus Sirach. BZNW 77. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. Wright III, Benjamin. “Ben Sira and Hellenistic Literature in Greek.” Pages 71–88 in Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism. Ed. Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. JSJSup 174. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Wright III, Benjamin. “Ben Sira on the Sage as Exemplar.” Pages 165–82 in Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint. Ed. Benjamin Wright III. JSJSup 131. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Yadin, Yigael. “The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada.” Pages 152–225 in Masada VI: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Report. Ed. Shemaryahu Talmon et al. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; Hebrew University, 1999. Zanker, Graham. “Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 124 (1981): 297–311. Zapff, Burkard. Jesus Sirach 25–51. NEB. Würzburg: Echter, 2010. Zeitlin, Froma. “Figure: Ekphrasis.” Greece & Rome 60 (2013): 17–31.

part 2 The Hebrew Manuscripts of Sirach: Diversity, Continuity, and Transmission

∵

chapter 6

Sirach MS C Revisited Frank Ueberschaer In recent years Manuscript C of the book of Sirach has received increased attention. Unlike other Hebrew manuscripts of the book of Sirach that consist of various fragments of the whole book, MS C instead presents an anthology of deliberately arranged portions and single verses. This situation leads to many questions: can MS C be read as a coherent wisdom text? If so, then what is it about? What was the guiding principle behind the selection and the specific arrangement of the material? And of course how much should the different textual witnesses and traditions be taken into account to gain insight into the specific profile of MS C in its interaction within the textual development of the book itself? This requires a reading of MS C in two “directions.” The first is a “vertical” direction that follows the text and structure of MS C with its arguments and its flow that restructures the text. The second is a “horizontal” direction, comprised of a synoptic comparison of the textual witnesses concerning both the contents present and absent in MS C in comparison to the other witnesses. In this paper I will investigate the beginning and the end of the existing text of MS C, as such passages are crucial for the general understanding and the hermeneutics of a given text. Although any hypotheses on the hermeneutics of MS C will be questionable until the inner part of the manuscript is found (or found again), it is still both possible and necessary to search for hermeneutical principles to evaluate the textual value of MS C in relation to the other textual witnesses and traditions. 6.1 In recent years MS C has moved increasingly into the focus of scholarship on Sirach. One of the first landmarks is surely the study by Hans Peter Rüger from 1970 with the title “Text und Textform im hebräischen Sirach.”1 In the early 1960s, Rüger prepared the Hebrew text of Sirach in close connection to the Biblia 1 Rüger, Text und Textform.

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Hebraica Stuttgartensia project. Unfortunately all the preparations for this publication are lost. What survives is his study on the MSS A, B, and C published in 1970. Rüger mainly compares MS A with MSS B and C. Regarding MSS A and C he notes that within the 37 stichoi that the two manuscripts have in common, there are 20 differences within 19 verses. In 15 cases Rüger argues that MS C presents the older text, while MS A only does so in 4 verses. Nevertheless, Rüger points out that MS C is not a reliable source for the oldest text of the Hebrew book of Sirach, because he recognizes three instances of Mishnaic Hebrew influence (3:14, 16, 21) and three instances of changes due to assimilations to canonical biblical texts (3:14, 22; 4:22). In Rüger’s view, the most reliable source for the “original” Sirach remains Gr I, which is also represented by the Latin version, while the Syriac displays a later text. On the other hand, Rüger rejects the view that MS C contains retranslations from Syriac or Greek into Hebrew. He instead argues that the whole Hebrew textual transmission leading to MS C took place in a Hebrew context.2 Due to the strict focus on textual criticism, Rüger addresses his comments to single verses. He does not investigate hermeneutical questions concerning the text of MS C as a text in its own right with its own message. Some years later, Pancratius C. Beentjes considered these questions in several articles, the most important being: “Hermeneutics in the Book of ben Sira. Some Observations on the Hebrew Ms. C” from 1988.3 Beentjes focuses on the changes in location of several portions of the book that give MS C its unique character. He points out that the compiler brought together verses scattered throughout the whole book into sections focused on individual topics. He concludes: The Hebrew manuscript, known as Ms. C, is an anthological collection of passages from the ‘original’ Book of Ben Sira. The compiler of manuscript C has collected this traditional material in a number of subject-oriented clusters, of which at least three important themes strike the eye: a passage on shame (‫)בשת‬, on the wise man (‫ )חכם‬and finally a tract on the wife (‫)אשה‬. In order to provide the reader with a complete survey on each subject, the compiler in at least four places in his anthology has inserted verse lines or larger sections, which in comparison with the ‘original’ Book of Ben Sira have been dislocated (Sir 41:16; 20:22–23;

2 Rüger, Text und Textform, 47–50. 3 Beentjes, “Hermeneutics in the Book of Ben Sira,” 332–47.

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36:19; 37:19, 22, 24, 26). This has been done in a very creative way, so that one can say he has written a kind of new text.4 Beentjes recognizes the new and distinctive character of MS C as an anthology with its own message. He even speculates about its purpose: “The manuscript itself adduces no further evidence in which setting this special text has been used. If the first leaf (Sir 3.14–21) was indeed the actual opening of this anthology, it seems to me an important indication to point to a special educational purpose, e.g., for use in schools.”5 His hypothesis recalls an old article by Israel Lévi from 1900, which drew attention to the small size of the leaves and the large characters with which MS C was written.6 Thus, according to Beentjes MS C could have been a school text. Unfortunately he does not argue how this explains the collection of topics that makes MS C unique from the other textual witnesses. In her article “Honor, Shame, and the Hermeneutics of Ben Sira’s MS C” from 1997, Claudia Camp drew attention to the topic of honor and shame in MS C that Beentjes pointed out earlier as one of three major themes in MS C.7 She explicitly builds upon Beentjes’ work in stating that shame is the hermeneutical key to the whole goal of MS C and that the creator of the anthology acknowledged the weight of shame long before modern social science happened upon the same conclusion. Camp shows that the anthologizer puts together verses and sentences from the original book that thematize the existence of “two kinds of” shame, of wives, of friends, of speech, of silence, and of time. Her work anticipates the more nuanced discussion of the topics of MS C by Jeremy Corley,8 while also adding the topic of economics regarding 20:13 and the verses from chap. 37, in which she recognizes again the double structure of “two kinds of”: two kinds of wisdom in relationships and two kinds of prosperity. All in all she understands the anthologizer of MS C as an interpreter of the whole book of Sirach who reveals the topic of honor and shame as the basic theme of the whole book. MS C is characterized by a “two kinds of” typethinking; but in contrast to the whole book, the compiler of MS C does not just emphasize the necessity of constant choosing but purposefully omits all aspects of threat; thereby it “reduces the level of anxiety by failing,” as Camp says.9 On the contrary, the reader of MS C is assured that God will favor the 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ibid., 345. Ibid. Lévi, “Fragments de deux nouveaux manuscrits hébreux de l‘Ecclésiastique,” 1–30. Camp, “Honor,” 159. Corley, “An Alternative Hebrew Form of Ben Sira,” 3–22. Camp, “Honor,” 170.

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humble (3:18). Nevertheless, she agrees with Corley that the focus is on the moral life and not on theology.10 It is important for what I will argue later that Camp binds together honor and shame as two sides of the same coin but with a clear progression from honor to shame. This idea of progression leads her to speculate that MS C may not have started in Sir 3:14 but already with 3:1, because vv. 1–13 offer a heightened density of vocabulary like δοξάζω, τιµάω, and ‫כבד‬.11 I will argue against this theory with respect to the textual evidence. In 2008 Shulamit Elizur published a leaf of MS C which she had found during her research in Cambridge.12 She provides the reading of the manuscript and notes on its text. Furthermore, she gives a short introduction in which she assumes that there must have been at least one leaf that contained text from before Sir 3:14 and at least one or—in her view more likely—even more leaves in the middle of the quire.13 MS C thereby fully accords with the medieval scribal habits of the Near East, as she points out, referring to the study Hebrew Codicology by Malachi Beit-Arié.14 However, it should be mentioned that Beit-Arié concludes that the most frequently used booklets in the Jewish Medieval Orient consisted of five leaflets with ten leaves and only a few of six or seven leaflets, a conclusion which in a way contradicts Elizur’s optimistic reference to his study.15 In the same year Jean-Sébastien Rey published his article “Un nouveau bifeuillet du manuscrit C de la Genizah du Caire,”16 in which he presents the first profound study of MS C including the new material. Rey offers a very detailed analysis including a thorough discussion of the textual witnesses and conclusions on the quality of each text. He also presents convincing reasons for the displacements of verses found in MS C. Rey first integrates the new leaf of MS C into its context and thereby provides good insight into the structure not only of the content but also of the material dimension of the manuscript as a whole. He looks far beyond the new leaf and assumes that the previously known bifolia I and VIII (formerly VI) are not the first and the last of the manuscript. Instead there were likely verses before and after them. Rey’s main argument is that the text in MS C begins quite abruptly in Sir 3:14. Thus he assumes a booklet with six or seven bifolia and therefore relies on

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ibid., 171. Ibid., 160. Elizur, “‫ק חדש‬,” 17–24 (= ET: DJD 17 [2010], 13–29). Ibid., 19–20. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology. Ibid., 44–46. Rey, “Un nouveau bifeuillet du manuscrit C de la Genizah du Caire,” 387–416.

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Beit-Arié’s Study Hebrew Codicology,17 as Shulamit Elizur did before. (And again it should be stated that Beit-Arié concluded that the usual booklet consisted of five bifolia and that there are only a few booklets with more.) Also in 2008 Renate Egger-Wenzel published an article on the new fragment.18 She provides a comparison between the readings of MS C and the other Hebrew textual witnesses as well as the Septuagint, in cases where there is no other Hebrew counterpart to the text of MS C. The most recent study of importance on MS C is the 2011 article, “An Alternative Hebrew Form of Ben Sira: The Anthological Manuscript C” by Jeremy Corley.19 Corley emphasizes the state of the text: the manuscript is divided into leaves that display passages and verses mainly from Sirach 3–7, on the one hand, and into leaves that mainly display verses from Sirach 18–26 and 36, on the other. The middle part of the manuscript is still missing, so he stresses that any effort to describe the work as a whole is rather uncertain. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that MS C excerpts and re-sequences the book of Sirach, and Corley draws an analogy between MS C and several other instances like the collection of Psalms 105; 96; and 106 in 1 Chronicles 16, the re-use of Psalm 57 and Psalm 60 in Psalm 108, or many manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in which biblical texts are reused. In terms of the contents of the manuscript, Corley mentions several major topics: women, wisdom and folly, speech, friendship, and honor and shame. Additionally, he reaffirms Beentjes’ conclusion that MS C has the tendency to avoid theological topics. The method of presenting the material is characterized first by the use of anaphora and by juxtapositions (whether they be preserved or created)—and surprisingly many of these verses are verses that open or close sections within the book of Sirach—and second by the obvious rearrangement of single verses or short passages. Thus Corley emphasizes the “creative role”20 of the compiler, although the principles according to which he worked are not clear. Regarding the textual development, Corley underscores that MS C represents a reworked text and demonstrates this conclusion in, for example, the section of 5:9–13 as a rewording of the original text represented in MS A21 or a general reworking as in, for example, 3:27. In terms of the extent of the text, Corley follows Rey, who proposes that the manuscript did not begin in 3:14 but earlier. 17 18 19 20 21

Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology. Egger-Wenzel, “Ein neues Sira-Fragment,” 107–14. Corley, “Alternative Hebrew Form of Ben Sira,” 3–22. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 9–10, with vv. 10a, 11, 12 as examples.

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Ueberschaer

To sum up, Corley emphasizes that MS C is a new text, especially in that its resequencing creates new poems. Although the principles of resequencing and compilation remain somewhat unclear, Corley views it as noteworthy that MS C omits theological passages such as in Sirach 14–15 and 24 and focuses instead on social topics. However, the reason for this omission remains uncertain. Corley simply states the assumption that MS C may have been for educational purposes or for a traveler. 6.2 As an anthology of single proverbs and short passages of the book of Sirach, MS C is the most individual manuscript of the book’s diverse textual transmission. Obviously the portions of the book that MS C contains were deliberately chosen and arranged. This raises the question not only of the guiding principles for both the selection and the arrangement but even further whether there has been an impact on the text itself. In other words: The question of the manuscript’s hermeneutical principles emerges. And this is the case although, as already mentioned above, such considerations will necessarily be hypothetical, at least until the inner part of the small booklet is found. But the question remains, and finally then the work should be done in humility as MS C itself states right in its opening sentences. For questions of hermeneutics, beginnings and endings of a unit are highly important. In this paper I will argue that it is indeed plausible that MS C’s original beginning and ending are where we find them now—on the first and the last leaflet of the manuscript. MS C starts within the portion about honoring one’s parents in Sir 3:14. It reads: [‫ותחת נותו תתנצ]ב‬/‫ צדקת אב אל תשכח‬Thus MS C begins in a passage with a parallel Hebrew text in MS A: {{ ‫ותמור ח את היא }}תנת‬/‫צדקת אב לא תמחה‬ ‫ תנ‬. The differences are obvious. MS C reads ‫ אל‬while MS A presents ‫לא‬, and MS C reads ‫ח‬ while MS A presents ‫ חה‬, and last but not least, there is the whole second stichos in which the two manuscripts have nothing in common: MS C read, [‫ ותחת נותו תתנצ]ב‬while MS A reads {{ ‫ותמור ח את היא }}תנת‬ : ‫ תנ‬. Therefore we have two different statements: from MS C, “Do not forget the justice of the father [or: for the father]/and put yourself under his humility.” MS A reads: “The justice of the father/[or: for the father]will not be wiped out, it will be planted instead of sins.” But it is not only the Hebrew tradition that diverges. The Septuagint presents yet another reading: ἐλεηµοσύνη γὰρ πατρὸς οὐκ ἐπιλησθήσεται/καὶ ἀντὶ ἁµαρτιῶν προσανοικοδοµηθήσεταί σοι “For

Sirach MS C Revisited

97

charity for a father will not be forgotten, and it will be credited to you/built up for you against sins.”22 Comparing these three textual traditions, there are several striking differences. First, the Septuagint reads ‫ לא‬instead of ‫ ;אל‬thus the structure of the sentence of the Septuagint is closer to MS A than to MS C. Second, and in a way contradictory to this, the Septuagint uses the same verb as MS C: the middle voice of ἐπιλανθάνοµαι has the meaning “to forget” and the passive voice “to be forgotten.” In terms of the wording, the Septuagint seems to be closer to MS C than to MS A. This changes again in the second colon; here it seems to be closer to MS A than to MS C. The main difference between the Septuagint’s account and MS A is the verb. προσανοικοδοµηθήσεταί is a verb from the world of architecture while ‫ תנ‬derives from the world of agriculture. This is a kind of repetition of the phenomenon in 3:9. Here MS A reads: /‫ברכת אב תיסד שרש‬ ‫( וקללת אם תנתש נ‬A father’s blessing firmly establishes a root,/and a mother’s curse uproots a plant). While the Septuagint presents: εὐλογία γὰρ πατρὸς στηρίζει οἴκους τέκνων,/κατάρα δὲ µητρὸς ἐκριζοῖ θεµέλια (For a father’s blessing supports children’s houses,/but a mother’s course uproot foundations). In both cola the metaphorical background is changed in the Septuagint from agriculture to architecture. Nevertheless, in a way the Greek translation still alludes to the rural background even in its urban setting by using the verb ἐκριζόω. However the message is the same, although it is expressed against two different metaphorical backdrops. We witness here that translation is always something like a jump over a gap between cultures, in this case between rural and urban cultures, which surely hints at the different backgrounds of the author and translator of the book. But a further question arises for the manuscript itself, because MS C presents a totally different wording, a wording which cannot easily be extrapolated from the other witnesses. Thus, going back to the first verses of the manuscript, one might suggest understanding the first sentence both as a deliberate textual change due to the context and as the very first sentence of the manuscript itself. This is supported by further observations. In the version of MS C, v. 14 anticipates a topic dealt with intensively in the following verses: humility. The compiler of MS C took numerous verses from Sirach 3, namely vv. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, and 22:

22

English translations are taken from Pietersma and Wright, A New English Translation of the Septuagint.

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Ueberschaer

The justice of the father [or: for the father] do not forget, and put yourself under his humility. On that day it will be remembered [or: he will remember] on your behalf, and like hot weather on ice, your sins will have melted away. Like a blasphemer is the one who forsakes his father, and he who curses God will drag off his mother. My son, in all your works proceed with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts. My son, to the extent that you are great, the same extent you must humble yourself, and you will find favor in the eyes of God. The things that are too wonderful for you, do not delve into, and the things that are too perilous for you, do not inquire after. On what is permitted, concentrate, for hidden things will not be your concern.

3:14

‫צדקת אב אל תשכח‬ [‫תחת נותו תתנצ]ב‬

3:15

‫ביום י כר ל‬ ‫וכחורב ל קרח נמס ח אתי‬

3:16

‫כמגדף ה ו ב אביו‬ ‫ו ו ם אל יסחוב אמו‬

3:17

‫בני את כל מלאכתי ב נוה הלו‬ ‫ומאיש מתן תאהב‬

3:18

‫בני גדול אתה כן תש יל נ ש‬ ‫וב יני אלהים תמצא חן‬

3:21

‫לאות ממ אל תחקור‬ ‫ור ים ממ אל תדרוש‬

3:22

‫באשר הורשיתה התבונן‬ ‫ו סק אל יהי ל בנסתרות‬

Among these proverbs, vv. 21–22 represent the beginning of a section about what the student (and the wise) should dedicate himself to and what he should avoid. But the compiler does not adopt the whole section of Sir 3:21–24: the parts that may allude to apocalypticism are rejected here. He instead only takes these sentences that generally admonish the person toward humility. Following on 3:22, MS C places 41:16 as the next sentence about shame and continues with a compilation of verses on this topic.23 In this context the second colon of the manuscript sets the agenda. By changing the wording, 3:14 in MS C introduces the first topic of the compilation: 23

I thank Eric Reymond for sharing a prepublication version of his article “The Poetry of Ben Sira Manuscript C,” now published in James Aitken, Discovering, Deciphering, and Dissenting. See also Reymond, Innovations in Hebrew Poetry, and his essay in the present volume.

Sirach MS C Revisited

99

humility, which is followed by a discussion of a good way to handle shame and one’s own reticence. It is plausible that this change was made deliberately to introduce the topic. It would be problematic to speak of an alternative reading because of the difficulty in finding the “original” reading of the book of Sirach. However, one might read ‫ נותו‬as a defective writing of ‫“ ונותו‬his sins.” This would indeed correspond to and provide a close equivalent to both the Greek translation, which reads ἁµαρτιῶν, and to the text of MS A with its reading ‫ח את‬. But a defective writing of ‫“ ונותו‬his sins” requires some explanation because the scribe who compiled MS C usually wrote ‫ ון‬with a plene and not a defective spelling (e.g. 4:21 [I verso, 4]; 5:5 [II recto, 7–8]; 7:2 [III recto, 9]; 25:24 [V verso, 9] in the singular, but more importantly 5:6 [II recto, 9] in the plural!). This very first sentence of MS C would be the exception. On the other hand, ‫ נוה‬is mentioned again in MS C just a few lines later (3:17 [I recto, 6]). Thus it may be more plausible that the “original” v. 14 indeed mentioned ‫ ון‬, possibly a defective spelling, and the scribe who compiled MS C did not take it as a term of sin but for humility, understanding v. 14 in the context of the following verses of the book. One now may ask if such an intervention in the text was necessary. That is, why did the compiler begin with v. 14 and not with v. 17, which directly addresses the student? Any answer will of course be speculative. But this very question—why did the compiler not address the reader directly?—might have been the problem. He might not have wanted to start with a direct address to the student. Instead, he first reminds the student, who is called “son,” of his teacher, who is called “father.” And this might be the reason, as well, why he did not begin prior to 3:14. In 3:1–13 the passage clearly concerns the biological father and mother, but v. 14 can easily be read in the context of a relationship between a father-teacher and a son-student, abstracting from a biological sequence and turning the subject to an educational context. In this case the message is: “Be humble in the same manner that I am humble as a teacher.” This is why MS C reads the imperative ‫ח‬ ‫ אל‬and not the indicative in a general aphorism like in MS A or in the Septuagint. All these ideas are worthless if they do not fit the concrete manuscript itself. In other words, speculation about the beginning of the manuscript has to include speculations about its end as well. The opposite page on the first leaflet contains a passage about the value of a good wife (Sir 36:29–31):24

24

My translations are based upon Benjamin Parker and Martin Abegg’s translation of MS C (see www.bensira.org).

100

Ueberschaer

Who acquires a wife, [acquires] a chief asset, 36:29 he has acquired a fortified city; […] he has set up a support. Without a wall a vineyard will be razed, 36:30 and without a wife a man is a fugitive and a wanderer. Who will put his trust in a battalion at arms 36:31 that skips from city to city? So it is with a man who does not have a nest, who takes his rest, like he runs around.

‫]קנה[אשה ראשית קנין‬ ‫קנה יר מבצר נה‬ ‫מש ן ה מי‬ ‫באין גדר ]יבו[ ר כרם‬ ‫ובאין אשה ]נ[ ונ‬ ‫מי יאמין בצבא גדוד‬ ‫המדלג מ יר אל ]י[ר‬ ‫]כ[ן איש אשר אין לו קין‬ ‫המרגי כאשר יסבי‬ .‫נסה‬

In this passage, the last colon is full of problems. All the other textual witnesses support another reading of this text than the one in MS C. In Hebrew both in MS B and MS D offer ‫ המרגי באשר י רב‬and the Greek has καὶ καταλύοντι οὗ ἐὰν ὀψίσῃ. All of them have the meaning: “who takes his rest wherever evening finds him” (translation by Benjamin Parker and Martin Abegg). Thus one can plausibly assume that this variant is the “original” one and that the compiler of MS C again deliberately changed the wording. However, why he does so remains unclear. One might guess that he wanted to emphasize the aspect of restlessness or aimlessness, such that the end of v. 31 would recall the end of v. 30 with its quotation of Gen 4:14. More significant are two further problems. First, the reading of ‫כאשר‬, which might also be read as ‫כאשה‬, as there is a small stroke in the resh so that it can be read as a he. Second, there is the question of how to understand the final word, which consists of the three letters ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫נ‬. Both problems have been dealt with together, as can be seen in the translation offered by Parker and Abegg. They understand this last line of the page as follows: ‫]כ[ן איש אשר אין‬ ‫המרגי כאשר יסביב נסה‬/‫“ לו קין‬So it is with a man who does not have a nest,/but is forced, in temptation, to take his rest with different women” (36:31b). This reading implies that the word ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫ נ‬is part of the sentence in v. 31. But there is—in addition to other problems with this translation—a dot just after ‫יסביב‬ which usually marks the end of a verse in MS C. In other words, ‫ יסביב‬has clearly been understood as the end of the verse by the scribe and the word ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫נ‬ must be something else. In his article from 1988, Beentjes assumes that there will be no solution. He discusses various ideas for the beginning of a verse that fits either with a word deriving from the root ‫ נסה‬or from the roots ‫ נוס‬or ‫סור‬.25 But this quest has been unsuccessful, because there is no verse and not even a whole sentence in the book of Sirach that begins with such a Hebrew verb 25

Beentjes, “Hermeneutics,” 344–45.

Sirach MS C Revisited

101

or a Greek equivalent. Therefore, Jeremy Corley suggested that ‫ נסה‬is the parent text for the Syriac version of Sir 27:17 (‫;)ܢܣܐ ܚܒܪܟ ܘܐܬܬܟܠ ܥܠܘܗܝ‬26 unfortunately, the Greek text differs very much (στέρξον φίλον καὶ πιστώθητι µετ̓ αὐτοῦ). Thus, it might be possible to present another suggestion which focusses on MS C itself. The first suggestion is to read ‫ כאשר‬instead of ‫כאשה‬. The stroke is clearly readable, but the remaining part of the letter can be both a ‫ ר‬or a part of a ‫ה‬ if we compare the letter with others on this page: a ‫ ר‬can be seen in the word ‫ אשר‬immediately above the word under discussion, and a ‫ ה‬is written in the word ‫ אשה‬four lines above in the sentence ‫( ובאין אשה ]נ[ ונד‬VIII verso, 7). As both letters indicate, there is no way to decide between ‫ ר‬and ‫ ה‬just from the shape of the letters. Additionally, it is unconvincing merely to state that the reading ‫ כאשה‬is the lectio difficilior. The possible message of the sentence must be taken into account. If one reads ‫כאשה‬, the first question is how to integrate a woman into the meaning of this sentence in which every person is male and every grammatical form is masculine. This is why Parker and Abegg do not read ‫ יסביב‬in their translation but something else. The only word that might fit is the term ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫נ‬ because the ‫ ה‬at the end might hint at a feminine form. But this word is clearly separated both by a dot and a blank space. Therefore, it cannot be integrated into the preceding sentence but must instead be kept separate. What remains are sentences like “who takes rest like a woman, runs around” or “who takes rest, runs around like a woman.” But these seem to be meaningless sentences, especially in the context. A possible solution might be to understand the ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫ נ‬word as a commentary on the last colon. If this last fully written colon of the manuscript is understood as “who takes rest, runs around like a woman,” then the ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫ נ‬word could be understood as an explanation of what “to runs around like a woman” could mean. The answer might be: ‫“ נסה‬she fled.” But is this convincing? The immediate context is more helpful in the search for a solution. The whole verse is part of a passage about the good wife, and the thrust is that it is bad for a man to be without a good wife. This is most clearly expressed in 36:29–30. Like in the “regular” book of Sirach, v. 31 continues this reasoning. In other words, there is no reason to think that the mood changes in v. 31. This clearly argues against ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫ נ‬as a commentary on the preceding verse, because it implies a negative view on women. So it might be more plausible to go back to the reading ‫ כאשר‬and to understand the last bicolon as follows: ‫]כ[ן איש‬ ‫נסה‬/‫המרגי כאשר יסביב‬/‫“ אשר אין לו קין‬So it is with a man who does not have a nest,/who takes his rest in the same way he runs around” (36:31b). The whole 26

Corley, Friendship, 174–75 n. 79.

102

Ueberschaer

verse recalls the reasoning of 36:29–30 and especially v. 30 with its quotation of Gen 4:14. As in the “regular” book of Sirach, MS C’s version of v. 31 is also nothing other than an explication of the message of v. 30, it just provides more intensification. The message of the whole passage on page VIII of MS C is: a good wife is vital and indispensable for a man. But how does ‫ה‬-‫ס‬-‫ נ‬fit in, if on the one hand there is no verse or sentence within the book of Sirach that fits with it as has been shown by Beentjes, and on the other hand if ‫ נסה‬cannot be related to another word within the preceding verses? In this case ‫ נסה‬might be the beginning of something new and completely different to the book of Sirach. However, it does not seem to be convincing that something completely new is added with one single word in the last line written in a little bit of leftover space on the back of a page. Thus, it is much more plausible to understand ‫ נסה‬as the final word by the scribe of MS C itself—not as a commentary but as some kind of advice. In this case the meaning could be: ‫“ נ ה‬try it!” ‫ נסה‬can probably best be understood as the long form of a piel imperative. Thus ‫ נסה‬would be the final statement of the teacherscribe to encourage his student-reader to go out and have his own experiences of social life. The meanings of “to test” and “to try” in a non-religious sense of the word are also attested in Deut 4:34; 28:56; Judg 6:39; 1 Sam 17:39; Eccl 2:1; 7:23; Dan 1:12, 14; and earlier in Lachish 3 line 9. The more common form of the imperative is ‫נס נא‬, the short form with the particle ‫נא‬. This form can be found in Dan 1:12 and (without the particle ‫ )נא‬in Sir 37:27 (MSS B, D) as well. In Sir 37:27 the root ‫ נסה‬has the meaning “to test” in the non-religious sense of the word. Here in MS C, the long form of the imperative is used. This may indicate emphasis laid on the last word of the manuscript. But it may also indicate a semantic dissimilation within the imperative forms of ‫נסה‬.27 As ‫ נס‬in Sirach 37 lays stress on the meaning “to test,” the long form may bear the aspect “to try” because here, at the end of the teaching, there is nothing to test, but a lifetime to try, to have one’s own experiences and to figure out one’s own way of living. Thus, if this is true, MS C as a unique manuscript in its given form is not any copy of an older text but a special version written by a teacher who conceived it either for one single student or for a group of students that he addressed individually. In this case MS C would be the autograph of a teacher who selected what he thought to be worth knowing for a successful life from the wisdom tradition.28

27 28

I thank my colleague Stefan Schorch (Halle) for sharing and discussing this idea. Eric Reymond’s observation regarding the compiler’s poetry fit very well with this consideration, as his observations indicate, too, that MS C might be a unique manuscript.

Sirach MS C Revisited

103

Bibliography Beentjes, Pancratius C. “Hermeneutics in the Book of Ben Sira. Some Observations on the Hebrew Ms. C.” Pages 332–47 in “Happy the One who Meditates on Wisdom” (Sir. 14,20). Collected Essays on the Book of Ben Sira. Ed. Pancratius C. Beentjes. CBETh 43 (Leuven/Paris/Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2006). Beit-Arié, Malachi. Hebrew Codicology. Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981. Camp, Claudia V. “Honor, Shame, and the Hermeneutics of Ben Sira’s Ms C.” Pages 157– 71 in Wisdom, You Are My Sister, FS Roland E. Murphy. Ed. Michael Barré. CBQMS 29. Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1997). Corley, Jeremy. Ben Sira’s Teaching on Friendship. BJS 316. Providence, RI: Brown University, 2006. Corley, Jeremy. “An Alternative Hebrew Form of Ben Sira. The Anthological Manuscript C.” Pages 3–22 in The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira. Ed. JeanSébastien Rey and Jan Joosten., JSJSup 150. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011. Egger-Wenzel, Renate. “Ein neues Sira-Fragment.” BN 138 (2008): 107–14. Elizur, Shulamit. “‫ק חדש מהנוסח ה ברי של ס ר בן סירא‬.” Tarbiz 76 (2008): 17–24 (ET: DJD 17 [2010], 13–29). Lévi, Israel. “Fragments de deux nouveaux manuscrits hébreux de l‘Ecclésiastique.” REJ 40 (1900): 1–30. Pietersma, Albert, and Benjamin Wright. New English Translation of the Septuagint. 2d ed. New York: Oxford, 2009. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Un nouveau bifeuillet du manuscrit C de la Genizah du Caire.” Pages 387–416 in Florilegium Lovaniense: Studies in Septuagint and Textual Criticism. FS Florentino García Martínez. Ed. Hans Ausloos, Bénedicte Lemmelijn, and Marc Vervenne. BEThL 224. Leuven/Paris/Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2008. Reymond, Eric. Innovations in Hebrew Poetry. Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach. SBLStBL 9. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2004. Reymond, Eric. “The Poetry of Manuscript C.” Pages 221–42 in Discovering, Deciphering, and Dissenting: Ben Sira Manuscripts after 120 Years. Ed. James K. Aitken, Renate Egger-Wenzel, and Stefan C. Reif. DCLY 2018. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Rüger, Hans Peter. Text und Textform im hebräischen Sirach: Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik der hebräischen Sirachfragmente aus der Kairoer Geniza. BZAW 112. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970.

chapter 7

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach Eric D. Reymond This paper assesses the differences and similarities between vav and yod in two manuscripts of Sirach, MSS A and B.1 It will be demonstrated that, although sometimes the two letters are written in a similar way in MS A, there is generally a distinction between them. This finding implies that spelling irregularities can often be characterized as errors. This paper also gathers the most obvious examples of spelling errors involving vav and yod in MSS A and B, especially where one letter is written for the other. The relatively high number of errors reveals that the two letters were often confused at some point in the transmission of the text. Although it can be assumed that such spelling mistakes derive at least in part from the Second Temple era, when these two letters were similar or identical in appearance, the similarity between vav and yod in MS A suggests that some of these mistakes derive from the Middle Ages. 7.1

Graphic Similarities between Vav and Yod

Little attention has been paid to letter forms in the Genizah Sirach manuscripts. Solomon Schechter and Charles Taylor describe the cursive nature of the writing in MS A, but do not go further.2 Norbert Peters notes the similarity in shape between different letters, including vav and yod, but does not describe how they are similar.3 Other commentaries and editions follow suit.4 In many cases the erratic writing of MS A makes it difficult to determine whether we should read one letter or another. This is particularly the case with dalet and resh.5 These two letters are frequently written in a similar manner so that distinguishing them based on their form alone is often 1 Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and editors for many helpful observations and suggestions. 2 Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 8. 3 Peters, Ecclesiasticus, 10*. 4 A rare exception is found in Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 22–24. 5 Rey, “Si 10, 12–12, 1,” 581–82.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

105

difficult; in addition, sometimes resh is written like dalet and dalet like resh.6 Questions that the present study seeks to answer are to what degree vav and yod can be distinguished from each other and how commonly they get confused. Such attention to letter forms can help resolve certain confusions in the editions.7 Although in the Masada scroll (Mas) the vavs and yods look quite similar, in the medieval manuscripts from the Genizah, the vavs and yods actually are frequently dissimilar. This especially applies to MSS B, C, D, E, and F. In MS B, the letters are distinct in both their size and shape. The yod is smaller than the vav; it is shaped like a backward “c” or like a comma, in contrast to the vav, which is more or less a straight vertical line with a triangular head and a short tail that bends to the left, ending often just slightly beneath the base line.8 In MS A, however, the letters do share many characteristics, though they are often distinguishable based on their relative length as well as the tendency of yod to exhibit a bend in its middle and/or another characteristic. The yod of MS A is typically shorter than the vav and does not reach the base line like the vav. However, there is some variation. Note the yod (distinguishable from its bending in the middle) in ‫“ שריה‬its rulers” in Sir 10:3 MS A (III verso, line 20) which extends to the base line.9 The shape of the yod appears as:

6 In their most distinctive form, the horizontal mark of the dalet extends to the right of the vertical mark, while the horizontal mark of the resh often turns downward into the vertical mark, forming a rounded corner. But often, both letters exhibit a squarish corner. Not infrequently, a dalet is written as a resh and a resh like a dalet. E.g., on just the recto side of the first page of MS A, note the following examples. The dalet of ‫( תדרוש‬Sir 3:21, line 11) looks like a resh and the resh almost like a dalet, seemingly made with two strokes. The resh of ‫ירבו‬ (Sir 3:27, line 15) seems like a dalet, similarly with the resh of ‫( ר ואה‬Sir 3:28, line 17). On the other hand, the dalet of ‫( דה‬Sir 4:7, line 26) seems to have a rounded corner like a resh. Such variation makes it hard to determine what the first letter of the first word of Sir 4:2 is: ‫דווח‬ or ‫רווח‬. 7 E.g., Smend (Sirach, hebräisch und deutsch, 5 [Heb.]), reads ‫ ניסון‬at Sir 6:7, though the word is more likely ‫ניסין‬. 8 The only exceptions are where a scribe had to write the letters in a cramped space (e.g., at line end). 9 Similarly, the yod of ‫ ירבו‬in Sir 3:27 (MS A I recto, line 15) is relatively large, but note the circumflex top and slightly curving vertical stroke that are typical of the yod. Readings of the Hebrew Sirach text are made from the photographs of the manuscripts available at the following websites: www.bensira.org; https://fgp.genizah.org; http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/ collections/genizah; and genizah.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Before publication of these photographs, scholars often relied on the facsimile edition of the manuscripts, published as Facsimiles of the Fragments. All translations are mine, unless stated otherwise.

106

Reymond

1)

a short, nondescript, vertical stroke (the top yod of ‫“ ייי‬the Lord” Sir 5:3 MS A I verso, line 22; ‫“ ה לים‬hide” Sir 9:8 MS A III verso, line 6); 2) a short vertical line with triangular head directly above the descending vertical stroke (the first yod of ‫“ ידי‬my hand” Sir 5:1 MS A I verso, line 20); 3) a short vertical line with triangular head, the left corner of which extends to the left of the descending vertical stroke (‫“ יש‬there is” Sir 5:1 MS A I verso, line 20); 4) a pointed circumflex shape (‫[“ תהי‬do not] be” Sir 4:31 MS A I verso, line 19);10 5) a right-angle (like a short resh) (‫“ כי‬for” Sir 5:8 MS A I verso, line 28). Most of these basic shapes can appear with a straight vertical mark (those listed above) or with a vertical mark that bends in the middle, or which curves slightly toward the left (e.g., 1. ‫“ כי‬because” Sir 5:3 MS A I verso, line 22; 2. the last yod of ‫“ ייי‬the Lord” Sir 5:4 MS A I verso, line 24; 3. ‫“ ימחה‬will be wiped away” Sir 5:4 MS A I verso, line 24; 4. ‫“ שריה‬its rulers” in Sir 10:3 MS A III verso, line 20). In some cases, the mark is so small that it appears as a backward “c” or comma shape (as in ‫“ יוצר‬potter” in Sir 27:5 MS A II recto, line 23). In MS A, the vav is more consistently longer than yod, but shares many of the qualities of the yod. For example, vav appears as: 1) a straight, non-descript vertical mark (the first and second vavs of ‫ונותי‬ “my iniquities” Sir 5:4 MS A (I verso, line 24)) 2) a vertical line with triangular head, the left corner of which extends to the left of the descending vertical stroke (‫“ ב ולם‬always” Sir 4:23 MS A I verso, line 11) 3) a vertical line with a head that extends upwards and to the left (‫“ ר הו‬his friend” Sir 6:17 MS A II Recto, line 18) 4) a vertical line with a circumflex top (‫“ תאות‬desire of” Sir 5:1 MS A I verso, line 21).11 The vav is usually a straight line (as in the examples above), though sometimes it forms a curving shape (e.g., the last vav of ‫ כרצונו‬Sir 4:27 MS A I verso, line 15). In other cases it curves slightly to the left at its very bottom (e.g., ‫תסוב‬ “it will turn” Sir 10:28 MS A III verso, line 25). Finally, it should be remarked that the vav, although consistently longer than the yod, does sometimes appear short, specifically where it occurs above the foot of a preceding letter, like 10 11

Note also ‫“ ור י‬and weak” Sir 4:29 MS A I verso, line 17, and the second yod of ‫“ ידי‬my hand” Sir 5:1 MS A I verso, line 20. As for the last type, see also the vav of ‫( גאוה‬in Sir 10:8 MS A III verso, line 25; of ‫ י ול‬in Sir 10:10 MS A III verso, line 26). In contrast to the yod shaped as a circumflex, the vav with a circumflex top has a relatively long vertical mark.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

107

a tav (e.g., ‫“ תוחה‬opened” in Sir 4:31 MS A I verso, line 19; also see below for further examples). It should be noted that many letters vary their shape in MS A, even within proximity to each other. For example, the sin / shin letter appears four times in the four words at the beginning of Sir 6:5–6 MS A II recto, line 10, in each case exhibiting a slightly different form.12 In addition, the dalet and resh are often made in a similar manner, as noted above. In relation to vav, note the variation in length and shape between the two vavs in ‫“ וק וצה‬and clenched” in Sir 4:31 MS A I verso, line 19; the first is relatively long with a triangular head, while the second is relatively short (written above the foot of the pe) and without a distinct mark at its top. Note also the variation in yods in ‫“ ידי‬my hand” in Sir 4:31 MS A (I verso, line 20); the first is relatively short and non-descript, while the second has the form of a circumflex. Due to this variability and to the inherent similarity in shape between vav and yod, sometimes a vav will look very similar to a yod and a yod very similar to a vav. This is especially the case where the vav or yod appears above the foot of the preceding letter (as when paired with bet, kaph, nun, ayin, pe, tav). Compare the vav of ‫“ מנותן‬more than one who gives” in Sir 3:17 MS A I recto, line 9 with the first yod of ‫“ בניסין‬with a test” (= ‫ ) נ י ן‬in Sir 6:7 MS A II recto, line 11.13 In at least two cases what is always interpreted as yod in editions and commentaries actually appears more like a vav. In Sir 14:10 MS A V verso, line 27, the middle letter in the second instance of the word ‫“ ין‬eye” seems more like a vav, implying the word ‫“ ון‬iniquity.” Compare this letter with the vav in the word ‫“ ון‬iniquity” in Sir 13:24 MS A V verso, line 18.14 Nevertheless, the reading yod is implied by the context in Sir 14:10: ‫“ ין ר ין ת י ל לחם‬the eye of the wicked is an eye that flits over food.” Here, “iniquity” does not make good sense. Second, note ‫בני‬/‫“ בנו‬my child” in Sir 14:11 MS A V verso, line 29. 12

13 14

In the first, the middle arm meets the other arms in the bottom left corner of the letter; in the second, the middle arm tapers to an end at the bottom left corner; in the third, the middle arm curves and intersects half-way up the left arm; in the fourth, the middle arm does not touch any of the other arms. Note also that the yod of ‫ ני‬in Sir 4:22 MS A I verso, line 10 is also relatively close in size to the vav of ‫מנותן‬. The similarity in letter size is in part due to the relative smallness of the preceding nun in ‫ ני‬and the largeness of the nun in ‫מנותן‬. Note too ‫“ למכשולי‬at your stumbling blocks” in Sir 4:22 MS A I verso, line 11, where the vav is the same size and shape as the first yod of the triangle of yods in Sir 5:3 MS A I verso, line 22. Although the vav in ‫ למכשולי‬is straighter and longer than the following yod in ‫למכשולי‬, it is not unusual for these letter shapes to vary, as mentioned above. Given such factors, although the version in MS C and in the Greek and Syriac suggest reading a vav, one wonders if it is possible to read as a yod: ‫“ אל תכשל למכשילי‬do not be tripped by those who would cause you to stumble.”

108

Reymond

Although it is never (to my knowledge) transliterated in the editions as ‫“ בנו‬his child,” the last letter clearly extends to the foot of the preceding nun.15 Here again, the context suggests the letter is a yod.16 Another example is ‫“ מוצק‬one oppressed” in Sir 4:9 MS A I recto, line 27, where the second letter, although regularly read as vav, is closer in height to a yod. However, these cases represent the exceptions. In almost all cases, where a letter seems at first like it could be read as either a vav or yod, when one looks more closely, the relative length of the letter usually makes its identification clear. Note the relatively long yod of ‫“ שיר‬rich” in Sir 13:21 MS A V verso, line 13; however, the letter does not reach the baseline as a vav would. Similarly, the first letter of ‫ ישיח‬in Sir 13:26 MS A V verso, line 20, which some scholars read as ‫ושיח‬, does not descend as far as the base of the following sin / shin, and so seems more like a yod. The relatively short vav of ‫“ יחובר‬he should be joined” in Sir 13:16 MS A V verso, line 9 ends only slightly higher than the right leg of the preceding khet (the left leg of khet usually descending slightly beneath the baseline) and seems slightly lower than the vertical mark of the following resh. Thus, it is best to read vav. The relatively consistent distinction in length between vav and yod allows us to suppose that most places where we find what appears to be a vav where we expect a yod (and vice versa) are errors and are not reflective of a common manner of writing both letters. This is different, therefore, from the imprecise manner in which dalet and resh are written, since these two letters seem to be frequently written such that there is no distinction between them (as noted above). In addition, at least two examples of corrections suggest that the scribe of MS A did generally discriminate between vav and yod and did recognize that a vav written for a yod (or vice versa) was a mistake.17 Note, first, the simple extension of the yod into a vav in ‫“ וסחם‬and he scraped them” Sir 10:17 MS A IV recto, line 4.18 The opposite correction of vav (where we might expect yod) is reflected in the spelling ‫“ רו‬serve” or “serving” in Sir 14:11 (MS A V verso, line 29). The apparent cancellation of the third letter suggests that the scribe 15 16 17

18

See, e.g., Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 8; Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2:102; BenḤayyim, Ben Sira, 19; Beentjes, Book of Ben Sira, 42; Abegg and Towes, “Ben Sira”; Morla, Ben Sira, 129. Note also in Sir 12:2 MS A V recto, line 1, one finds a relatively short vav in ‫“ שלומת‬reward.” Of course the mistakes could also be due to the scribe who copied its Vorlage (if not due to a preceding scribe of the mid-first millennium CE). The scribe who copied MS A is thought to be Abraham b. R. Shabbetai, who was dayyan of Minyat Zifta (Egypt) in ca. 1100 CE. On this identification, see Edna Engel as cited in Sirat et al., Codices Hebraicis, 32 n. 6; Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 24–27; Schlanger, “The ‘Booklet’ of Ben Sira.” See Rey, “Si 10, 12–12, 1,” 581.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

109

of MS A recognized that the third letter of the word was a vav (not a carelessly written yod), since a yod would be expected in a piel imperative like this and would not (one supposes) precipitate a cancellation mark.19 Furthermore, the unexpected vav in the word presumably also prompted the scribe of MS A (or the individual responsible for the vowel points in this manuscript or its Vorlage) to include the vowel points. This word is the only word vocalized in its verse or in the surrounding text. In MS A, such isolated vocalization often helps to clarify a spelling mistake, as with ‫“ ב ת‬shame” Sir 4:20 MS A I verso, line 9; ‫“ הוא‬he” in Sir 6:11 MS A II recto, line 14; ‫“ יום ורמש‬gnats and creeping things” Sir 10:11 MS A III verso, line 28; ‫“ ל‬his heart” Sir 10:13 MS IV verso, line 2; ‫מ ה א‬ “it is little” Sir 14:9 MS A V verso, line 26; ‫“ מודים‬those standing” Sir 16:18 MS A VI verso, line 23.20 7.2

Confusion of Vav and Yod, General Comments

Scholars of the Sirach manuscripts have long recognized the many scribal mistakes they contain. However, only some editions contain enumerations of the mistakes. Adolf Neubauer, for example, documented many of these in his edition with Arthur Cowley of chapters 39 through 49.21 He only cited some representative examples and did not cite them from chapters outside 39–49.

19

20

21

The cancellation mark is an oblique mark just to the right of the letter and intersecting with it at its base. A single letter is cancelled with an oblique mark in ‫“ מהי‬who” Sir 12:13 MS A V recto, line 13, though in this case, the line crosses through the entire letter. Similarly, note ‫“ החלונה‬her window” Sir 14:23 MS A VI recto, line 11. For a similar cancellation mark of a single letter, but in the shape of a circle, see ‫ ולהרבות‬Sir 11:10 MS A IV recto, line 27 (see Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 94). Entire words are also cancelled with lines, as in ‫ יגלה‬in Sir 3:20 MS A I recto, line 11; ‫ גומל‬Sir 14:18 MS A VI recto, line 7; and the marginal addition to the preceding verse, ‫ ;כן אסחות‬and ‫ תבואה‬Sir 15:3 MS A VI recto, line 17; as well as ‫ לא‬Sir 16:15 MS A VI verso, line 15; and ‫ מה‬Sir 16:22 MS A VI verso, line 26. See Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 19–21. It also sometimes implies a disparity between the orthography typical of the Masoretic Text and the orthography in the manuscript (e.g., ‫“ בחסירי מ‬among those lacking knowledge” Sir 13:8 MS A V verso, line 3 [reflecting the Rabbinic Hebrew (RH) form, cf. ‫ חסירה‬in m. Menaḥ. 5:1 in the Kaufmann MS and ‫נ ש‬ ‫“ חסירה‬needy soul” in Sir 4:2 MS A]; ‫“ ב ו יה‬in her branches” Sir 14:26 MS A VI recto, line 13). Additionally, the vocalization of a word reflects an ambiguity of the consonantal text that the vowels clarify (as with ‫“ אל‬God” in Sir 3:18 MS A I recto, line 10; ‫ רב‬Sir 6:5 MS A II recto, line 10) or it presents an alternative understanding (as with ‫“ נכוחה‬justified” [qere] and “obvious” [ketiv] Sir 6:22 MS A II recto, line 22). Cowley and Neubauer, Original Hebrew, xxxvi. Note also the list of Hebrew words that are difficult to identify, though preserved clearly in the manuscripts in Ben-Ḥayyim, Ben Sira, 309–10; for suggested corrections, see ibid., 314.

110

Reymond

In more recent years, Antonino Minissale has cited many cases of scribal lapse; still, there are some examples not in his lists.22 In some cases, the mistake is identified in the commentary, but not in the tables. For example, although he identifies the mistake of ‫“ כחו‬his strength” for ‫“ *כחי‬my strength” (Sir 5:3 MS A) in his commentary, he does not include this example in his tables.23 Furthermore, in his book scribal lapses are usually identified in relation to the Greek text. The absence of a more comprehensive listing of scribal mistakes means that scholars must evaluate the likelihood of a given mistake on a more-or-less ad hoc basis. It is hard to know whether a given spelling reflects an otherwise unattested word or a mistake. At first blush, the documentation of scribal lapses would seem to be a rather straightforward endeavor. Hiding behind this work and even behind the label “scribal error,” however, is an assumption that we can discern which words are “right” and which are “wrong.” Of course, we do not know for certain what Ben Sira himself wrote (nor do we even know if he wrote his instruction himself). Moreover, we do not know if he produced just one edition of his work or multiple editions.24 This is not to mention the fact that the text that was (or the texts that were) ultimately in circulation in the late centuries BCE would have been mostly consonantal and would have admitted of different interpretations and readings. Thus, it is quite difficult to decide when a spelling exhibits a mistake and when it makes explicit one of a number of possible articulations of the earlier consonantal text. In addition, scribal errors are not limited to the language of the “original” text. When we can determine that a given word was likely not part of an early version of Sirach (e.g., because the word is clearly late or inappropriate to its context or both), it is still possible for it to be transmitted incorrectly, and, thus for it to exhibit errors. For this study, a scribal error will be considered any incorrectly spelled word, whether deriving potentially from an earlier or a later version of the text. Sometimes the identification of a mistake can be determined by the absence of any other convincing explanation. For example, if we assume vav and yod are distinct letters in MS A, then in Sir 6:5 (MS A II recto, line 10), we find the following: ‫חי רב ירבה אוהב וש תי חן שואלו שלום‬. The second-to-last word in the bicolon, ‫שואלו‬, must be a mistake for ‫( *שואלי‬the form found recently in

22 23 24

Minissale, Siracide, 153–73. Ibid., 39 (commentary), 165–66 (tables). See Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 1:xx, 2:xiii, xxviii; and Reiterer, “Book of Exodus,” 110; idem, “Urtext und Ausgangstext,” 140.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

111

MS C), the plural construct of the participle: “A sweet palate multiplies friends, and gracious lips those giving greeting.” Often, however, multiple interpretations are possible and while trying to translate a given passage, one must often weigh how likely a given interpretation of the Hebrew is. For example, in Sir 43:5, one finds ‫ גדיל‬in MS B XII verso, line 6: ‫כי גדיל ייי ושהו ודבריו ינצח אביריו‬. Almost every scholar assumes that this is just a mistake for ‫“ גדול‬great,” which is attested in the margin to MS B as well as in Mas and is implied by the Greek and Syriac translations.25 Nevertheless, it seems possible to construe it in the context of MS B as a piel form of the verb, especially if one assumes that the following verb, ‫ינצח‬, indicates praising: “for, the Lord, its maker, praises, (by) his words he glorifies his valiant ones (i.e., the celestial objects).”26 The yod mater in this form would not be unusual; the vowel corresponding to tsere in the Tiberian tradition in piel verbs often is marked with a yod mater in Sirach manuscripts (in MSS A, B, and C).27 A piel verb ‫ גדיל‬would make perfect sense in 43:5. Can ‫ גדיל‬simply be characterized as a mistake? Did the “original” text read ‫גדל‬, which the Greek and Syriac translators interpreted as “great” while others read as “he praised”? In the end, given the evidence at hand, it seems less likely that the earliest Sirach manuscripts contained the piel verb ‫ ;גדל‬nevertheless, reading ‫ גדיל‬in this way in MS B seems reasonable. Even apparently minor discrepancies can give one pause. For example, where we would expect ‫ שמו ה‬in the plural meaning “traditions” (see Jastrow), we find instead ‫“( שמי ה‬hearing”) in the plural. See ‫ שמי ת‬in Sir 8:9 (MS A III recto, line 16) and ‫ שמי ות‬in Sir 8:9 (MS D I verso, line 9). And, vice versa, where we expect ‫שמי ה‬, we find ‫ שמו ה‬in Sir 5:11 (MS C II verso, line 6).28 25

26

27 28

See, e.g., Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 1.66; Peters, Ecclesiasticus, 210; Segal, Sefer Ben Sira, 294; Morla, Ben Sira, 270. Other scholars do not bother even to mention the reading ‫ ;גדיל‬e.g., Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 402; Box and Oesterley, “Sirach,” 1.474. In the edition of Ben-Ḥayyim (Ben Sira), the word is not listed as a verb. As van Peursen (Verbal System, 79) notes, one of the only scholars to read ‫ גדיל‬as a true alternative was Iwry (“New Designation,” 46–47), who suggested that it was a noun “signal,” as he reads in 1QS X, 4, though others read ‫גדול‬. The sense of “to praise” for the piel of ‫ גדל‬is found in both BH and RH. The sense “to praise” for the piel of ‫ נצח‬is found in RH (see Jastrow, who cites Midrash Tehillim, a work known from the eleventh century CE), but is more common in the D-stem in Syriac (see Sokoloff, Lexicon Syriacum3). In any case, it is not hard to imagine how the piel of this verb could develop such a meaning, given the substantive ‫“ נצח‬glory, splendor,” which is found in BH and later dialects. See van Peursen, Verbal System, 47. See Reymond, “Fast Talk,” 265. The same passage in MS A reads: “be someone quick to give ear (‫)היה ממהר להא ין‬.” For more on manuscript C, see the essay by Ueberschaer in the present volume.

112

Reymond

Similarly, what we would have expected to be ‫( *דון‬i.e., ‫“ ) ן‬misery” (a noun known from Targumic Aramaic and other dialects) is consistently written ‫דין‬ (perhaps ‫ ;]?[ ין‬cf. ‫“ דין‬judgment”) at Sir 14:1 (MS A); 30:21 (MS B), 23 (MS B); 37:2 (MS B and D); and 38:18 (MS B).29 Finally, it must be admitted that one can never really determine how many scribal mistakes a given manuscript contains since the “original” text is not available to us and, thus, we cannot tell how far a later manuscript has diverged from this earlier form. It should go without saying that the Hebrew text of Sirach poses numerous challenges. It is likely, therefore, that I have overlooked some possible mistakes. 7.3

Confusion between Vav and Yod in MS A

In the following, identification of vav and yod is based on the distinguishing characteristics of the two letters described above, especially their relative length. Unless otherwise stated, the identification of vav or yod in the examples below is relatively unambiguous. A confusion between vav and yod is most clear where we see an unambiguous correction in the manuscript itself (e.g., the extension of an initial yod into a vav in ‫“ וסחם‬and he scraped them” Sir 10:17 MS A IV recto, line 4).30 Most obvious cases of mistakes between vav and yod, however, are identifiable because the word with the mistaken letter simply does not make sense. We have already cited ‫ שואלו‬in Sir 6:5 (MS A II recto, line 10). Another example is ‫ ונ ותיהו‬for ‫ *ונ יתיהו‬in Sir 4:19 (MS A I verso, line 7). The spelling with vav presupposes a geminate root, ‫נ‬, which does not occur in Hebrew. And, even if we were to suppose a byform of ‫“ נו‬to tremble,” we would expect it to be in the hiphil. Similarly, in Sir 5:3 (MS A I verso, line 22), ‫“ כחו‬his strength” must be a mistake for ‫ *כחי‬and in Sir 6:36 (MS A II verso, line 4) ‫“ בסי י‬in my threshold” must be a mistake for ‫*בסי ו‬.31 Yet another example is the otherwise unknown ‫ בי ה‬in Sir 9:18 (MS A) for the participle: ‫“ *בו ה‬one who talks loosely.” In other cases, one finds texts that may have made sense to a medieval reader, but which likely derive from a spelling error involving vav or yod, as with ‫ גדיל‬for ‫ *גדול‬in Sir 43:5 (MS B). In Sir 10:25, MS A (IV recto, line 10) one reads: 29 30 31

In these cases, the Greek translates with the word λύπη “pain, grief”; the Syriac with dwwn’ “misery” in Sir 30:21, 23. See Rey, “Si 10, 12–12, 1,” 581. The verb ‫ חק‬takes a direct object in the qal and is used with bet to mark instrument, as in m. Beṣah 2:8: ‫“ שוחקים את ה ל לים בריחים‬they grind peppers in a mill.” The same characteristics are found with the Aramaic cognate (see, e.g., Tg. Ps.-J. Num 11:8).

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

113

‫“ בד משכיל הורם ו בד‬a wise servant is exalted and a servant (?) …”; though in

MS B (I recto, line 7), reflecting what is likelier the earlier text, the last word is a prefix verbal form: ‫(“ י בדוהו‬nobles) will serve him.” Another example is likely ‫ גוים‬in Sir 10:16 (MS A IV recto, line 3), which (based on the Syriac dg’wtn’ “of the proud” and the context) may have been ‫( גיים‬gēyīm < gē’īm) “the proud.”32 On the other hand, some texts are very difficult to interpret. In Sir 13:22 (MS A V verso, line 15), we find ‫“ דל נמו ג ג ושא ודבר משכיל ואין לו מקום‬The poor stumbles—‘oh! oh! and speak!’—though he speaks wise things, there is no place for him.”33 The sequence ‫ ושא‬should more likely be interpreted as a mistake for ‫ *ישא‬or, better, ‫*ישאו‬, as most scholars indicate, allowing the more sensible translation: “The poor stumble and they say [= ‫‘ ]*י א‬oh, oh,’ and though he speaks wise things, there is no place for him.”34 Another difficult example is found in Sir 13:26 (MS A V verso, line 20): ‫קבת‬ ‫לב וב נים אורים ושיג ישיח מחשבת מל‬. Assuming the spelling ‫ישיח‬,35 the second colon is difficult to translate, and only with straining can one make some sense of it: “the mark (or consequence) of a happy heart is a glowing countenance; contemplative withdrawal (?) dissolves (‫ )י יח‬laborious thought” or “… meditation expresses (‫ )י יח‬laborious thought.”36 Most agree, however, that the phrase in Sirach is derived from 1 Kgs 18:27 (‫“ כי יח וכי יג לו וכי דר לו‬for meditation, wandering, and path are his”) and that the Sirach passage is best 32

33 34 35

36

Note the rabbinic interpretation of Gen 25:23 (‫ )גיים‬in t. Ab. Zar. 11A: “do not read ‘nations [‫ ’]גוים‬but ‘lords [‫]גיים‬.’” A similar spelling is found in Gen. Rab. (p. 63), where the relevant word in Gen 25:23 is recorded as being interpreted as indicating ‫“ גיאי גוים‬lords of nations.” The shift of aleph to yod is also found in a variety of other words, like the name Daniel: ‫( נאל‬Ezek 14:14) to ‫( נ אל‬Dan 1:6); see Reymond, Qumran Hebrew, 123–31. Smend (Sirach, erklärt, 95) suggests reading ‫ וים‬, though the vav in this spelling is unusual. Cf. the Greek translation (ἐθνῶν) which presupposes “nations.” I understand ‫ ג ג‬as an onomatopoetic expression, analogous to the Syriac translation’s gw‘ “ugh!,” an “interjection of disgust and contempt” (LS3, s.v.). See Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, xxviii and 49; Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2:97; Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 128. See, e.g., Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, xxviii, 49; Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2:97; Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 128. Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, (8), originally read ‫ ושיח‬since the letter is somewhat unclear. In later editions it is often read as yod. See, e.g., Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2:98; Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 129; Ben-Ḥayyim, Ben Sira, 19; Beentjes, Ben Sira, 42; Morla, Ben Sira, 126. This reflects the fact that the letter does not extend to the base line. On the other hand, Rey (“Sagesses hébraiques,” 118) reads ‫ושיח‬. For ‫ י יח‬in this sense, I assume the hiphil of ‫ חח‬. For ‫ קבה‬, see the usage in m. ʿAbod. Zar. 5:7, “trace, remnant” (Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 119). The Syriac cognate has the same sense. Still, this is not a perfect solution since the word in the Sirach passage implies not just a small bit of something, but the true, telling characteristic of it. Thus, perhaps, it has the sense “end result, consequence,” similar to that of the masculine Hebrew (and Aramaic) word ‫ קב‬.

114

Reymond

understood as ‫ושיג *ושיח‬.37 With this emendation, the last colon may be translated: “(the mark of) … laborious thought (is) distraction and concern.” In another passage, ‫“ למנוח‬for the rest of” (Sir 12:3 MS A V recto, line 2) appears to be a mistake for ‫“ *למניח‬for the one placating” (= ‫)למני‬.38 One reads: ‫“ אין ובה למנוח רש וגם צדקה לא שה‬there is no benefit to the one placating (= ‫ )למניח‬the wicked; nor does he do charity.” Although the verb ‫ נוח‬in the hiphil usually takes a lamed preposition as complement when it has the sense “give rest to,” it also takes a direct object in a similar sense in Prov 29:17 (i.e., “discipline your child, and he will satisfy you”). The same sense is found in Syriac in the aphel. In many other cases, it seems that the confusion of the letter is associated with a confusion over a verbal stem. Note, for example, ‫“ שרות‬serve” or “serving” (piel imperative or infinitive construct) in Sir 14:11 (MS A V verso, line 29), for ‫*שרית‬. The spelling of what would be a tsere in TH is frequently marked with a yod in the Sirach manuscripts, as noted above. Similarly, note ‫“ תסוב‬she will go around” in Sir 9:6 (MS A III verso, line 4) for the hiphil ‫*תסיב‬, with yod marking what would be a tsere in TH.39 The entire verse reads: ‫“ אל תתן ל ונה נ ש ן תסוב את נחלת‬do not give yourself to a prostitute, lest you turn away (= ‫ )*תסיב‬your inheritance” (cf. 1 Chron 10:14). This explanation seems simpler than the explanation offered by Elwolde of the particle ‫ את‬marking “the subject of an intransitive verb.”40 The Greek (ἀπολέσῃϛ “destroy”) and Syriac (twbd “destroy”) seem to imply a verb of destruction (e.g., ‫)אבד‬.41 Nevertheless, one wonders if the Hebrew verb might have been read as ‫(“ *תסיף‬lest) you bring to an end.” The confusion of bet and pe is also found in the Hebrew manuscripts of Sirach (e.g., ‫“ מבי‬will flow” [MS B] for ‫מו י‬ “will shine” [Mas] Sir 43:2; ‫“ ברא‬he created” [MS B] for ‫“ ר‬he loosened” [Mas] Sir 43:14; ‫ כנצ נ י‬for ‫“ *כנצב נ י‬like the flower in the branches of” Sir 50:8 [MS B]).42 37 38 39 40 41 42

See, e.g., Schechter and Taylor, Wisdom of Ben Sira, (8); Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2:98; Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 129. See Bacher, “Notes,” 278. Most commentators agree; see Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 105. The Greek reads, “one who persists in evil” (for which perhaps it read ‫)מ יח‬. The Syriac reads “one who honors the wicked.” See Smend, Sirach, erklärt, 84. Elwolde, “ʾEt,” 178. See also Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 76. See, e.g., Segal, Ben Sira, 56. The Greek verb ἀπόλλυµι in the LXX often corresponds with Hebrew ‫ ;אבד‬likewise for the Syriac verb, which is also cognate with Hebrew ‫אבד‬. On the last, see Minissale, Siracide, 166. Also note another potential case of confusion: ‫“ בצ‬unjust profit” for ‫“ * צ‬wound” Sir 7:6 (MS A; Minissale, Siracide, 165).

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

115

A more ambiguous case is offered by ‫“ ת וח‬do (not) dishearten” in Sir 4:2 (MS A I recto, line 22). Here, the qal fits the idiom as attested in RH, where ‫וח‬ takes as object “soul”: ‫(“ דווח נ ש חסירה אל ת וח ואל תת לם מ דכ נ ש‬one sick [?]), do not dishearten the needy soul, do not turn your back on the oppressed soul.”43 Nevertheless, the context seems to suggest an act graver than “dishearten,” and, thus, scholars as far back as Bacher have suggested that this is a mistake for ‫“ *ת יח‬do (not) disturb,” which in turn helps make sense of the first word: “do not disturb the respite (= ‫ )רווח‬of the needy soul …”44 In still different cases, one wonders if it is correct to interpret the mistake as one relating primarily to the confusion of vav and yod. In Sir 10:28 MS A IV recto, line 13, one reads ‫“ ויתן ל‬and it (your soul) will give you” for what is more likely closer to the original ‫“ ותן לה‬and give it” (MS B I recto, line 12, as also reflected in the Greek and Syriac).45 Also, note ‫“ יום‬gnats” in Sir 10:11 MS A III verso, line 28, which may derive from an earlier spelling ‫ *כינים‬with the initial yod mater to mark short /i/;46 ‫“ ביוד‬in the hand of ” in Sir 5:13 MS A II recto, line 3, perhaps for an earlier ‫ *בייד‬with two yods for one (as in ‫“ חייבים‬guilty” Sir 8:5 MS A III recto, line 12);47 and ‫“ סרידה‬escaped” (? < ‫ )*שרידה‬in Sir 10:1 MS A III verso, line 19, which likely appears for an earlier ‫“ *סדורה‬organized.”48 Sometimes the confusion seems to be between similarly spelled nouns and the issue is not necessarily related to the similarity in shape of vav and yod. In Sir 10:31 (MS A IV recto, line 16), one finds the following: ‫נכבד ב שרו איככה ונקלה‬ ‫“ ב יניו איככה‬as for one who is honored, how much more (is he honored) in his wealth; as for the dishonored, how much more (is he dishonored) in his (own) eyes.” The Greek and Syriac (in different ways), as well as the doublet in MS A 43 44

45 46 47 48

The third word, ‫חסירה‬, reflects the orthography and morphology of later Hebrew. Cf. Sir 13:8 MS A V verso, line 3 and m. Menaḥ. 5:1 in the Kaufmann MS. See Bacher, “Notes,” 275; Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 37. Another example may be ‫תאי‬ “(do not) insist” for ‫“ תאו‬do not rush” in Sir 7:17 (MS A). The bicolon reads: ‫אל תאי לאמר‬ ‫“ ל ר גל אל אל ורצה דרכו‬do not impel (someone) saying, urging, ‘devote (yourself) to God and desire his path.’” In this case, the spelling with yod might be encouraged by another spelling mistake in Sir 7:15 (MS A) of ‫ תאי‬for an expected ‫“ *תנאי‬do not despise,” the piel jussive (or a mistake for ‫)*תנא‬. Similarly, note ‫ ישובב‬in the main text and ‫ וישובב‬in the margin to Sir 38:25 (MS B VIII verso, line 16). Yod marks etymological short /i/ (= TH hireq) followed by a geminated consonant in RH and is not infrequent in Sirach manuscripts (e.g., ‫“ היכנ‬be humbled” Sir 4:25 [MS A]). In this case, however, perhaps we are dealing with a confusion in pronunciation (from Aramaic) or even a confusion with the name of the letter (i.e., ‫“ יוד‬yod”). Note the Greek translation corresponding with this word τεταγµένη “is ordered.” Another example may be ‫“ שוכר‬tenant (?)” Sir 7:20 MS A II verso, line 23 vs. ‫“ שכיר‬hireling” (MS C) (but, cf. ‫ שוכרו‬CD XI, 12).

116

Reymond

that follows (with ‫“ בדלותו‬in his poverty”), imply that in the second colon ‫ב יניו‬ should be ‫ *ב ניו‬or ‫“ *ב וניו‬in his poverty” (= ‫) ני‬.49 It is unclear how the mistake happened. Did a scribe find ‫ *ב ניו‬and think it a defective spelling for “in his eyes” or did he find ‫ *ב וניו‬and mistakenly write it ‫ב יניו‬. Note the spelling for “poverty” found in Sir 13:24 (MS A V verso, line 18): ‫ה וני‬. Several times, it is unclear which reading is best, as in Sir 6:14, where we find ‫“ תקוף‬strength” in MS A (II recto, line 16) and ‫“ תקיף‬strong” in MS C (III verso, line 7). Note also the alternatives at Sir 5:9 between ‫“ שבולת‬stream” attested in MS A (I verso, line 29) versus ‫“ שביל‬path” in MS C (II verso, line 2). 7.4

Confusion between Vav and Yod in MS B

The same kinds of mistakes also appear in MS B. In fact, MS B (I recto, line 15) attests the same mistake in Sir 10:31 as described above for MS A (i.e., ‫“ ב יניו‬in his eyes” for ‫“ *ב וניו‬in his poverty”). In this case, however, the text seems to have developed further, such that the mistaken spelling becomes a sensible part of the proverb and repeats in the second colon: ‫הנכבד ב יניו ב שרו איככה‬ ‫“ ונקלה ב שרו ב יניו איככה‬the one honored in his (own) eyes, in his wealth how much (more so), and the one cursed in his wealth, in his (own) eyes, how much (more so).” Again, most obvious examples involve a word that is nonsensical in its context. In Sir 31:5 (MS B III verso, line 8), the text reads ‫“ רודף חרו לא ינקה‬one who pursues gold will not be found innocent.” The marginal alternative has ‫חרי‬, which in BH could mean either “iron pick” or “portion,” both meanings that do not fit the context. The RH sense of ‫חרי‬, “furrow, ditch,” also seems unlikely here.50 All things being equal, this marginal word seems likely to be a mistake, recorded in the margin as a means of preserving an alternative, though inferior, reading (as happens elsewhere in MS B).51

49 50 51

The corresponding phrases in the Greek and Syriac can be translated “in poverty” (ἐν πτωχείᾳ and bmsknwth). Nevertheless, note the marginally similar sense in Sir 5:9, as reflected in MS A: … ‫אל תהיה‬ ‫“ ונה דר שבולת‬do not be … someone who turns down the path of (any) channel.” One wonders if it might be a mistake for ‫“ תרי‬right” (a word found commonly in Aramaic), the whole verse then taking on another sense: “the one who pursues what is right will not be found innocent, but the one who loves money (lit., price) will make much (= ‫ )י ה‬with it.”

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

117

In Sir 11:3 (MS B I verso, line 2) one finds ‫ אלול‬for an intended ‫*אליל‬ “insignificant.”52 In Sir 40:6 (MS B IX verso, line 15) one finds ‫“ לרוק‬for spittle” for an expected ‫“ *לריק‬for vain.” In Sir 41:12, the margin to MS B (XI recto, line 4) contains ‫ סומות חמדה‬for what must earlier have been ‫“ *סימות חמדה‬desirous treasures.” In Sir 41:16, one finds ‫“ מש ו‬his judgment” in the margin of MS B (XI recto, line 9) for the more likely ‫“ מש י‬my judgment” which is attested both in the body of MS B and in Mas (and is reflected in the Greek). As in MS A, the confusion of vav and yod is often connected to possible confusion over the root and/or conjugation of the verb. For example, in Sir 43:17, one finds ‫(“ יחול‬his earth) writhes” in the text of MS B (XII verso, line 18) for what must have been the hiphil of the same root, ‫“ יחיל‬he makes writhe,” which is found in the margin of MS B and in Mas. In Sir 31:2, in the margin, we find ‫(“ תנוד‬a reproach) will wander ([with] a trusted friend)[?]” (MS B III verso, line 4) for what is likely ‫(“ תניד‬a reproach) will scare (a trusted friend),” as found in the main text. The sense “to scare” for ‫ נוד‬is found in Aramaic in the aphel; thus, we suppose a hiphil in Hebrew. Note, in particular, the participial expression ‫“ לית מניד‬there will not be anyone scaring (you)” in Targ. Onq. at Lev 26:6, translating Heb ‫“ אין מחריד‬there will not be anyone scaring (you).”53 Note too the same expression with the same sense in Tg. Job 11:19 and in a targumic tosephta (Kasher text 144, Book 25, 2:14).54 In Sir 31:13 (MS B IV recto, line 5), we find: ‫“ כי ה מ ני כל דבר ת ו ין‬because of this, on account of anything the eye trembles.” The reading ‫ת ו‬, however, may not reflect the qal of ‫ ו‬, but instead may really be a simple mistake for ‫(“ ת י‬the eye) streams” (hiphil of ‫י‬, known from RH [listed by Jastrow sub ‫] ו‬, and found in the margin to Sir 31:13 in MS B), especially given the parallel phrase ‫“ דמ ה תדמ‬it weeps tears” (and the marginal alternative to ‫תדמ‬, that is ‫“ תסי‬it causes [tears] to go forth”). In Sir 40:14 (MS B X recto, line 5) the form ‫ יגילו‬offers a bit more of a challenge since it is conceivable that this is either from the geminate root ‫ גלל‬or from a middle weak root ‫( גול‬as found, e.g., in RH “to roll up a scroll” [see Jastrow] and in Palestinian Aramaic in the peal “to roll something up” [see DJPA]). In either case, the spelling ‫ יגילו‬seems likely to be a mistake for an intransitive or passive form, “they (were) rolled”: ‫“ ם ם שאתו כ ים יגילו כי תאם לנצח יתם‬when 52 53 54

Most editions read as ‫( אליל‬e.g., Beentjes, Ben Sira, 50; Abegg and Towes, “Ben Sira”), though Alexander A. Di Lella (“Recently Identified,” 158) early on read a vav. See similarly Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 150; Morla, Ben Sira, 153. This is the parsing in Jastrow and in CAL. See Kasher, Targumic Toseftot.

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it (the wadi) rises, rocks roll away (or, were rolled away), though suddenly it ceases entirely.” Since the qal of ‫ גלל‬and the peal of ‫ גול‬are transitive, it seems unlikely that ‫ יגילו‬is a mistake for a qal form.55 Instead, it is easiest I think to assume a mistake for a niphal form like ‫ י ל‬or ‫י‬.56 Note that although the niphal imperfect of ‫ גלל‬appears with an /a/ theme vowel in BH (i.e., once as ‫ י ל‬in Amos 5:24), in RH it appears sometimes with an /o/, as if from ‫( גול‬b. Ber. 4a [twice]).57 In fact, the website Ma’agarim cites one instance of the niphal imperfect of ‫ גלל‬with the same presumed mistake (i.e., ‫ )יגילו‬in Seder Eliyahu Rabbah (dated to around 1050 CE).58 The fact that this spelling occurs in Seder Eliyahu Rabbah as part of the same idiom that is attested in the talmudic passages with ‫ יגולו‬suggests again that this spelling with yod is simply a mistake for vav. Often, the reading that is the result of an error still makes some sense in its context. For example, in Sir 15:12 MS B II recto, line 13, ‫“ היא‬she” is a mistake for ‫“ הוא‬he” (found in MS A VI recto, line 22) and ‫ לי‬is a mistake for ‫*לו‬, the antecedent in each case being originally God, as in MS A.59 It is conceivable that the confusion derives from the preceding parallel expression in Sir 15:10 (in MS B) where the subject is ‫( תחלה‬itself a mistake for ‫“ תהלה‬praise” found in MS A).60 In this case, 15:12 might read: ‫“ ן תאמר היא התקילני כי אין לי ח באנשי חמס‬lest it (= ‫ )היא‬be spoken: ‘he has caused me to stumble, for I have no desire among people of violence.’”61 More naturally, however, the verse speaks of God: “lest you say ‘he (= ‫ )הוא‬has caused me to stumble, for he has (= ‫ )לו‬no desire among people of violence.’”

55 56 57

58 59 60 61

Where the qal of ‫ גלל‬seems to be intransitive (in Ps 22:9 and Sir 7:17), it likely takes an implicit object (e.g., “your path,” as in Ps 37:5). In the qal, the verb is transitive in BH and RH, even where it seems to have a form derived from ‫גול‬, as in y. Meg. 4.4 (75b), where it is used in an impersonal idiom. See Maʾagarim (maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il), accessed 25/4/2016. The website also lists the same spelling for two piyyutim, one from the era of 600–800 CE, the second from ca. 1000–1050 CE, as well as in other works, e.g., one titled ‫ ת ילת בית המקדש‬from ca. 1050 CE. In BH too, some geminate verbs appear with an /o/ theme vowel in the niphal imperfect (e.g., ‫ב‬, ‫בקק‬, ‫רמם‬, ‫ר‬, ‫)רצ‬. Ibid. See Di Lella, “Recently Identified Leaves,” 161. See Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 157, who notes that “Eve” might be the intended antecedent to the independent pronoun and this verse and the preceding reflect a reinterpretation of Genesis 2–3. Nevertheless, ‫ התקילני‬presupposes a masculine subject. Note the similar sequence of the particle ‫ ן‬followed by verb and then independent pronoun that agrees with the subject of the verb in Gen 45:11 and 2 Sam 12:28.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

119

In Sir 38:25 “the one who grasps the goad” is said to ‫“ ישובב בשיר‬turn back (and forth) in song” (MS Bm VIII verso, line 16); one imagines a farmer singing to himself as he plows. Within the body of the page, however, we have what is likely the original expression: ‫“ ישובב בשור‬he turns back and forth with the ox.” In some cases what is a consonant in the earlier text is misconstrued as a mater in the later text, as with ‫“ חיל‬wealth, power” in Sir 40:13 Mas (‫חיל מ ול‬ “wealth from injustice”) and in the margin to MS B X recto, line 4 (‫חיל מחיל‬ “power from strength” [?]) versus ‫“ חול‬sand” in MS B (‫“ מחול אל חול‬from sand to sand” [?]). The expression “from sand to sand” presumably emerges due to influence from 40:11 (‫“ כל מאר אל אר ישוב‬everything from earth to earth returns”), which immediately precedes 40:13 in MS B. In Sir 31:21 (MS B IV verso, line 2), the repetition ‫“ קוה קוה‬hope, hope” must be a mistake for the more mundane and practical ‫ קיה קיה‬or ‫“ קיא קיא‬vomit! vomit!” or even more likely ‫“ קום קיה‬arise, vomit!”62 It seems likely that the shift may be partially attributable to a pious scribe. Note also at Sir 42:17 ‫“ אומ‬strength” appears in the margin (MS B XII recto, line 10) for ‫“ אימ‬he strengthens” in the text, implying the translation “the strength of God (is) his hosts …” Despite this, the more likely sense is that reflected in the text ‫“ אימ אלהים צבאיו‬God strengthens his hosts.”63 In Sir 49:14 (MS B XIX recto, line 4), ‫“ כהני‬your priests” appears for what must have been earlier ‫“ *כחנו‬like Enoch.” The whole verse reads: ‫מ נוצר‬ ‫“ ל האר כהני וגם הוא נלקח נים‬Few were formed over the earth like Enoch (= ‫)*כחנו‬, and he was taken (to the) presence.”64 In other cases, it is hard to be sure whether the mistake involves a confusion of the letters or some other cause. In at least two cases what might be interpreted as a confusion of vav and yod is more likely related to metathesis of matres: ‫“ היו‬they were” in Sir 37:3 (MS B VII recto, line 11) appears for ‫“ הוי‬o!”

62 63

64

Cf. the Greek “rise and vomit!” and Syriac “extract your breath from the midst of the belly” = “vomit!” (see Calduch-Benages et al., Sabiduría del Escriba, 194). In the margin to the preceding bicolon, one finds ‫“ גבורותיו‬his mighty deeds” for what is ‫ ייי‬in the body of the text. The two marginal alternatives make sense together as an elliptical phrase: “the holy ones of God are not able to recount his wondrous mighty works, his hosts (are not able to recount) the strength of God …” Other examples include ‫“ צרי‬it is necessary” (MS B) versus ‫“ צור‬necessity” (MS F) Sir 32:7; ‫“ מ מו‬his delicacy” (MS B) versus ‫“ מ מי‬delicacies of (a gift)” (MS Bm) Sir 40:29. In Sir 37:30, the different manuscripts seem to attest not only different spellings, but different verbs and senses. MS B has ‫“ והמרבה יגי אל רא‬the one who does this too much (i.e., eats too much) will reach ( ‫ )נג‬nausea.” This reflects a sense similar to that of the Greek and Syriac. MS D, on the other hand, preserves: ‫“ והמ י יגו ל רא‬and the one sweating will die on account of nausea.”

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(MS Bm); ‫ וימי‬in Sir 42:25 (MS B XII recto, line 17) for ‫“ ומי‬and who?” in the margin of MS B and in Mas.65 The spelling of the imperative of ‫ כ ף‬seems to be another case of a spelling error involving yod for vav, perhaps partially influenced from a Targum passage. In Sir 30:12 (MS B III recto, line 3), we read ‫“ כיף ראשו בנ רותו‬bow his head in his youth.” The spelling ‫ כיף‬seems unlikely to be the piel imperative of ‫כוף‬, since the root is otherwise unknown in Hebrew and since it is comparatively rare in Aramaic (occurring only rarely in Syriac [one citation in LS3] and once in a correction to a targumic tosephta).66 More likely, as Ma’agarim again indicates, it can be assumed to be a mistake for the qal imperative of ‫( כ ף‬the root known from BH), misspelled with yod for vav = ‫ ף‬.67 In Sir 30:12 and 17 (MS B III recto, lines 4 and 10), ‫ ולוד‬is likely a mistake for ‫ *ילוד‬or ‫*וילוד‬, a passive qal participle “one born,” though it is perhaps influenced by the similar word ‫“ ולד‬offspring,” known from BH (Gen 11:30) and RH.68 In Sir 36:27, the form ‫“ והליל‬it will illuminate” (MS B VII recto, line 4) implies the piel vav-consecutive perfect, while ‫“ יהלל‬it will illuminate” (MS Bm) implies the piel imperfect. In either case, we expect the hiphil, which would be written with a single lamed in the imperfect in BH, ‫*יהל‬, and in the perfect ‫*ההל‬. Other possible cases of confusions are also likely attributable primarily to other causes.69 65

66 67

68 69

Cases of metathesis of matres appear in other, less ambiguous cases in MS B: ‫”?“ סירים‬ for ‫“ *סריס‬eunuch” in Sir 30:20 (MS B); ‫( גימילות‬MS Bm) for ‫“ גמילות‬charity” (MS D) in Sir 37:11; ‫“ שולח‬one sending” (MS B) for ‫“ שלוח‬beam, messenger” (MS Bm) in Sir 43:4; ‫“ אוהב‬friend” (MS B) for ‫“ *אהוב‬one loved by” in Sir 46:13. The case of ‫“ שיהיו‬which will be” in Sir 16:3 (MS B) for ‫ שהיו‬as in MS A is possibly related to this phenomenon. Note also the cases in MS A: ‫“ נכוחה‬it is not justified” (qere) vs. “it is not obvious” (ketiv) in Sir 6:22 (MS A); ‫“ מודים‬those standing” (qere) vs. “pillars” (ketiv), in Sir 16:18 (MS A), though these are perhaps both mistakes for ‫“ *מו דים‬they shake,” as suggested by Smend (Sirach, erklärt, 150). In Sir 16:9 (MS A), one also finds ‫ הנודשים‬for what most assume to be ‫*הנדושים‬ “those crushed” (see Rey, “Sagesses hébraiques,” 105; cf. Smend [Sirach, erklärt, 147] who reads ‫“ הנורשים‬those dispossessed,” as suggested by the Greek). I.e., ‫ כיף‬is written as an alternative to ‫ כוף‬in the targumic addition to 1 Sam 17:42 (Kasher text 57, line 14). See CAL (27/4/2016) and Kasher, Targumic Toseftot, 109. The spelling ‫ כיף‬may be influenced from the anomalous form in the Targum to Isaiah 58:5: ‫הלכיף‬, which corresponds to ‫“ הלכף‬is it to bend (the head)?” in the MT. I assume that the Aramaic word is a noun, ‫“ כיף‬pressure,” that also appears in Tg. Prov. 16:26 translating the perfect verb ‫“ אכף‬it presses.” The root ‫ כ ף‬also likely appears in Sir 4:7 (MS A), spelled with an aleph (‫ )הכאף‬akin to preceding words (‫“ תכאיב‬do (not) cause pain” Sir 4:3; ‫בכאב‬ “in pain” 4:6; and ‫“ האהב‬cause (yourself) to be loved” 4:7a). See Segal, Ben Sira, 184. E.g., ‫“ שיר‬wealthy” appears as a complement to ‫“ איש‬person” in Sir 10:30 (MS B), though the version in MS A contains no complement to ‫איש‬, but has at its end (as presumably did MS B): ‫“ שרו‬his wealth.” In Sir 42:12 (MS B) one finds ‫“ תסתויד‬may she (not) converse”

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

7.5

121

Conclusion

As for the number of errors of vav for yod or yod for vav in MS A, I count fourteen cases of sure mistakes (Sir 4:19; 5:3; 6:5, 36; 9:6; 10:16, 17, 25; 12:3; 13:22, 26; 14:10, 11 twice [‫ בנו‬and ‫ )] רו‬and at least six mistakes that may or may not involve a confusion of the two letters (Sir 4:2, 9; 5:3; 8:9; 10:1, 11).70 In MS B, I count seventeen certain cases (Sir 11:3; 15:12 [‫“ היא‬she” and ‫“ לי‬to me”]; 30:12 [‫“ כיף‬bow”]; 31:2 [marg.], 5 [marg.], 13, 21; 38:25; 40:6, 13, 14; 41:12 [marg.], 16 [marg.]; 42:17 [marg.]; 43:5, 17) and four ambiguous cases (Sir 30:12 [‫“ ולוד‬one born”], 17; 36:27; 49:14). Although this at first appears to suggest a relatively consistent manner of mistake, note that MS B is longer than MS A.71 In addition, MS B preserves alternative readings from other manuscripts in its margins (a fact made clear in the marginal Persian comments).72 Therefore, we might re-calculate the number of errors according to where they occur in MS B; for instance, it seems significant that the main text of MS B contains only twelve certain cases of confusion or error.73 Given these factors, MS A would seem to contain a much higher concentration of these mistakes. It seems quite likely to me that this should, in part, be connected to the similarity in letter shape between vav and yod in MS A. This, in turn, might be significant for the argument that the Vorlagen of the Genizah manuscripts derive from ancient, Second Temple era scrolls discovered from desert caves, near the year 800 CE (in a manner similar to how the Dead Sea Scrolls were later discovered in the twentieth century).74 Alexander A. Di Lella suggested that the presence of mistakes involving vav and yod in the medieval manuscripts supports the idea that these manuscripts derived from Second Temple scrolls. If confusions between vav and yod are at

70 71

72 73 74

though the verb appears in the margin and in MS A (8:17; 9:3, 14) with just a yod or yods. The vav might reflect the articulation in Syriac, whence the verb likely derives, and the yod in the other forms an accommodation to Hebrew morphology. In nine of the eleven cases of sure error in MS A, vav is written for yod. Thus, measuring by the number of pages in the various editions. MS A covers twentyfour pages in Beentjes, Ben Sira (23–47), while MS B covers forty-five pages (49–94). In addition, note that in Accordance, the number of words (i.e., discrete items tagged as an adjective, noun, verb, particle, or pronoun) in MS A is 4216, while the number in MS B is 8324. Although such measurements are not precise, given the many lacunae in MS B, it does suggest the relative amount of material preserved in each manuscript. Alternatively, note that MS A contains portions of fourteen chapters (not including chapter 1 as read in offset letters) and MS B contains portions of twenty-five chapters. See Wright, “Persian Glosses.”. In five of the eight cases of sure error in the MS B main text, vav is written for yod. Di Lella, Hebrew Text, 97–101.

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least partially attributable to medieval scribes, then Di Lella’s argument becomes slightly weaker (though still not impossible). However, I do not mean to imply that all the confusions or errors in MS A occurred in the copying out of MS A itself. The scribe of MS A, I believe, sought to preserve the text of the manuscript from which he was copying.75 So, it is quite natural that at least some of the errors are due to their presence in the Vorlage. In particular, some mistakes must have occurred rather early (e.g., note the translation of ‫ גוים‬as ἐθνῶν in Sir 10:16 and the mistake of ‫ ב יניו‬for ‫ *ב וניו‬in both MSS A and B at Sir 10:31). Although MS B shows fewer examples of confusion between vav and yod, it also has a peculiar profile and exhibits many examples involving the metathesis of matres, which are not as common in MS A. Bibliography Abegg, Martin G. and Casey Towes, “Ben Sira.” In Accordance 9.5. Altamonte Springs, Fla.: Oak Tree Software, 2007, 2009. Adler, E. N. “Some Missing Chapters of Ben Sira.” JQR 12 (1900): 466–80. Bacher, W. “Notes on the Cambridge Fragments of Ecclesiasticus.” JQR 12 (1900): 272–90. Beentjes, Pancratius C. The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: A Text Edition of All Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of All Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts. 2nd ed. VTSup 68. Atlanta: SBL, 2006 (1st ed. 1997). Ben-Ḥayyim, Z. The Book of Ben Sira: Text, Concordance and an Analysis of the Vocabulary. The Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1973. Box, G. H., and W. O. E. Oesterley, “Sirach.” Pp. 268–517 in Volume 1 of The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Ed. R. H. Charles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1913. Calduch-Benages, N., J. Ferrer, and J. Liesen. La Sabiduría del Escriba / The Wisdom of the Scribe. Biblioteca Midrásica 1. Estella: Verbo Divino, 2003. Cowley, A. E., and A. Neubauer. The Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus, XXXIX.15 to XLIX.11, together with the Early Versions and an English Translation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1897. Di Lella, Alexander A. The Hebrew Text of Sirach, a Text-Critical and Historical Study. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Di Lella, Alexander A. “The Recently Identified Leaves of Sirach in Hebrew.” Bib 45 (1964): 153–67.

75

Note, e.g., the examples of the disparity between the consonants and the vowel pointing that implies an impulse to preserve the consonantal text.

Vav and Yod in the Hebrew Manuscripts A and B of Sirach

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Dihi, Haim. “The Morphological and Lexical Innovations in the Book of Ben Sira” (Hebrew). Ph.D. dissertation. Beersheba: Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2004. Elwolde, John. “The Use of ʾEt in Non-Biblical Hebrew Texts.” VT 44 (1994): 170–82. Facsimiles of the Fragments Hitherto Recovered of The Book of Ecclesiasticus in Hebrew. London: Oxford University Press / Cambridge University Press, 1901. Iwry, Samuel. “A New Designation for the Luminaries in Ben Sira and the Manual of Discipline (1QS).” BASOR 200 (1970): 41–47. Kasher, Rimon. Targumic Toseftot to the Prophets. Sources for the Study of Jewish Culture 2. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1996. Lévi, Israel. L’Ecclésiastique. 2 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1898–1901. Maʾagarim: The Academy of the Hebrew Language Historical Dictionary Project. maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il, accessed 25/4/2016. Minissale, Antonino. La versione greca del Siracide: confronto con il testo ebraico alla luce dell’attività midrascica e del metodo targumico. AnBib 133. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1995. Morla, Víctor. Los Manuscritos Hebreos de Ben Sira: Traducción y Notas. Asociación Bíblica Española 59. Estella: Verbo Divino, 2012. Peters, Norbert. Der jüngst wiederaufgefundene hebräische Text des Buches Ecclesiasticus. Freiburg: Herdersche 1902. van Peursen, W. Th. The Verbal System in the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira. SSLL 41. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pietersma, Albert and Benjamin G. Wright. A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Reiterer, F. V. “Die Differenz zwischen Urtext und Ausgangtext: Beispiele zur Entwicklung der sirazidischen Versionen.” Pp. 123–40 in From Qumran to Aleppo: A Discussion with Emanuel Tov about the Textual History of Jewish Scriptures in Honor of his 65th Birthday. Ed. Armin Lange, et al., FRLANT 230. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Reiterer, F. V. “The Influence of the Book of Exodus on Ben Sira.” Pp. 100–17 in Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit: Essays in Honor of Alexander A. Di Lella, O. F. M. Ed. J. Corley and V. Skemp. CBQMS 38. Washington: CBAA, 2005. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Si 10, 12–12, 1—Nouvelle Édition du Fragment Adler (ENA 2536– 2).” RevQ 25/100 (2012): 575–603. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Sagesses hébraiques de l’époque hellénistique: Éditions, traductions, commentaires, perspectives historiques et linguistiques; Tome 2: Le manuscrit A de Ben Sira, Édition critique, traduction et notes paléographiques et philologiques.” Unpublished habilitation thesis. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg, 2012. Reymond, Eric D. “Fast Talk: Ben Sira’s Thoughts on Speech in Sir 5:9–6:1.” RevQ 26/102 (2013): 253–73.

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Reymond, Eric D. Qumran Hebrew: An Overview of Orthography, Phonology, and Morphology. Resources for Biblical Study 76. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. Schechter, S., and C. Taylor. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book of Ecclesiasticus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899. Schlanger, Judith Olszowy. “The ‘Booklet’ of Ben Sira: Codicological and Paleographical Remarks on the Cairo Genizah Fragments.” Pages 67–96 in Discovering, Deciphering, Dissenting: Ben Sira Manuscripts after 120 Years. Ed. James K. Aitken, Renate Eger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif. DCLY 2018. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Segal, M. Z. Sefer Ben Sira ha-Shalem. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Bialik, 1958. Sirat, Colette, Mordechai Glatzer, and Malachi Beit-Arié, eds. Codices Hebraicis Litteris Exarati Quo Tempore Scripti Fuerint Exhibentes, Tome III de 1085 à 1140. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, hebräisch und deutsch. Berlin: Reimer, 1906. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt. Berlin: Reimer, 1906. Wright, Benjamin G. “The Persian Glosses and the Text of Ms B Revisited.” Pages 125– 45 in Discovering, Deciphering, Dissenting: Ben Sira Manuscripts after 120 Years. Ed. James K. Aitken, Renate Eger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif. DCLY 2018. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018.

chapter 8

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach Jean-Sébastien Rey L’œuvre scribale est un commentaire, une paraphrase, le surplus de sens, et de langue, apporté à une lettre essentiellement inaccomplie. B. Cerquiglini1

∵ 8.1

Introduction2

The history of the transmission of the Hebrew text of Sirach is known to be particularly complex. One of the traits of this complex history is the attestation of numerous doublets in these manuscripts and more specifically in MS B. This study intends to analyze this phenomenon from three perspectives: 1) to highlight the question of the historical development of the Hebrew text of Sirach; 2) to focus on scribal practices from antiquity to the medieval period;3 and finally, 3) to question the theoretical and pragmatic distinction between textual criticism and literary criticism. In order to approach these issues, after reviewing relevant research and defining the concept of a doublet, this essay will be structured around analysis of a series of pragmatic examples that may illustrate three interrelated processes: collation of textual variants by scribes, literary development, and retroversion.4

1 Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante, 58–59. 2 My thanks go to Myles Schoonover for his editing work and for correcting and improving my English. This article has been written with the support of the ANR-DFG/MSH Lorraine Project PLURITEXT and the Center of Research Écritures (EA3943). 3 “Doublets provide us with a chance to study the various ways Jewish scribes ‘copied’ their master texts.” Ghormley, “Inspired Scribes,” 321. 4 This study does not aim to provide a systematic analysis of all the doublets attested in the Hebrew manuscripts, but to select several paradigmatic examples. Moreover, as H. P. Rüger provided an analysis of the doublets of MS A, this study focuses mainly on the doublets of MS B. See Rüger, Text und Textform, 1970.

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Rey

State of Research

The question of the doublets in the Hebrew manuscripts of Sirach has been a constant source of controversy among scholars since the Hebrew manuscripts were rediscovered at the end of the 19th century. In 1899, these doublets were examined by D. S. Margoliouth, who argued that they were the result of a double retroversion, one from the Greek and one from the Syriac.5 Contrarily, Eduard König argued the exact opposite on the basis of the same examples, since according to him, retranslation is “absolutely impossible” even in the case of doublets.6 In the same period, Israel Lévi published a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, first in a double article published in 1899–19007 and then in the second volume of his commentary on Sirach.8 In his earlier article, Lévi reluctantly accepts Margoliouth’s hypothesis against König, noticing that the doublets often are attested in one part from the Greek text and in the other from the Syriac.9 Lévi offers a more nuanced view in his later commentary. While he still maintains the idea that doublets have been retroverted by learned scribes from the Syriac,10 he limits the hypothesis of retroversion from the Greek to one dubious example (Sir 30:20).11 He also raises the possibility that doublets may reflect two Hebrew recensions from which derive the Greek and Syriac translations, respectively.12 A scrupulous scribe would have collated these two forms of several sentences one after another.13 Unfortunately, he does not develop this idea further. In any case, Lévi judiciously observes 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

“Here over and over again we have two renderings of the same verse, one according to each version; and the mistranslations here are particularly gross.” See Margoliouth, “The Hebrew Ecclesiasticus,” 528. König, “Origin,” 174. See Lévi, “Les nouveaux fragments hébreux,” esp. 11–15, 181. Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, xxvii–xxxv. “Les doublets que nous venons d’examiner sont donc bien, dans leur double forme, de doubles traductions, faites l’une sur le syriaque, l’autre sur le grec, et la conclusion que nous en avons tirée reste entière: celui qui en est l’auteur est probablement l’auteur de partie ou de la totalité du restant de l’ouvrage” (Lévi, “Les nouveaux fragments hébreux,” 186). In a short footnote he implicitly contradicts the hypothesis of retroversion from the Syriac by noticing that some of these doublets were probably already present in the 3rd century CE, since the Syriac seems to have preserved some of them. Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, xxxiv. See also Corley, “An Alternative Hebrew Form,” 21 n. 52. “Il est donc très naturel qu’un copiste consciencieux, disposant de deux mss., ait placé côte à côte les recensions différentes d’un même verset. Au lieu de se borner à noter à la marge les variantes, il a pu écrire le verset entier soit à la marge, soit dans le corps même du texte” (Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, xviii).

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

127

that the doublets of MS B are not due to the copyist of our manuscript but were already present in the texts that the scribe was copying. This argument is based on the Persian note14 of Sir 35:21: “S’il avertit cette fois que cette réplique manquait à l’exemplaire qu’il suivait, c’est donc que généralement les doublets se lisaient et dans cet exemplaire et dans les autres qu’il consultait. Ici encore cette conclusion sera confirmée par les faits.”15 A few years later in 1904, Victor Ryssel defended the same hypothesis, arguing that the doublets of MS B were retroverted from the Syriac translation.16 Unfortunately, the examples proposed by Ryssel are unconvincing, as numerous doublets differ radically from the Syriac. In 1934, Moshe Segal rejected Lévi’s hypothesis of doublets retranslated from Syriac17 and suggested that if only a few doublets had their origin in errors of transcription (viz. 14:14b; 32:18; 33:11), then all the other doublets were created to simplify the difficult classical diction of the author. As Segal puts it: A feature common to both Syr. and Heb. is the tendency occasionally to simplify the difficult classical diction of the author and to reduce it to the easy popular diction of Mishnaic Hebrew. This tendency has sometimes given rise to a duplication of the sayings of our book in two forms, one in a more or less severe classical Hebrew and the other in a simplified colloquial Hebrew. The older classical form has been preserved in Gr. and the later popular form in Syr., while Heb. has as a rule preserved the two forms side by side.18 According to Segal this process of simplification appears through oralization and oral proverbial transmission: Thus, we may suppose, some verses of our book received orally a new and more popular form, and this new form eventually found its way into the written text of the book, replacing the older form. Accordingly, we reach the conclusion that Syr. is based upon a Hebrew text which embodied

14 15 16 17 18

For the Persian notes, see Wright, “The Persian Glosses,” 125–46. Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, v. Ryssel, “Die Herkunft,” 248–53. Segal, “Evolution,” 91–149, esp. 144–46. Ibid., 118; see also, “Of these doublets only a few had their origin in errors of transcription, viz. 14:14b; 32:18; 33:11. All the other doublets originated in a conscious desire to simplify the difficult language of the original form of the saying and to make it more intelligible” (ibid., 122–23).

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popular paraphrases of certain verses originally current orally in Jewish circles of the Talmudic period.19 In 1970, following the same intuition as Segal, Hans Peter Rüger offered an exhaustive analysis of the doublets of MS A.20 He distinguishes two historical layers: “die ältere und jüngere Textform” (the older and newer text form) and notices that the relationships between these two forms are similar to the relationships between the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible and Targumic translations. According to Rüger, the old text is characterized by usage of late Biblical Hebrew, while the newer text attests Mishnaic Hebrew with numerous Aramaic words and phrases. He claims that the variants between the two forms are not the result of textual alterations occurring during transmission, but are instead the result of conscious (linguistic and aesthetic) or unconscious (bilingualism and lexical interferences) reasons.21 However, the two hypotheses of Segal and Rüger are hardly compatible with the data provided by the Masada scroll. Indeed, as this later text shows, there are numerous Mishnaic or Aramaic words and phrases attested in the Masada scroll that have been biblicized in the Medieval codices.22 Finally, as already noticed by Lévi and Segal, our doublets are curiously very localized. For example, we observe a series of doublets in MS B that are missing in MS A: in chapter 11 (vv. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) and in chapters 30–32 (e.g., 31:13, 15, 16; 32:11, 14, 16, 18, 21, 22); the doublets in MS B disappear after chapter 34. This last factor must be related to the fact that the marginal readings also end after chapter 45. This corroborates the hypothesis of the existence of incomplete alternative versions of Sirach in the medieval period. 8.3

What Is a Doublet?

Defining the concept of a doublet is not straightforward.23 In biblical studies, it generally refers to a phenomenon within textual criticism. Emanuel Tov defines it as follows:

19 20 21 22 23

Ibid., 123. Rüger, Text und Textform, 12–26. Rüger argues on the basis of theoretical elements developed by Weinrein, Languages in Contact. See Rüger, Text und Textform, 20–23. Yadin, Masada VI, 163. For a tentative definition and a fruitful discussion of this notion, see Ghormley, “Inspired Scribes,” 102.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

129

A doublet (lectio duplex, double reading, conflate reading) is a particular type of redundancy created by the combination of two or three different and sometimes synonymous readings, either in juxtaposition or in close proximity. These doublets sometimes resulted from an erroneous juxtaposition of elements, but in other cases they grew out of a conscious desire to preserve alternative readings. Some doublets were probably created when interlinear or marginal elements—possibly corrections …— were wrongly copied as part of the running text.24 Yet a doublet may also be a stylistic figure of speech that falls under the category of semantic repetition25—in the same way as the well-known parallelism feature in Hebrew poetry.26 As such, doublets may articulate simultaneously lexical repetitions—explicit resumption of a linguistic segment—and lexical variations. One of the basic problems is knowing how much lexical repetition has to be present to identify a doublet. In some cases, synonymous parallelism is at work. As noticed by Ghormley: “When the disparity between the two texts of a (potential) doublet is too great, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that one text is directly based on the other.”27 As in our case variations are mainly synonymous, and the decision must not be limited to the evaluation of the repetitive elements, but must also consider semantic equivalences. 8.4

Doublets as Scribal Collation of Textual Variants

Lévi’s hypothesis that doublets are the result of scribal collation of different textual traditions is, in our opinion, now well documented, and we will now apply this hypothesis to the Sirach manuscripts.

24 25

26 27

Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 241. See also Talmon, “Conflate Readings,” 1956; idem, “Double Reading,” 144–84; idem, “Conflate Reading (OT),” 170–173. On the category of semantic repetition, see Frédéric, La répétition, 188–217: “La répétition sémantique recourt essentiellement à la reprise d’un noyau sémico-connotatif—soit totale (répétition synonymique), soit partielle (répétition fondée sur la superposition de sens)—à celle d’un thème (répétition thématique), ou encore à celle d’un référent plus complexe (mise en abyme)—cette dernière modalité nous fait quitter le domaine de la poésie pour celui du récit, en même temps qu’elle met en lumière de nouvelles modalités de répétition sémantique qui semblent relever essentiellement du domaine romanesque” (188). Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, 1981. Ghormley, “Inspired Scribes,” 98.

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8.4.1 Doublets in B Missing in A: Sir 11:4 We observe numerous doublets attested in MS B but missing in MS A. It is, for example, the case for the series of doublets in Sir 10:31–11:10. With the exception of Rüger, these doublets have not received a lot of attention by scholars.28 Given that we do not presume a priori that the scribe of MS A deleted these doublets, we have to suppose that they are later than the copy of MS A or that they come from another textual tradition.29 Sir 11:4 MS A:

MS B:

‫ה א] [ור אל תהתל‬

‫ ב‬Do not mock the one wrapped

in loincloth ‫ ואל תקלס במרירי יום‬And do not scoff in the bitterness of the day

‫במ ו ף בגדים אל תת אר‬

(B1)

‫ יום‬30‫ואל תקלס במרירי‬ ‫ב ו ה א ור אל תהתל‬ ‫ואל תקלס במרירי יום‬

[= MS A] (B2)

Do not glorify yourself when (you) cover yourself with clothes And do not scoff in the bitterness of the day Do not mock the one wrapped in loincloth And do not scoff in the bitterness of the day

The first stich (B1) is equivalent to the Greek translation (ἐν περιβολῇ ἱµατίων µὴ καυχήσῃ, “Do not boast about the putting-on of clothes”).31 This is not the 28

29

30 31

Rüger, Text und Textform, 54. One of the main reasons is that this folio of MS B was discovered in 1956 by Schirmann (“Additional Leaves,” 125–34); after the main textual studies of Rudolf Smend (Die Weisheit, 1906), Lévi, Peters and Segal, among others. See also Di Lella, “Recently Identified Leaves of Sirach,” 153–67. As the marginal readings of MS B represent a textual tradition close to MS A and as the marginal readings of MS B agree most of the time with the Masada text, we must conclude that MS A represents, generally, an earlier textual tradition than MS B. See Rey, “The Relationship between Manuscripts A, B, and D and the Marginal Readings of Manuscript B,” (forthcoming). Schirmann, Di Lella, Zeev Ben-Ḥayyim, The Book of Ben Sira, and Rüger read ‫כמרירי‬, while Beentjes and Accordance read ‫במרירי‬. In this article, unless otherwise stated, translations of the Greek are taken from the translation of Sirach in Pietersma and Wright, A New English Translation of the Septuagint; and translations from the Syriac are taken from Calduch-Benages, Ferrer, and Liesen, La sabiduría del escriba. The second stich of the Greek (καὶ ἐν ἡµέρᾳ δόξης µὴ ἐπαίρου, “and do not

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

131

case for the second stich, which differs radically from the Greek but is similar to the second form of the proverb in B2 and A. This observation excludes the hypothesis that the first form of our doublet was retroverted from the Greek. The second form of the proverb, B2, is similar to A and coincides more or less with the Syriac translation. Contrary to Rüger’s opinion, it seems difficult to decide which form of the text is the most ancient.32 The relationship between the two forms of the proverb in B1 and B2 is the result of (1) a synonymic alternative between ‫ במ ו ף בגדים‬and ‫ב ו ה א ור‬, and (2) a confusion between ‫“( אל ה ל‬do not mock”) and ‫“( אל תה ל‬boast not yourself”), a synonymous expression of ‫ אל ת אר‬attested in B1. But it is difficult to know in which way these transformations happened. As we cannot explain this doublet as retroversion, and insofar as both forms of the doublets represent, respectively, the Greek and the Syriac translation, we must suppose that the scribe collated the Hebrew Vorlage of these two textual traditions. Such a situation is frequent in our doublets. Consequently, the scribe does not simply copy the text of Sirach he has in front of him but compares at least two textual traditions, and, when these copies diverge, he conflates the two textual traditions, resulting in the doublet. Moreover, by doing this, the scribe creates a new text where the doublet that was first due to a textual phenomenon, becomes a stylistic figure. Indeed, in our case the doublet provides a new meaning, and both forms offer a beautiful and meaningful antithetic parallelism: “Do not glorify yourself when (you) cover yourself with clothes” // “Do not mock the one wrapped in loincloth.”

32

exalt yourself in a day of glory”) differs from all other textual form but offers a very good sense with the first stich. Rüger argues that B1 represents the more ancient form of the text, and B2 and A the most recent. In fact, the argument is difficult to follow. First, he notices that the Hebrew verb ‫ ה‬is regularly translated by ‫ ף‬in the Targumim. However, this contradicts his assumption that Aramaic forms represent the most recent form of the text (see n. 21). Moreover, the verb ‫ ף‬in the meaning “to cover oneself,” scarcely attested in Biblical Hebrew (see Pss 65:14; 73:6 and perhaps Job 23:9), is primarily used in Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic; furthermore, the pual appears mainly in the medieval period (See Ben Yehuda, A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew, 4426; and Maagarim [http://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il]). Second, Rüger cleverly notices the equivalent evolution between ‫ כמרירי יום‬in B1 and Job 3:5 into ‫ במרירי יום‬in B2 and 1QHa 13:36. However, all this argumentation may be pointless as the reading ‫ כמרירי יום‬is dubious. Di Lella argues for the opposite position: “B’s added alternative is a corrupt variant. With B read ʾēzôr, loincloth, and point, with Smend, bimĕrîrî yôm, “at the bitter (individual) of the day”—cf. Deut 32:24. B’s alternative, kmryry ywm = Job 3:5, is meaningless here” (Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 229).

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Rey

8.4.2 A Complex Case Between A and B: Sir 11:6 The second example I have selected simultaneously presents two characteristics: (1) a doublet in MS B that is missing in MS A, and (2) a doublet attested in MS A and MS B, which concerns only one expression and not the entire sentence. Sir 11:6 (MS A): ‫ל יח‬

‫ רבים נ אים נקל מא וה‬Many exalted / princes33 have been

greatly disgraced and have been humiliated together ‫ ו ם נכבדים נ נ בי‬And the honored have been also delivered up.34

The first stich is abnormally long, and the clause ‫ וה ל יח‬appears to be a double reading of ‫נקל מא‬. Indeed, ancient translations represent only one form of the clause. The first form, ‫נקלו מאד‬, is represented by the Greek (ἠτιµάσθησαν σφόδρα), while the second, ‫והש לו יחד‬, agrees—particularly regarding the last word—with the Syriac ( ‫ܚ‬ ‫ܪܘ ܐ‬ ‫ ܐ‬, “who suffered dishonor together”). Regardless of which is the most ancient form,35 it seems clear that a scribe, here again, decided to conflate two alternative readings that derive from two concurrent recensions. However, unlike the preceding example, the scribe does not duplicate the entire sentence, but just one clause of the sentence, a situation also frequently attested to in the Hebrew Bible.36 The situation in MS B attests a second stage of transmission and illustrates clearly the process of development. The sentence is attested three times, both as a doublet in the main text and in the marginal reading. B1 presents the sentence without the addition of the double reading, while B2 and the marginal reading B3 agree with the double reading of A.37 33 34 35

36 37

The scribe vocalized ‫ נ אים‬as a niphal participle, “the exalted ones” (cf. Isa 2:13), while Greek and Syriac read ‫נ אים‬, “chief, prince, ruler,” as antithesis of the ‫ נדכאים‬of v. 5. For the elliptic Hebrew ‫נתן ביד‬, see 1 Sam 26:23 and 1 Chr 25:20. Rüger considers that the last form ( ‫ )וה ל יח‬is the most recent because of Mishnaic features. But the arguments of Rüger are not conclusive. Even though the hophal of ‫ש ל‬ is not attested to in Biblical and Qumran Hebrew, the frequent usage of the hiphil makes it usage plausible. Finally, the use of ‫ יחד‬in adverbial postverbal position is well attested to in Biblical Hebrew. Talmon, “Double Reading.” Because the marginal reading is incomplete, we cannot be definitive as to whether this marginal reading is perfectly similar to B2. (It would not be an exception where the marginal reading is similar to the plain text.) Most of the marginal readings of MS B have been added by the same scribe who also wrote the notes in Persian. These annotations

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

133

(1) MS B main text:

‫וגם‬

‫ירים‬ ‫ונכבדים נתנו ביד‬

‫[אד ונכבדים נתנו ביד‬ ‫נק[לו מאד והוש לו יחד‬

]—B1 ]—B2

(2) MS B margin: ‫—]       מא[ד והש לו יחד‬B3 ‫]      [ביד‬

At an earlier stage, before the production of MS B, a scribe conflated the short sentence in the main text and the long form originating in another Hebrew witness which is similar to MS A and close to the Vorlage of the Syriac translation, as in the preceding example (B1 + B2). At the time of the copying of MS B, the scribe preserved the doublet in the main text, but also added in the margin the version attested to in its other copy of Sirach, which seems to be similar to MS A. As the doublet in the main text of MS B (B2) and the marginal reading of MS B (B3) attest a monogenetic error, we can reasonably conclude that the doublet, as well as the marginal reading of MS B, come from a recension from the same family as MS A. Another Doublet of B Missing in A but Represented in a Rabbinic Quotation: Sir 16:4 In Sir 16:4, we have another example of a doublet in MS B that is missing in MS A. 8.4.3

‫ מאחד רירי ירא ייי תשב יר‬B1 (= MS A) From one childless (person) who fears

God a city is populated, ‫ וממש חות בוגדים תחרב‬But through families (MS A: a family) of treacherous men it is desolated. ‫ מאחד מ]בי[ן תשב יר‬B2 From one understanding (person) a city is populated, ‫ וממש חת בוגדים תחרב‬But through a family of treacherous men it is desolated.

are based on at least one other incomplete copy of Sirach from the same family as the Hebrew text of Sirach MSS A and D. For more details on these marginal notes, see Rey and Dhont, “Scribal Practices,” 97–123; and Rey, “Relationship.”

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Rey

The first sentence, also attested to in MS A, agrees with the Syriac ( ‫ܚ‬ ‫ ܪ ܚܠ‬, “for by one [person] who fears God”), while the second sentence agrees with the Greek (ἀπὸ γὰρ ἑνὸς συνετοῦ). I have chosen this example, because, while the second form of the doublet is not attested in any other Hebrew manuscripts, it is in a quotation of Sirach by Rabbi Nissim ben Jacob, in the text produced by Jellinek’s Beth Ha-Midrash, V (19673), 135: (Meil Zedakah): ‫ ;וכן אמר באחד מגין תשב יר‬idem, 206: ‫וכן אמר בן סירא באחד מגין‬ ‫ ;וכו‬idem, VI, 133: ‫שכן אמר בן סירא באחד מגין תתיישב ה יר‬. ‫( מגין‬Hiphil of ‫גנן‬, “to protect,” “from one who protects”) is without doubt a mistake for ‫מבין‬, precisely as in the doublet of B and the Greek.38 Of course, we do not know from where this doublet comes. It may come from a lost Hebrew copy, but it is also highly plausible that the scribe knew this other form of the sentence through rabbinic tradition—the one quoted by Nissim. In that case, this example would illustrate that the scribe not only conflated two or more manuscripts in one, but also researched in the literary tradition other attestations or quotations of Sirach and recorded them as doublets. Doublet Attested to in More than One Hebrew Manuscript: Sir 32[35]:16 (MSS B, E, and F) In Sir 10:31 we have a doublet common to MSS A and B, with the same mistake (‫ ב יניו‬for ‫ )ב וניו‬that may prove a common textual tradition.39 Cases of doublets attested to in more than one textual tradition are also represented in the overlapping texts of MSS B, E and F. It is, for example, the case in Sir 32[35]:16: 8.4.4

MS B: ‫ירא ייי יבין מש‬ ‫ותחבולות מנשף יוציא‬ ‫יראי ייי יבינו מש ו‬ ‫וכחמות רבות יוציאו‬ ‫מלבם   וחכמות‬

38 39

The one who fears the LORD discerns judgment, And from darkness he brings out advice/guidance (?). They that fear the LORD discern his judgment, And from their heart, they bring out much wisdom.

Schechter and Taylor (The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 52 n.4) mention another form of the sentence in the Sepher Maasiyoth (ed. Warsaw, 1886). But this mistake may be a polygenetic error, as a similar case is attested to in Zech 9:8. For this verse, see van Peursen, “The Alleged Retroversions,” 57–61. For an analysis of this doublet, see Rüger, Text und Textform, 63. See also the discussion of Reymond in the current volume.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

MS E (= MS F): ‫]ירא ייי י[בין מש‬ ‫ותחבולות מנשף יוציא‬ ‫]יראי ייי יבי[נו מש ו‬ ‫וחכמות יוצי]או[ מלבם‬

LXX:

135

The one who fears the LORD discerns judgment, And from darkness he brings out advice/guidance (?). They who fear the LORD discern his judgment, And they bring out wisdom from their heart.

οἱ φοβούµενοι κύριον εὑρήσουσιν κρίµα καὶ δικαιώµατα ὡς φῶς ἐξάψουσιν Those who fear the Lord will get a verdict, and they will kindle right acts like a light.

Syriac:

‫ܘܗܝ‬ ‫ܢ ܚ ܘ‬ ‫ܒ ܘ ܢ ܘ‬

‫ܬ‬

‫ܚܠܘܗܝ ܐ‬

‫ܘܚ‬

Those who fear God will become wise in His verdicts, and much wisdom will go out from their hearts. This doublet is attested in three manuscripts and is of special interest. No form of the doublet can be explained as a retroversion from the Greek or the Syriac. As already noticed by Segal,40 for the first stich, the Greek offers a mixture of the reading of c and a lines of the Hebrew, and, for the second stich, it seems to be a free rendering of the b line in Hebrew.41 The Syriac, overall, follows the Hebrew of c and d.42 It is evident that the doublets appeared during the transmission of the text. We have already seen that doublets from MS B are often not represented in MSS A, D, E, and F, and therefore must be later. In this case, on the contrary, the doublet of B is represented in three witnesses proving that, as is also probably the case for Sir 10:31, the doublet appeared at an earlier stage of the textual transmission. It demonstrates also that the creation of a doublet by collation of divergent textual traditions was not the work of only one erudite scribe but seems to be a common practice by ancient scribes.

40 41 42

Segal, “Evolution,” 122. ‫ מנשף‬was read ‫ כנשף‬by the Greek in the sense of “dawn,” as in Job 7:4 (Segal, ibid.). According to Segal, ‫ מלבם‬is the result of the following transformation: ‫> מנ שם > מנשף‬ ‫מלבם‬.

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Finally, as the textual value of the doublets is often reflected by the Greek and sometimes by the Syriac, we must conclude that these textual forms precede these ancient translations. Divergent Doublets Attested in MSS B and in MSS E and F: Sir 32[35]:18 The doublet attested in Sir 32[35]:18 is particularly intriguing, and the textual situation of this verse is obscure. As with the preceding example, it is attested in three manuscripts: B, E, and F, but the doublet of MS B is not the same as the doublet attested in MSS E and F. MS B offers three forms of the sentence: 8.4.5

Manuscript B Main text: a A wise man does not conceal [mg. wisdom] b And a scorner does not guard his tongue. c A wise man does not take a gift/present/bribe d Proud and scorner do not guard instruction (Torah) Margin: f A violent man does not acquire understanding g Proud and scorner do no acquire the commandment.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

137

two as doublets in the main text (a–b, c–d) and one in the margin (e–f ). MSS E and F also provide a doublet that corresponds to a–b of MS B and f–g of the margin of MS B. The Greek and Syriac texts offer readings that are quite different from the Hebrew forms, and they reflect a complex history of transmission. Furthermore, it is clear that our various Hebrew forms of the sentence cannot be explained as retroversions.43 Generally, the Syriac corresponds to the first form of the doublet in MS B, while the Greek would correspond to elements a and d, except that διανόηµα reflects ‫ שכל‬from f. As the situation is quite complex, I opted to present the situation through a figure:

LXX a? A man of deliberation will never overlook a thought, d? The stranger and the arrogant will not cower from fear. [+ and after doing with him without deliberation]

Manuscript F (= ± ms E): a b f g

A man does not conceal wisdom, And a scorner does not guard his tongue. A violent man does not acquire understanding, Proud and scorner do not acquire the commandment.

Syriac a An astute person does not dismiss wisdom when it is hidden b And an evil-doer does not watch his tongue

43

The Vorlage of the Greek for the entire verse is not totally clear: (1) ἀνὴρ βουλῆς (cf. 1 Macc 2:65) would suppose ‫( איש צה‬Ps 119:24; Isa 40:13; 46:11; 1QSa 1:3; 1QSb 4:24; 1QpHab 5:10; 9:10; etc.). But most probably this Greek form came under the influence of ἄνευ βουλὴς from v. 19 (Peters, Der jüngst wiederaufgefundene hebräische Text, 131; contra Smend, Die

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Manuscript B Main text ‫חכמה‬

*

‫איש חכם לא יכסה כחמה‬ ‫ולץ לא ישמר לשונו׃‬ ‫איש חכם לא יקח שחד‬ ‫זד ולץ לא ישמר תורה׃‬

a b c d

‫איש חמס לא יקח שכל‬ ‫זד ולץ לא יקח מצוה׃‬

e f

Margin

Figure 8.1 The intricate textual situation of Sir 32:18

It is very difficult to retrace development of the phenomenon. The Hebrew sentence existed in three forms that are attested in different and independent textual traditions. (In that case, we cannot say that B depends on E and F, or vice versa.) Moreover, since the Greek indicates another textual form, we have to suppose yet another unknown Hebrew Vorlage. I have not found a simple explanation for this phenomenon. The first solution would be to consider a polygenetic error:44 two textual traditions Weisheit, 496). (2) The Greek οὐ µὴ παρίδῃ is more intriguing. Segal considers that it comes from the Hebrew ‫יב ה‬, “to despise,” as a mistake for ‫ יכסה‬and that the Syriac ( ‫ܐ ܒ‬ ‫ܣܐ‬ ‫ܟ‬ ‫ܚ‬, “does not dismiss wisdom when it is hidden”) would be a combination of the Greek and the Hebrew forms. However, παροράω never translates ‫ ב ה‬in the Septuagint (the Syriac ‫ ܒ‬may nevertheless attest this reading, see Sir 4:4a). (3) διανόηµα supposes ‫שכל‬, which is attested in MSS B margin and E and F. (4) ἀλλότριος καὶ ὑπερήφανος clearly represent the Hebrew ‫ ד ול‬with a confusion between ‫ ד‬and ‫ ר‬. (5) οὐ καταπτήξει is also hard to explain. According to Smend, ‫ יקח‬may have been read as ‫יחת‬, while

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

139

LXX ἀνὴρ βουλῆς οὐ μὴ παρίδῃ διανόημα ἀλλότριος καὶ ὑπερήφανος οὐ καταπτήξει φόβον [+ καὶ μετὰ τὸ ποιῆσαι μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἄνευ βουλῆς]

Manuscripts F (= ± ms E) ‫איש לא יכסה חכמה‬ ‫ולץ לא ישמור לשונו׃‬ ‫איש חמס לא יקח שכל‬ ‫זד ולץ לא יקח מצוה׃‬

Syriac ‫ܒܪܢܫܐ ܥܪܝܡ�ܐ ܠ�ܐ ܫܒܩ ܚܟܡܬܐ ܟܕ ܡܟܣܝܐ‬ ‫ܘܥܘܠ�ܐ ܠ�ܐ ܢܛܪ ܠܫܢܗ‬

produced here a doublet independently. While this solution is unlikely, it cannot be excluded. Another scenario is to consider that an initial doublet appeared in the transmission of the text by collation of two textual traditions. Then one of these doublets, in one family of manuscripts, has known several transformations. And then, the copyist of MS B responsible for the marginal reading found again the initial form of the doublet in the other textual family and copied it into the margin. In this scenario, the production of the Greek is hard to explain. It must belong to an independent textual tradition, or it has undergone its own textual transformations.

44

Segal suggests instead ‫ יכר‬as a possible Vorlage. (6) φόβον would represent ‫מורא‬, a mistake for ‫תורה‬. (7) Finally, the Lucianic recension and several manuscripts add a clause that has no connection with our Hebrew doublets, and that seems to be a corruption of v. 19b: καὶ µετὰ τὸ ποιῆσαι µετ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἄνευ βουλῆς, “and after doing with him without deliberation.” A polygenetic error is an error which can occur independently in various textual witness without genetic implications.

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Ω Creation of the doublet (= MS B a–b and e–f)

MSS E and F ?

Plain text of MS B

a–b and e–f continue to be transmitted

The Doublet e–f is changed to c–d

through one family of manuscripts

Margin of MS B A copyist has a second copy close to the family of MSS E-F and re-introduces the doublet e–f in the margin of MS B

Figure 8.2 Tentative solution

Consequently, according to this scenario, we must think of the genealogy between manuscripts not only in vertical and linear relationships, but also in horizontal relationships with contamination between independent manuscript families, because scribes compare different witnesses, when they are copying texts. If this is the case, it implies that vertical genealogy stematization does not represent a reliable model. 8.4.6 Sir 35:26—When the Scribe Explains His Own Doublet The last example of scribal collation of textual variants I would like to examine is the case of Sir 35:26. As the manuscript is altered, I will only focus on the second stich. On the basis of the preserved traces of ink, we can reconstruct the last line of the manuscript with confidence according to Illustration 8.1 below. ‫כ ת ח י ים ב ת בצורת‬ ‫כ ב ח י ים ב ת צר‬

(1) As a time of thunderstorms in time of drought, (2) as a cloud of thunderbolts in time of need.

The result of this reconstruction is that the two lines of Sir 35:26 represent a doublet, which was already supposed by Lévi.45 This case is particularly 45

Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, iv–v.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

141

illustration 8.1 Reconstruction of Sir 35:26

interesting, because the marginal Persian note explicitly explains the phenomenon: “This verse (is) from other cop(ies) and had been omitted here and written [or and I wrote it].”46 Indeed, as noticed by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, the penultimate line of the manuscript is not written by the same scribe as the plain text but, most probably, by the same scribe as the marginal notes.47 That means that the scribe filled the penultimate blank line of the manuscript with a doublet that was attested to in its other copy, and explained what he was doing. 8.5

Doublet as Literary Creation: Sir 4:3–4a—When Textual Variations Imply Stylistic Improvement

In Sir 4:3–4a, which is only preserved in MS A, we observe another doublet (v. 3a and b) missing in the Greek and Syriac translations:

46 47

See Wright, “The Persian Glosses.” Olszowy-Schlanger, “The ‘Booklet’ of Ben Sira,” 67–96. I suppose that because there was a blank line in the main text for a reason I do not grasp, rather than writing the variant in the margin, the scribe copied it directly into the space available. Blank lines delimit thematic sections in MS B: fol. I recto, between lines 10 and 11 (between Sir 10:27 and 10:28); fol. II verso, between ll. 15 and 16 (between Sir 15:15 and 15:16); folio VIII recto, between ll. 5 and 6 (between Sir 37:31 and 38:1); fol. VIII verso, between ll. 12 and 13 (between Sir 38:23 and 38:24); fol. XI verso, between ll. 11 and 12 (between Sir 42:8 and 42:9); fol. XII recto, between ll. 4 and 5 (between Sir 42:14 and 42:15); fol. XXI recto, between ll. 8 and 9 (between Sir 51:12 and 51:13).

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‫ אל תחמיר מ י ד‬Do not make the stomach of an oppressed person ‫ וקרב ני אל תכאיב‬churn, and the entrails of the poor, do not impose hurt

on them. ‫ אל תמנ מתן ממסכינ‬Do not refuse a gift to the indigent who is near you. LXX:

καρδίαν παρωργισµένην µὴ προσταράξῃς καὶ µὴ παρελκύσῃς δόσιν προσδεοµένου An angry heart do not trouble, and do not delay giving to one in need.

Syr:

‫ܘܗܝ ܐܢ ܐ ܣ ܐ ܐ ܬܟ‬ ‫ܐ‬ ‫ܘ ܐ ܬܟܠܐ ܘܗ‬ Do not make the entrails of the poor man suffer, and do not withhold a gift from the needy.

If one of the two stiches of v. 3 has been added secondarily, perhaps by conflating two alternative readings, we realize that the scribe takes an active part in the poetic construction of the text with a beautiful chiastic parallelism (verb—complement versus complement—verb). Moreover, the combination of synonyms is not without biblical echoes: ‫ מ ה‬and ‫ קרב‬are connected in Lam 1:20 (which also associates ‫ מ ה‬and ‫ ;חמר‬see also Lam 2:11), Isa 16:11, and Job 20:14.48 It seems that the doublet, even if it comes from the conflation of two textual traditions, strengthens the poetic value of the images used here, and should be considered a textual development rather that a textual corruption. 8.6

The Doublet in Sir 31:16—When Scribes Retrovert from the Syriac Translation into Hebrew

Lévi’s hypothesis that doublets appeared in the history of textual transmission through retroversion from Syriac has often been criticized. However, such a hypothesis cannot be excluded altogether, as Sir 31:16 indicates:49 48 49

For the link between ‫ ד‬and ‫ ני‬, see Ps 74:21. See Kister, “Additions,” 51–52; and Rey, “Reflections,” 187–204.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

‫הסב כאיש אשר נבחר‬ ‫ן תג ל‬ ‫אל ת‬ ‫]אכל כאיש נכח‬ [ ‫ן תגלו תגל‬ ‫ואל ת‬ ‫ד שר כמו‬ ‫ואכול כאיש דבר ששם ל ני‬ ‫ולא תהיה גרגרן ן תמאס‬ ‫ן תמאס‬

(…) ‫ ואל תל‬17b

143

(1) Sit down (at a banquet) like a man chosen, do not fall upon (food) lest you be rejected. [(2) Eat like an honest man, and do not fall upon (food) lest you be revealed.] (3) Know that your neighbor is like you, and eat like a man whatever one sets before you, and do not be a glutton lest you be abhorred. (…) 17b (4) Do not gulp down lest you be abhorred.

The textual situation of this verse is particularly complex. The proverbial saying concerning food is repeated four times, while the Greek and the Syriac have only one occurrence. The first (1) is in the body of the text; the second (2) is in the margin; the third (3), which is disrupted from the preceding sentence by a misplaced phrase related to one’s neighbor (31:15a = ‫)ד שר כמו‬, becomes a tristich and for this reason has its last stich written in the left margin. Finally, the second colon of the sentence is also attested in 31:17b for the fourth time (4). In this series of doublets, I would like to demonstrate—in addition to the fact that the scribe copied alternative forms of the proverb (1, 2, 4)—that the third form of the sentence (3) is retroverted from the Syriac version. Let us start with the first two forms (1) and (2). The first form (1) has undergone several transformations independently of the Greek and Syriac traditions: ‫ הסב‬is a sophisticated equivalent of the more common ‫ אכל‬attested in all the other Hebrew forms of the sentence, as well as the Greek (φάγε) and the Syriac ( ); the phrase ‫כאיש אשר נבחר‬, “like a man who is chosen,” certainly appears in the transmission of the text as graphic confusion with ‫אשר נכח‬, “what is before you” (see the Greek τὰ παρακείµενά σοι and the Syriac ), close to ‫נכח‬, which is attested in the marginal version of this sentence (2).50 The marginal version of this verse (2) has also undergone various transformations: ‫כאיש נכח‬, which is certainly misleading, could mean “Eat like an honest man,”51 a meaning surprisingly not so far from the main text (1). Moreover, the form ‫ תגלו‬is obscure in the context. This verb is again corrected in the margin to ‫תגל‬,52 which is not really better and would be a metathesis for ‫תג ל‬, 50 51 52

See Segal, Sepher Ben Sira Hashalem, 195. ‫נכ)ו(ח‬, which would be a mistake for ‫נכח‬, could be considered as an adjective (as in Prov 8:9 and 24:26), while such a usage is not common to qualify a person in Classical and Rabbinic Hebrew. From ‫( גל‬Niphal), “to be opened through rubbing or scratching,” or a synonym of ‫גלה‬, “to be known, to be revealed,” Mopsik (La Sagesse, 186) translates: “de peur d’être mis à nu.”

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which is attested in the main text. The scribe has scrupulously copied an erroneous form of the sentence. The third version (3) of this proverb is certainly the most interesting for five reasons. First, this version differs clearly from the two previous forms. Second, both stichs are unusually long. Third, the Hebrew ( ‫ )ואכול כאיש דבר ששם ל ני‬is a verbatim equivalent of the Syriac ( ‫ܒܪ‬ ‫ܐ‬ , “Eat as a man what[ever] is put before you”).53 The third colon clearly depends on the Syriac: ‫ܢܐ‬ ‫ܪ ܐܬ‬ ‫ܘ ܐ ܬܗܘ‬, “and do not be a glutton lest you be hated.” Fourth, the syntax and the vocabulary of this stich is uncommon in Classical Hebrew and follows isomorphically the syntax and the vocabulary of the Syriac. Notably, the Hebrew vetitive, ‫לא תהיה‬, which corresponds perfectly to the Syriac ‫ ܐ ܬܗܘ‬, is not common and should have preferably been the jussive ‫ ;אל תהי‬the noun ‫גרגרן‬, which is a transposition of the Syriac ‫ܪ‬ , is only attested in Rabbinic Hebrew and Babylonian Aramaic. Finally, this version is far from what may have been the supposed original (‫אכל כאיש‬ ‫)אשר נכח ואל ת‬. ‫תמאס‬/‫ן תג ל‬ Based on these insights, we conclude that this third version (3) of the sentence was retroverted by a scribe from the Syriac version. This hypothesis is confirmed by the misplaced doublet of 31:15a ‫ ד שר כמו‬in the middle of v. 16.54 Moreover, ‫ܠ‬ ‫ܚܒܪܟ ܐ‬ , “Know that of your companion as that of your own,” has been retroverted into Hebrew, word for word, but in a totally different meaning: ‫ד שר כמו‬, “Know that your companion is like you.” The process of retroversion also explains the anomalous construction ‫ יד אשר‬in place of ‫יד כי‬.55 In conclusion, this example of Sir 31:16 shows clearly the scribe’s impact on the text. The history of the verse may be reconstructed as follows: upon copying the first form of the proverb (1) and noticing that the meaning of the colon was not correct (but on what basis?), the scribe decided to retranslate the proverb into Hebrew from the Syriac version (3), but he mistakenly retranslated verses 15 and 16ab together as a tristich. Finally, one of the scribes responsible for the marginal notes added in the margin another form of the proverb (2) as attested in its other copy and corrected ‫ תגלו‬to ‫תגל‬. 53 54 55

For the unclear equivalence between ‫ ששם‬and , see Kister, “Additions,” 17, n. 60. In the Syriac translation, the second colon of 31:15 is missing, creating a tristich where the sentence on the companion directly precedes the sentence on food. The construction ‫ יד אשר‬is rarely attested to in Biblical Hebrew (Exod 11:7, see 2 Chr 2:7 [cf. 1 Kgs 5:20, ‫ ;]יד כי‬Est 4:11; Job 9:5; Qoh 6:10; Ezek 20:26), as opposed to the construction ‫( יד כי‬230x). But this argument may be rebutted insofar as the construction ‫ יד אשר‬is only attested to in late biblical texts (1QHa 14:7; 4Q200 4:3 [= Tob 10:7]; 4Q271 [D] 3:6, 7; 4Q379 6:2 [cf. Josh 23:13, ‫)]יד כי‬. The particular construction ‫ש‬ ‫ יד‬appears in Qoh 1:17.

Doublets in the Hebrew Manuscript B of Sirach

145

This reconstructed process shows, once again, that the scribes involved in the transmission of this text were not simply copyists but were actively involved in the creation of the text as learned authors. These scribes compared their own copies with ancient translations, retroverted readings from Syriac, inserted synonymous readings, and adduced variants from other copies. 8.7

Conclusion

These instructive examples allow us to frame some conclusions. It appears clearly that doublets in Sirach are not all the result of a unique phenomenon. Any of several factors can be at work: (1) First, double readings. I tried to prove that most of the doublets that are attested to in MS B are the result of the conflation of divergent textual traditions by scribes.56 This is also documented by the fact that, in most of the cases, one doublet is represented by the Greek, while in the other it is represented by the Syriac. It is also highly probable that the scribe doubled sentences on the basis of another manuscript close to the family of MS A, as is also the case for the marginal readings of MS B. Finally, some of these double readings could also have been introduced by other sources, such as rabbinic quotations or other Jewish texts, as we observed in Sir 16:4. The process of textual conflations by scribes tells us about their relationships with texts. By integrating variants into the text, scribes transform a textual incompatibility or divergence into a stylistic figure and, by consequence, create a new textual form. Implicitly that means that they consider texts as expandable. By way of semantic repetitions incorporated into the text they give to it a new life, and a new semantic depth. (2) Second, synonymous readings. Another typical phenomenon, that does not exclude the preceding, are cases of synonymous readings. (See, for example, the case of Sir 10:3 about the bee and the variant between ‫ אליל‬and ‫ק ון‬.) Not only are these frequently attested to in the doublets, but also in the variants between A and C, or between B and B margin, or B and Masada. I did not develop this question in this study, but as demonstrated also by Shemaryahu Talmon, the phenomenon is also frequently attested in the Hebrew Bible as well as in the DSS material.57 56

57

It was already the hypothesis of Solomon Schechter in an article dedicated to the first discovery of a fragment of MS C: “The doublets, as well as many of the glosses, in MS B will now be easily accounted for by these two families of MSS [MSS A and C], with which the scribe of that MS was thoroughly acquainted, and the differences between which he carefully noted and inserted in his copy” (Schechter, “A Further Fragment,” 457). See the numerous examples given by Talmon, “Double Reading,” 114–84.

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(3) Third: stylistic creativity. Our doublets are not limited to textual conflations, but also most likely result from a scribal attempt to improve the stylistic features of the text (e.g., Sir 4:3–4a). This could very well be related to the strong influence of piyyutim practices and the numerous paraphrases of Sirach in the medieval period, which witness the strong influence of this text on medieval authors and scribes.58 (4) Fourth: retroversion from Syriac. Finally, we found at least one example of a doublet which is clearly retroverted from Syriac (Sir 31:16). These four phenomena—double readings, synonymous readings, stylistic creativity, and retroversion from Syriac—prove beyond any doubt, that we are not dealing with simple copyists, but with Jewish scholars and creative authors who compare manuscripts, conflate textual traditions, change one word for another, generate stylistic improvement, and compare ancient translations. It shows that any genealogical reconstruction of the manuscripts must not only consider vertical genealogy, but also horizontal relationships between manuscripts and free creativity from copyists. The first three phenomena are also clearly documented in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. And what is true for Sirach must also be true for other texts. Moreover, these phenomena reflect common scribal practices in antiquity. This confirms that in antiquity textual development and textual transmission are closely correlated, blurring the traditional and methodological boundaries between redactional and literary criticism with textual criticism. The integration of doublets by scribes into texts illustrates perfectly the fact that texts are perpetually moving, and this mouvance, to recall the concept of Paul Zumthor, is ontologically inherent to the very concept of text.59 Bibliography Aitken, James K., Renate Egger-Wenzel, and Stefan C. Reif. Discovering, Deciphering and Dissenting: Ben Sira Manuscripts after 120 Years. DCLS. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Ben Yehuda, Eliezer. A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew. 17 vols. Jerusalem: Tel Aviv, 1910–1959. Calduch-Benages, Nuria, Joan Ferrer, and Jan Liesen. La sabiduría del escriba/Wisdom of the Scribe. Estella: Verbo Divine, 2003. Cerquiglini, Bernard. Éloge de la variante. Histoire critique de la philologie. Paris: Seuil, 1989. 58 59

Consult the essay in the present volume by Goff. Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, 64–106.

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Corley, Jeremy. “An Alternative Hebrew Form of Ben Sira: The Anthological Manuscript C.” In The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira: Transmission and Interpretation. Ed. Jean-Sébastien Rey and Jan Joosten. JSJSupp 150. Leiden: Brill, 2011, 1–22. Di Lella, Alexander A., and Patrick W. Skehan. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Frédéric, Madeleine. La répétition. Etude linguistique et rhétorique. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 199. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985. Ghormley, Justus. “Inspired Scribes: The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah and the Vocation of Ancient Jewish Scribal Scholars.” Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2015. Jellinek, Adolf. Bet ha-Midrasch: Sammlung kleiner Midraschim und vermischter Abhandlungen aus der ältere jüdischen Literatur. 6 vols. 3rd ed. Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1967. Kister, Menahem. “Additions to the Article ‘‫’בשולי ס ר בן סירא‬.” Lešonenu 53 (1989): 36–53 (in Hebrew). König, Eduard. “The Origins of the New Hebrew Fragments of Ecclesiasticus.” ExpTim 11 (1900): 170–176. Kugel, James L. The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and its History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Lévi, Israël. L’Eccléstique, ou la Sagesse de Jésus, fils de Sira. Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes Études. Sciences Religieuses 10.2. Paris: E. Leroux, 1901. Lévi, Israël. “Les nouveaux fragments hébreux de l’Ecclésiastique de Jésus, fils de Sira.” REJ 39 (1899): 1–15, 177–90. Margoliouth, D. S. “The Hebrew Ecclesiasticus.” ExpTim 10 (1899): 528. Mopsik, Charles. La Sagesse de ben Sira. Lagrasse: Verdier, 2003. Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith. “The ‘Booklet’ of Ben Sira: Codicological and Palaeographical Remarks on the Cairo Geniza Fragments.” In Aitken, Egger-Wenzel, and Reif, Discovering, Deciphering and Dissenting, 67–96. Peters, Norbert. Der jungst wiederaufgefundene hebräische Text des Buches Ecclesiasticus. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herrsche Verlagshandlung, 1902. van Peursen, W. Th. “The Alleged Retroversions from Syriac in the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira Revisited: Linguistic Perspectives.” Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprachen des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt 2 (2001): 47–95. Pietersma, Albert, and Benjamin G. Wright, eds. A New English Translation of the Septuagint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “The Relationship between Manuscripts A, B, and D and the Marginal Readings of Manuscript B.” jjs, forthcoming. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Reflections on the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira: Between Eclecticism and Pragmatism.” Textus 27 (2018): 187–204.

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Rey, Jean-Sébastien, and Marieke Dhont. “Scribal Practices in Ben Sira Manuscript B: Codicological Reconstruction and Material Typology of Marginal Readings.” In Aitken, Egger-Wenzel, and Reif, Discovering, Deciphering and Dissenting, 97–124. Rüger, Hans P. Text und Textform im hebräischen Sirach: Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik der hebräischen Sirachfragmente aus der Kairoer Geniza. BZAW 112. Berlin: de Gruyter 1970. Ryssel, Viktor. “Die Herkunft der Hebräischen Fragmente des Buches Jesus Sirach,” in Verhandlungen des XIII. Internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses. Leiden: Brill, 1904, 248–53. Schechter, Solomon. “A Further Fragment of Ben Sira: Prefatory Note.” JQR 12 (1900): 456–65. Schechter, Solomon, and Charles Taylor. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book Ecclesiasticus from Hebrew Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection Presented to the University of Cambridge by the Editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899. Schirmann, Jefim. “Additional Leaves from the book of Ben Sira.” Tarbiz 29 (1960): 125– 34 (in Hebrew). Schirmann, Jefim, Alexander Di Lella, Zeev Ben-Ḥayyim. The Book of Ben Sira: Text, Concordance and Analysis of the Vocabulary. Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language and the Shrine of the Book, 1973 (Hebrew). Segal, Moshe S. Sepher Ben Sira Hashalem. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1958 (Hebrew). Segal, Moshe S. “The Evolution of the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira.” JQR 25 (1934): 91–149. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt. Berlin: George Reimer, 1906. Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Conflate Reading (OT).” In Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume. Ed. Keith Crim. Nashville: Abingdon, 1976. Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Double Reading in the Masoretic Text.” Textus 1 (1960): 144–84. Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Conflate Readings: A Basic Phenomenon in the Transmission of the Old Testament Text.” Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1956. Tov, Emanuel. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012. Weinrein, Uriel. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “The Persian Glosses and the Text of Manuscript B Revisited.” In Aitken, Egger-Wenzel, and Reif, eds., Discovering, Deciphering and Dissenting, 125–46. Yadin, Yigael. Masada IV: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965: Final Reports. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999. Zumthor, Paul. Essai de poétique médiévale. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1972.

part 3 Sages and Their Contexts: Hellenism, Hymns, and Pedagogy

∵

chapter 9

Where Is Ezra? Ben Sira’s Surprising Omission and the Selective Presentation in the Praise of the Ancestors Samuel L. Adams 9.1

Introduction

The Praise of the Ancestors in Sirach 44–50 is one of the more fascinating and consequential units in the extant literature of the Second Temple period.1 The retrospective of well-known figures provides a snapshot of the sacred history that was developing within early Judaism, at least from the vantage point of a particular sapiential author. This section offers a litany of valorous deeds and vivid descriptions concerning Israel’s past, providing a sense of the figures and legends that had captured the popular imagination. These chapters constitute one of the earliest recollections of their type from an identifiable voice and are a critical witness to the emerging narrative of ancient Israel. From the colorful invocations of Joshua and Elijah to the intricate treatment of Aaron, these chapters give an informative portrait of what was being remembered and cherished. Previous Israelite instructions did not end with a sustained retrospective of this type; Sirach is innovative in many respects, including this lengthy tribute to the heroes of old. In characterizing Sirach 44–50, most commentators note that the sage is both selective and eclectic in his presentation. When examining these chapters, it becomes clear that Ben Sira highlights certain figures and their deeds, while minimizing or ignoring others, and his allegiance to the priesthood is obvious.2 Scholars have long noted the prominence of Aaron in this section (Sir 45:6–22) and the hymn to the high priest Simon II at the end of the praise (50:1–28). In giving so much attention to Aaron, the author makes a strategic decision to honor the priesthood, and he presumably included one of his contemporaries in the litany to underscore his respect for the priestly office and 1 For background on the Praise of the Ancestors, see Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic; Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, 97–108. 2 Similar passages appear in 1 Macc 2:51–61 and Hebrews 11, and many of the same figures receive acclaim.

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his belief in a succession that started from the earliest priest.3 Such features are consequential, and through attentiveness to this content, one can glean early understandings of major figures in the emerging sacred narrative, particularly when comparing Sirach to the selective historiography in 1 and 2 Chronicles and to retrospective lists in 1 Macc 2:51–61 and Hebrews 11. The figures highlighted by Ben Sira indicate the popularity of key heroes from Israel’s past and some of the “sound bites” associated with them. Moreover, since we know with relative precision the date for this praise, the reflections of this author are a critical touchstone.4 In assessing these chapters, commentators have long noted what seems to be the most puzzling aspect: the omission of Ezra. The original appellation for this individual, a “scribe skilled in the law of Moses” (‫ס ר מהיר בתורת משה‬, Ezra 7:16), would seem to make Ezra a highly appealing and in fact essential figure for inclusion, especially since Ben Sira accentuates the prestige of the scribal vocation elsewhere in the instruction (Sir 38:34b–39:11). Moreover, Ben Sira commends the priestly office in a manner that would appear to dovetail with the figure of Ezra and the book associated with him, which depicts him as a priest (Sir 7:29–31; 34:21–35:13; cf. Ezra 7:11: “the priest and scribe, a scholar of the texts of the commandments of the LORD and his statutes for Israel”). Yet the Praise of the Ancestors highlights the activity of figures like Zerubbabel and Joshua (Sir 49:11–12), whose actions are usually viewed as less significant than Ezra’s reforms, and then the building efforts of Nehemiah (49:13), only to move straight to the “taking up” of Enoch in 49:14, without ever mentioning Ezra. Like the politician who fails to acknowledge the impact of one of the founders of the nation in a major speech, this praise leaves off one of the more obvious candidates for inclusion, at least from our modern assessment of Ezra’s importance. The fact that Nehemiah in particular receives acclaim, and Ezra does not, strikes most readers as a deliberate omission on the part of the sapiential author. A majority of modern interpreters of Sirach cannot understand why this author leaves the consequential and transitional figure of Ezra out of the various portraits. In viewing the absence of Ezra as a deliberate and puzzling decision, most interpreters then search for the rationale. According to the understandable logic, there must be some compelling reason for Ben Sira to ignore the 3 See Wright, “‘Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest,’” 189–222. 4 Because of the reference to Ptolemy VII Euergetes in the grandson’s prologue and the approximate length of two generations, the period in which Ben Sira had his career and wrote this instruction (early second century BCE, prior to the Maccabean revolt) is not particularly in dispute.

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important contributions of Ezra, and it is the task of the faithful exegete to unlock the reason for the omission. Scholars have proposed a variety of hypotheses for Ezra’s absence, some of them logical deductions based on the content of the Praise of the Ancestors and the historical circumstances of the putative authors and sources. Other proposals are more fanciful, utilizing the omission of Ezra to mount an argument on a tangential topic in the service of an unrelated agenda. Yet none of the disparate proposals concerning the omission have attracted any longstanding or widespread consensus, and the search for a logical rationale continues. Because the account of Ezra’s mission and job title have garnered immense attention in the field of biblical studies, there is a tendency to assume that this figure and the traditions surrounding him were of critical importance to the postexilic community from the late Persian period onwards, in the years succeeding his pivotal mission. Reception history and the emerging importance of Ezra in later sources certainly play a role in underscoring his significance and wondering about his absence from Sirach. Interpreters identify Ezra as one of the touchstone figures of the Persian period, an individual whose brave efforts played a major role in inaugurating and shaping Jewish identity.5 Modern biblical scholarship has often constructed a portrait of Ezra as central to the codification of the Torah and creation of the post-exilic Judean community. His official charge in Artaxerxes’ letter is “to make inquiries (‫ )לבקרא‬about Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of your God that is in your hand” (Ezra 7:14) and “to appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River who know the laws of your God” (7:25). The exact meaning of these and the other directives in the letter are very much open for debate; some commentators even doubt the historicity of Ezra’s mission and the deeds associated with him.6 Yet it is a fairly common assumption that the figure of Ezra played an essential role in the codification of the law and by extension the contours of Jewish identity during a formative period. One need not take a definitive position on the status of pentateuchal books during the Persian period to find significance in Ezra’s mission. Moreover, there is frequently an assumption that the earliest interpreters in the ancient world also

5 See, for example, Becking, Ezra, and Fried, Ezra and the Law. 6 Fried, Ezra and the Law, examines the figure of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible and beyond, at the historical-critical level and in terms of reception history. She interprets the word ‫ דת‬in v. 14 not so much as “law” or Torah, but rather as the Persian king’s charge to instill order according to the contents of the letter. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 147, sees more historical value in the letter and task of Ezra, who was to “restore the Jerusalem cultus and put the administration of the Jewish law on a firm basis.”

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placed Ezra among the pantheon of heroes whose acts are a model of faithfulness and innovation (see below). Consequently, there has to be a compelling reason for the omission in the Praise of the Ancestors, and the goal becomes ascertaining the most logical rationale. The various arguments can be broken down into two basic types: (1) the omission of Ezra should be traced to a conscious decision on the part of the author of Sirach because of conflicting views and an ultimate rejection of this figure (i.e., Ben Sira had difficulty with what he knew of Ezra, his priestly lineage, or his ideological convictions);7 (2) at some point, perhaps in the initial crafting of the Praise of the Ancestors, an editorial decision based on thematic coherence was made to exclude Ezra from the various figures (i.e., Ezra did not really fit into any category and would have disrupted the flow of Sirach 49).8 The various proposals concerning this vexing omission will receive attention in our discussion. It is the argument of the present essay that the reason for Ezra’s absence is much simpler than the vast majority of earlier proposals. The most likely explanation is that the figure of Ezra had not yet met a threshold for inclusion. In at least some circles, Ezra was not yet an essential part of the sacred narrative, despite the prominent and essential role modern scholarship usually assigns to this figure in the development of religious thought during the early Persian period.9 We assume he should be part of the list of heroes, because our scholarly litany of important individuals from Israel’s past includes Ezra. Part of the reason for this common assumption stems from the recognition Ezra receives in other ancient sources. He becomes an apocalyptic seer in 4 Ezra and then a person of renown in the rabbinic literature, whose primary accomplishment was the restoration of the Torah (e.g., b. Sukk. 20a). Yet these texts are much later than Ben Sira’s career, and we have no attestation of Ezra’s mission as a major touchstone prior to the Praise of the Ancestors. In addressing this vexing question of Ezra’s importance, the argument for the present discussion is more basic than the earlier proposals. The most likely explanation is that Ezra was not yet a major candidate for inclusion. We have little reason to assume that Ezra had become an essential figure in the sacred narrative by the time of the composition of the Praise of the Ancestors in Sirach, as the following discussion will maintain.

7 Marttila, Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 192–94, 199–206; cf. Piwowar, “Dlaczego Syrach pominął Ezdrasza w Pochwale Ojców (Syr 44–50)?” 8 Marttila, Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 194–97. 9 Collins, Jewish Wisdom, 105–6.

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In addressing this question, one must acknowledge that the relative attention given to the various heroes in the Praise of the Ancestors is somewhat illogical, if we base our assessment on the content of the Hebrew Bible and the reception history after Sirach (i.e., if we are looking at this question on the other side of 4 Ezra and the rabbinic praise of this figure). Ben Sira does not necessarily give preference to characters with lengthy works attributed to them or to figures who receive the most attention in the sacred narrative. If we compare the content of the Hebrew Bible to the Praise, Ben Sira’s emphases in this section are varied and seemingly eclectic in more than a few places. For example, the literary prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel get a sum total of 8 verses, whereas Elijah and Elisha receive 22. We can also cite the discrepancy between Moses and Aaron: the descriptions of Aaron are vivid and lengthy in the praise, but he plays a more minor role in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Moses has certainly gotten much more attention than Aaron in later interpretive sources, both Jewish and Christian. Moreover, Ben Sira leaves off any mention of women in his rendering of Israel’s faithful and glorious heroes from the past.10 One finds no attention to Sarah, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Ruth, or Esther. As we consider these issues, the argument here is that there is no elaborate reason for the absence of Ezra other than his status, or rather lack of status, as a figure for inclusion at this point in the development of early Judaism and from the vantage point of the particular author. There is no implied polemic that one has to discover in order to explain the omission. We will also argue that Ezra’s status as a scribal figure made Ben Sira less likely to include him, since the praise of the scribe earlier in the instruction already addresses the enduring benefits of this pursuit. 9.2

Earlier Proposals

In order to assess the validity of this thesis, it is necessary to review the other major suggestions concerning the omission of Ezra. Some of these are creative possibilities, even if they do not ultimately provide a satisfactory rationale for Ezra’s absence from the list of Ben Sira’s heroes. First is the argument that the sage simply did not know the Ezran traditions yet or knew of them and did not include them because of his belief that they were fictitious.11 Based on Sir 49:13 10 11

Calduch-Benages, “Absence.” Pohlmann, Studien zum Dritten Esra, 72–73, claims that the author simply did not know the traditions involving Ezra. For more background, see Grabbe, “What Was Ezra’s Mission?” 286–99.

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(“The memory of Nehemiah also is lasting; he raised our fallen walls, and set up gates and bars, and rebuilt our ruined houses”), some have argued that Ben Sira had familiarity with the Nehemiah Memoir, but not any content involving Ezra. This is perhaps the least plausible suggestion. Whenever one dates Ezra’s mission and the literary traditions surrounding it, these developments occurred well before Ben Sira’s career or the compilation of this instruction.12 Even if Nehemiah’s mission happened prior to Ezra’s, such a chronology is irrelevant to the question of why Ben Sira excluded Ezra from the praise. Moreover, several commentators have pointed to the terminological affinities between Ezra 7:10b ( ‫ )וללמד בישראל חק ומש‬and Sir 45:17cd (‫ולמד מו חק ומש את בני‬ ‫)ישראל‬.13 This parallel would seem to offer evidence that Ben Sira knew at least some of the content of the book of Ezra and presumably some of the traditions surrounding this figure. Moreover, it defies logic to assume that the sage knew the Book of the Twelve, Job, the Song of Songs (see Sirach 24), and had an intimate familiarity with the details of Joshua–2 Kings and the Chronicler’s history but knew nothing of Ezran literary traditions.14 Another possibility is that the omission has to do with the anti-Levitical bias in the instruction.15 Ben Sira never mentions the Levites and centers his discussion of priestly matters on the Aaronide line. Those who argue this position claim that Ben Sira transfers all of the levitical responsibilities to Aaron’s descendants, effectively ignoring the content of 1 and 2 Chronicles, where the Levites figure prominently.16 Since Ezra mentions the Levites so frequently (1:5; 2:40, 70; 3:8, 10, 12; 6:18, 20; 7:7, 13, 24; 8:20, 29; 9:1; 10:5, 15, 23), perhaps his perspective on the best organizational framework for cultic life was viewed as suspect by Ben Sira. Yet this proposal does not really work either, since Ezra is a descendant of Aaron (Ezra 7:1–6) and is called a priest (Ezra 7:11), rather than a Levite. The inference that the omission reflects some sort of internecine conflict among different priestly factions does not match up with the pedigree of Ezra himself. Ben Sira’s lack of engagement with levitical traditions is an interesting topic, but this aspect of the instruction does not necessarily explain the Ezra question. A similar suggestion relates to Ben Sira’s lofty praise of the priestly office (e.g., Sir 7:31: “Fear the Lord and honor the priest, and give him his portion, as 12 13 14 15 16

On the date for Ezra’s mission, see Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 60–69; Williamson, Ezra and Nehemiah, 55–69. The current discussion places Ezra’s mission in 458 BCE and Nehemiah’s efforts in 445 BCE, a common (but by no means universal) scholarly position. See Duggan, “Ezra, Scribe and Priest, and the Concerns of Ben Sira,” 207. Marttila, Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 198. Höffken, “Warum schwieg Jesus Sirach über Esra?” 184–201. Ben Sira mentions that Aaron was from the tribe of Levi (Sir 45:6).

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you have been commanded”) and his emphasis on the primacy of Aaron. As he traces what is for him the sacred lineage from Aaron to Phinehas to Simon II, one of the more interesting features of the praise is that Ben Sira focuses so much attention on Aaron and relatively little on Moses. Aaron also receives significant attention in certain sections of pentateuchal material that are commonly ascribed to the Priestly source (e.g., Exodus 28–29; Leviticus 6). Along similar lines, some have argued that Ben Sira minimizes the Zadokite lineage, thereby explaining the absence of Ezra (i.e., Ezra 7:2).17 Ben Sira associates Simon II with Aaron’s lineage (Sir 50:13, 16), highlighting a direct line from Aaron to the high priests of his own day. Beentjes claims that Ezra “did not fit into Ben Sira’s concept, since it is the extreme and absolute emphasis on High Priesthood that structures the ‘Hymn in Praise of the Famous’ [sic] (Aaron: Sir 45:6–22; Simon: Sir 50:1–24).”18 If the priesthood is the central focus of the praise, specifically a pro-Aaron interpretation of the priesthood, then perhaps Ezra does not belong on the list, even if he is identified as a descendant of Aaron in Ezra 7:1–6. Yet this possibility does not really work, either. Ben Sira devotes a significant portion of this section to non-priestly matters and figures, including prophets, kings, and other heroes. The argument that this entire section is built around the succession of high priests does not match up well with the overall content, despite the undeniable prominence of Aaron and Simon II. Perhaps the most creative explanation attributes the omission to the thematic content of various figures as builders in chapter 39, an activity in which Ezra does not engage.19 Ben Sira declares in 49:13 that “the memory of Nehemiah also is lasting (or ‘glorious’: Heb ‫ ;)אדר‬he raised our fallen walls, and set up gates and bars, and rebuilt our ruined houses.” Sir 49:11–12 describes the building efforts of Joshua and Zerubbabel in building a temple “holy to the Lord.” Since the depictions of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible do not involve infrastructure projects, perhaps the author made a decision to leave Ezra off the list of heroes in the interest of thematic coherence. This possibility is intriguing, particularly if the tradition in Ben Sira’s day held a close association between Ezra and Nehemiah. He simply left Ezra off the list, because this figure does not fit the building theme. One can even extend this argument to what interests Ben Sira about Hezekiah: his fortification networks (Sir 48:17). Moreover, even the beginning of the praise of Simon mentions infrastructure and his repairs to the temple (50:1–4). If this section in particular emphasizes the construction

17 18 19

Olyan, “Ben Sira’s Relationship to the Priesthood,” 261–86, cites Exod 6:16–25. Beentjes, “Canon and Scripture in the Book of Ben Sira,” 172. Schnabel, Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul, 27–28.

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efforts of the various figures, then perhaps Ben Sira wanted to highlight the importance of a secure Jerusalem and reestablished temple. While innovative and somewhat convincing, such a proposal cannot overcome the fact that the vast majority of the heroes in the Praise of the Ancestors do not receive acclaim because of their building but through their fidelity to God and their capacity to preside over miracles. Antediluvian and patriarchal figures like Enoch follow Nehemiah in the description (Sir 49:14–16), proving that Ben Sira felt no obligation to work chronologically. More than a few commentators understand these verses about Enoch to be a secondary insertion, and if this is the case, the “builder thesis” has more merit. If Ben Sira felt obligated to mention Ezra, however, he could have found a means of doing so elsewhere in the praise. The possible insertion of the antediluvian figure does raise the possibility that Ezra may have been edited out of this section for some reason, but this is impossible to substantiate. Yet another suggestion relates to Ezra’s exclusivist understanding of marriage, a rigid position that does not cohere with the tenor of Ben Sira’s instruction.20 One of the best-known features of Ezra’s career is that he opposed any intermarriage with non-returnees, and he engages in a creative midrash of Deuteronomy 7 and 23 and Lev 18:24–30 in an effort to eliminate all forms of exogamy (Ezra 9:1–4). He wants those returning from exile only to marry among themselves.21 Ben Sira does not take an explicit position on this point, as he lauds the benefits of marriage (e.g., 36:29). In this and other respects, Martin Hengel categorizes Ezra as a forerunner of the Hasideans, and he pits Ben Sira against the more restrictive mindset of this exclusivist party.22 The issue of universalism vs. particularism in Ben Sira is a complex topic when studying this instruction, and one finds an interesting mixture of receptiveness to outside cultural propellants and a defense of the sage’s own Jewish tradition.23 Yet we can hardly base opposition to Ezra on an implied polemic that is not really present in the text of Sirach. Moreover, Nehemiah also severely criticizes exogamy (e.g., Neh 13:25), and yet Ben Sira includes him in the list of heroes.24 Perhaps one can offer a more subtle, modified version of this anti-exogamy position by claiming that Ben Sira does not exhibit hostility to foreign nations, as demonstrated by his efforts to tone down the “zeal of Phinehas.” The sage 20 21 22 23 24

Smend, Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt, 474, became an early proponent of this position. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 116–21. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:176–78. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, 23–41. Marttila, Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 200.

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does not highlight the earlier figure’s violent purging of idolatry in Numbers (Num 25:7–11; Sir 45:23), and he minimizes the outwardly violent tendencies of other figures, a move that is also present in the Chronicler’s accounts (1 Chron 9:20). While it is undoubtedly the case that such interpretive moves are significant, especially the downplaying of violent acts that one finds in the Deuteronomistic History (e.g., the more modest portrait of David in Sir 47:1– 12), this does not answer our essential question for this essay. A dichotomy between Ezra the particularist and Ben Sira the universalist cannot necessarily explain the omission, particularly because the sage includes Nehemiah as a praiseworthy figure. Michael Duggan has an interesting approach to this question, as he looks at the figure of Ezra as priest and scribe.25 He sketches the various roles of Ezra in transporting funds and vessels, appointing magistrates and judges, presiding over the marriage reform and covenant renewal ceremony, and dedicating the city walls. Ezra’s reading of the scroll is noteworthy (Neh 7:72b–8:12); like Joshua, Ezra brings together the exiled “children of Israel” and engages in covenant renewal by reading the law.26 Yet Duggan cites Ezra’s wariness about the temple and priests of his day, in contrast to Ben Sira’s laudatory statements about the institutions of his own era. Ezra came to Yehud under the auspices of the Persians, while Ben Sira owed his livelihood to the wealthy patrons and priestly class members who listened to his advice and sought his scribal abilities. In this respect, Duggan argues that Ben Sira and his associates represent the scribe as “layperson,” in contrast to Ezra’s priestly status. In a cultural landscape that differs from Persian period Yehud, later sages such as Ben Sira sought to maintain their vocation as scribal-sages. Duggan concludes, “Although Ezra provided for the possibility of a scribal school like Ben Sira’s, he remains outside the sage’s religious landscape, perhaps due to the very fact that Ezra was a reformer.”27 This is an intriguing explanation, but Ben Sira’s status as a “nonreformer” is highly questionable. He deplores financial trickery and seeks to inculcate fidelity to the Torah as a core requirement of his social ethics. His entire project corrects wayward tendencies based on a confessional application of Israel’s wisdom tradition. Such an agenda hardly qualifies as non-reformist. The content of the instruction militates against understanding Ben Sira as a non-reformer. Moreover, we simply do not know enough about the historical person of Ezra, much less the veracity of the mission associated with him, to

25 26 27

Duggan, “Ezra, Scribe and Priest, and the Concerns of Ben Sira,” 201–10. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 210.

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posit such a differentiation between the two figures. Nor do we know enough about the ideological pursuits of Ben Sira to justify such a specific thesis. All of these theories reflect admirable efforts to solve an interpretive riddle, one of the more fascinating omissions in Second Temple literature. For those who study wisdom literature and the book of Ezra, the absence of this figure is simply vexing. In assessing the various proposals, modern scholarly agendas often drive the explanation as to why we find no mention of Ezra. As the previous review of proposals has demonstrated, some commentators use the omission to draw larger conclusions about the landscape of early Judaism, including divisions, rivalries, and the state of certain institutions such as the priesthood. Because Ben Sira offered his reflections during an identifiable and transitional period, the inclination to use this feature of the book as a launching pad for broader inquiry and conclusion is understandable, but not necessarily advisable. Arguments from silence can lead to highly speculative frameworks that rely not on actual content, but the possible reasoning of ancient authors whose internal logic is not available to us, and whose texts have been edited, copied, and translated by many subsequent hands.28 The reality is that Ezra represents one of the more logical figures for emulation. Despite some of the possible differences outlined in earlier proposals, his essential mission as a “scribe skilled in the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6) correlates remarkably well with the ethos of Ben Sira. The praise of the scribe in chapters 38–39 dovetails nicely with Ezra’s job description, especially the image of this person as a court official “who serves among the great and appears before rulers” (39:4) and “who devotes himself to the study of the Law of the Most High” (38:34). In a recent study, Lisbeth Fried argues that “these two images of the scribe, the court official and the wisdom scholar, play out in the biblical traditions of Ezra.”29 In the letter from Artaxerxes, Ezra mingles with powerful figures as an important official, and he discusses the Mosaic law throughout the book. This term, “skilled scribe” (‫)ס ר מהיר‬, also appears in Ps 45:2 and in Ahiqar. Martha Himmelfarb has noticed other thematic parallels between the praise of the scribe in Sirach 38–39 and Ezra, including prayer (Sir 39:6d; Ezra 7:27–28).30 Unfortunately, the Hebrew for this section of Sirach is not extant, but here and elsewhere, the affinities suggest that the author knew the book of Ezra and interacted with it, and yet we have no mention of this figure in the Praise of the Ancestors.

28 29 30

See the essay by Wright and Mroczek in this volume. Fried, Ezra and the Law, 35. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 11, 30–52.

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In assessing this question, we should try to avoid armchair psychoanalysis about the internal motives of one author here. While there is remarkable thematic continuity in Sirach that seems to indicate a particular sapiential voice during an identifiable era in the history of ancient Judea, this text is undeniably a compilation that stems from accretions of wisdom and pentateuchal traditions and subsequent editorial additions. So on a certain level, the current discussion is in agreement with Eva Mroczek that Ben Sira “is continuous with the anonymous and pseudepigraphic textual culture of early Judaism.”31 Yet at the same time, we can be at least somewhat assertive about the perspective of a specific scribal-sage, since the text that survives reveals an ideological and thematic coherence on a variety of fronts. The consistency of this instruction does not allow us to make highly specific conclusions about the actual person of Ben Sira, but the thematic continuity does invite exploration of the sociocultural landscape of scribal-sages in the late Second Temple period. And this particular sage and/or the school associated with him omitted Ezra from the list of heroes. It is not venturesome to search for a plausible reason. 9.3

A Possible Solution

If none of the previous solutions are ultimately convincing, the current proposal provides a more basic answer to the dilemma. The most likely explanation is that traditions involving Ezra had not yet attracted the widespread and perhaps necessary popularity for Ben Sira to include them. He becomes a central figure in later apocalyptic literature, but at this point in the late third- to early second-century BCE, “Ezra” had not yet attained the requisite status to be included in this list of heroes.32 The praise contains an eclectic list of individuals, some of them based on strategic decisions (e.g., the emphasis on high priests), others being prophets and kings from the past who attracted a great deal of attention. We already see such trends at work in the Chronicler’s selective representation of the details of 1 and 2 Kings. For example, the presentation of David changes, such that the first monarch becomes more of a musical band leader than a ruthless warrior (1 Chron 29:26). Another example will help to illustrate the point about the figures who had attracted attention and loyalty. Based on the content of Sirach and other texts from the Second Temple period, it seems clear that Elijah had captured great 31 32

Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity, 89. The full name, Ezra, never appears in the surviving Hebrew Qumran scrolls, and only one copy of the book of Ezra (4Q117, with parts of chapter 4–6) is preserved.

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resonance in the popular imagination: the extensive attention he receives in Sir 48:1–15 is remarkable (cf. 1 Macc 2:58). The miracles, confrontations with kings, aversion to idolatry, journey into the whirlwind, and even his successful resuscitation of a corpse (something that runs contrary to Ben Sira’s skepticism about an afterlife), all presumably in line with popular beliefs about this figure, are noteworthy in this section. Witness also the New Testament and extracanonical traditions involving Elijah (e.g., Matt 16:14; 17:3; Mark 9:11–13, etc.). If we contrast the prominence of Elijah with the relative inattention that Ben Sira gives to major prophetic figures like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in the Praise of the Ancestors, the discrepancy is puzzling. The most plausible explanation is that the Elijah traditions had captured an important place in the popular consciousness; Ben Sira lauds the deeds of this man of God as an example of faithfulness and opposition to idolatry. In assessing the evidence, the most plausible explanation for the absence of Ezra is that he did not yet have an established place in the litany of heroes. Those who engage this question often proceed with the assumption of Ezra as a major figure, the first great legal interpreter, the paradigmatic Torah teacher whose tenure signified a new era in the religious traditions of Judea. While we have 4 Ezra, which dates from the first century CE, Ezra does not get explicit attention in the Dead Sea Scrolls.33 When considering a figure who espoused allegiance to the Torah, who opposed mixed marriages, and who felt a special allegiance to the priestly descendants of Aaron, it is puzzling that the sectarians responsible for the scrolls did not give him at least some acclaim for his heroism. The Greek book of 1 Esdras of course demonstrates interest in Ezra as a pivotal figure, but this is a translation with some additional material. 1 Esdras indicates that complex traditions involving Ezra and Nehemiah did exist in the third to first centuries BCE in Alexandria, and perhaps also in Judah. By the time of 4 Ezra, there are detailed apocalyptic traditions involving this figure, not long after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. This is much later than the Praise of the Ancestors in Sirach, where Ezra is not yet a central figure and the author does not feel compelled to cite him. It should also be noted that Ezra does not appear in the list of ancestors in 1 Macc 2:51–61, yet another indicator that traditions involving this figure had not yet fully blossomed.34 Moreover, there is significant overlap between the passage in 1 Maccabees and Sirach 44–50. Finally, Nehemiah receives acclaim in 2 Maccabees as a builder of the temple and altar (1:18–36), and 33 34

On the date for 4 Ezra, see Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 196. Another figure gaining attention in later Jewish literature was Baruch, but he is also unmentioned in Sirach. Most commentators date 1 Maccabees in the latter half of the first century BCE.

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this is almost certainly the same tradition associated with the building of the walls and not the tradition in Ezra 2:2 and Neh 7:7, where an individual named Nehemiah (possibly a different person) is a contemporary of Zerubbabel and Joshua.35 The fact that Nehemiah is the object of veneration in 2 Maccabees, without any mention of Ezra, further underscores the likelihood that traditions involving Ezra had not garnered the same status as those involving Nehemiah during the period in which Sirach was written and even later in the Second Temple period.36 Hindy Najman argues that in the extant literature of the Second Temple period, there was a flowering of interpretive traditions concerning authoritative works. Yet there was often significant disagreement about the constellation of figures who populate the sacred corpus. Even if Jewish interpretations were coalescing around a specific body of texts and figures, this was a fluid process, and as Najman explains, sharp disagreements arose “about who had the correct interpretation of an already ancient tradition whose meaning was sometimes elusive.”37 Najman’s study of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll indicates some of the key features of discourse on authoritative texts and figures. This was an evolving development, as different voices, generic categories, and schools of thought had an impact on emergent traditions and the process of reinterpretation. For example, Najman cites the emphasis on pre-Sinaitic revelation involving Jacob in key texts from this period, which are later supplanted by Mosaic discourse in many texts. We can assign the same fluidity to the emerging lists of ancient heroes in Sirach and other works like 1 and 2 Maccabees. In all of these texts, the figure of Ezra had not yet attained the necessary reputation for inclusion.38 John Collins argues that the book of Ezra had simply not yet attained a “canonical status” by the time of Ben Sira.39 We should be careful about the use of “canonical” in assessments of this type, since this is a controversial term, especially in the Second Temple period, and it can be interpreted in various ways. It is worth asking whether the author of the Prologue to Sirach included the text of Ezra among the “other books of our ancestors,” but that is a topic for another discussion. Yet Collins’s basic reasoning is correct. This figure and his actions were not yet included in the list of “mighty deeds,” whether in Sirach or elsewhere. In the Praise of the Ancestors, Ben Sira is casting dramatic roles, 35 36 37 38 39

See Doran, 2 Maccabees, 48. On the date for 2 Maccabees, see Doran, 2 Maccabees, 14–15. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 41. Along these lines, it is also noteworthy that the apostle Paul does not mention Ezra as a laudable figure in his various writings. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, 105–6.

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recounting some of the more memorable tales in the sacred narrative that had formed and was continuing to form. The argument here is that Ezra was not yet a figure of renown, and this assertion is supported by the other lists and accounts of heroes where Nehemiah is included, but Ezra is not. Rather than assuming Ben Sira had some sort of grudge against Ezra or ideological reason for excluding him, it is far more likely that he was not yet a suitable figure for inclusion. The introduction to this section promises hortatory praise of the ‫( אנשי חסד‬Sir 44:1). Moral uprightness is not the primary reason the various characters in the earlier history of Israel receive attention in this section. The central question is whether a figure and the legends associated with him (they were all men) had attained sufficient status in the mind of the author and in the popular consciousness to receive recognition. Ben Sira presents a somewhat varied list of famous heroes, including priestly figures, and Ezra simply does not make the list, because he was not yet part of the narrative of heroes. On a related note, we can perhaps add a finer point as to why certain figures are left off the list and why the more mundane aspects of other characters are minimized, and that has to do with the scribal task. To return to the argument of Duggan, Ben Sira has already lauded the work of the scribe, which happens to be his own vocation. Yet in the prologue to the Praise in 44:1–15, he only briefly mentions scribal achievement (44:4–5) in his descriptions of the laudable deeds of the ancestors. This is because the author has already covered the tasks of the scribe. Along these lines, he minimizes the scribal aspects of Moses, David, Josiah, and other figures on the list. He certainly values the accomplishments of scribal figures, but he has already mentioned them, and Ben Sira presents himself as an exemplar par excellence of scribal pursuits (Sir 39:1– 12). Consequently, along with the assertion of Ezra’s lesser status during this period and the lack of flashy deeds associated with him is the probability that Ben Sira has already extolled scribal pursuits and therefore minimizes them in the Praise of the Ancestors.40 9.4

Conclusions

The figure of Ezra transforms in later periods. In 4 Ezra, he becomes a seer who has visions and reflects on existential questions, a far cry from the individual 40

In this respect, I think there is more thematic unity in Sirach than the essay by Mroczek and Wright in this volume suggests, and while this instruction obviously went through many editorial accretions, there is clear authorial intent and planning in the literary construction of the Praise of the Ancestors.

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in the book of Ezra. In rabbinic traditions, he is remembered as the preserver/ restorer of the Torah and also as a scribal-sage par excellence (e.g., b. Meg. 18b). This type of reception history persists all the way to later figures such as Spinoza, who in his “Theological-Political Treatise” credits Ezra with shaping the works of the Hebrew Bible and grappling with the many discrepancies and thematic inconsistencies in the various sources.41 Yet this rich and varied history involving Ezra was not fully operative at the time the Praise of the Ancestors in Sirach was authored and edited. From the perspective of this sapiential author, Ezra is apparently not yet remembered as a powerful figure whose role in shaping Jewish identity places him in the pantheon of the other essential founders. That understanding would certainly develop, but at least from the perspective of a Second Temple sage who chose to include a colorful and selective patchwork of figures at the end of his instruction, he and any subsequent editors did not feel compelled to include Ezra. Rather than search for a forced rationale, it is better to assume that Ezra was not yet a logical candidate for inclusion. Bibliography Becking, Bob, ed. Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity. FAT 80. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Beentjes, Pancratius C. “Canon and Scripture in the Book of Ben Sira (Jesus Sirach/ Ecclesiasticus.” Pages 169–86 in “Happy the One who Meditates on Wisdom” (Sir. 14,20): Collected Essays on the Book of Ben Sira. CBET 43. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezra-Nehemiah. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1988. Calduch-Benages, Nuria. “The Absence of Named Women from Ben Sira’s Praise of the Ancestors.” Pages 301–17 in Rewriting Biblical History. Essays on Chronicles and Ben Sira in Honor of Pancratius C. Beentjes. Ed. J. Corley and H. van Grol. DCLS 7. Berlin: de Gruyter 2011. Collins, John J. Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Curley, Edwin, ed. The Collected Works of Spinoza. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Doran, Robert. 2 Maccabees. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. Duggan, Michael W. “Ezra, Scribe and Priest, and the Concerns of Ben Sira.” Pages 105–31 in Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit: Essays in Honor of Alexander A. Di Lella, 41

See Curley, The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:45–356.

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O. F. M. Ed. J. Corley and V. Skemp. CBQMS 38. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2005. Fishbane, Michael. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Fried, Lisbeth. Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition. Studies on the Personalities of the Old Testament. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. Grabbe, Lester. “What Was Ezra’s Mission?” Pages 286–99 in Second Temple Studies 2. Temple Community in the Persian Period. Ed. T. C. Eskenzai and K. H. Richards. JSOTSup 175. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. Trans. John Bowden. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974. Himmelfarb, Martha. A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Höffken, Peter. “Warum schwieg Jesus Sirach über Esra?” ZAW 87 (1975): 184–201. Mack, Burton L. Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira’s Hymn in Praise of the Fathers. CSHJ. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Marttila, Marko. Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira: A Jewish Sage between Opposition and Assimilation. DCLS 13. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. Mroczek, Eva. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Najman, Hindy. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. JSJSup 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Olyan, Saul. “Ben Sira’s Relationship to the Priesthood.” HTR 80:3 (1987): 261–86. Piwowar, Andrzej. “Dlaczego Syrach pominął Ezdrasza w Pochwale Ojców (Syr 44– 50)?” Biblical Annals 58/1 (2011): 105–31. Pohlmann, Karl-Friedrich. Studien zum Dritten Esra. Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach dem ursprünglichen Schluss des chronistischen Geschichtswerkes. FRLANT 104. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. Schnabel, Eckhard J. Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul: A Tradition Historical Inquiry into the Relation of Law, Wisdom, and Ethics. WUNT 16. Tübingen: Mohr, 1985. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt. Berlin: Reimer, 1906. Williamson, H. G. M. Ezra and Nehemiah, OTG. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987. Wright, Benjamin G. “‘Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest’: Ben Sira as Defender of the Jerusalem Priesthood.” Pages 189–222 in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research: Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference, 28–31 July 1996, Soesterberg, Netherlands. Ed. P. C. Beentjes. BZAW 255. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997.

chapter 10

Sages as Singers in Sirach and the Second Temple Period David A. Skelton Sirach 39 has long captured the imagination of scholarship on this instruction and Second Temple studies in general.1 Interpreters concerned with canonicity or biographical information on scribes often turn to vv. 1–11, and scholars with an interest in theodicy and possible Stoic influences on Jewish thought have turned to vv. 12–35. Despite the copious treatment this chapter has received, few have emphasized the reference to music in 39:15. In this paper, I hope to demonstrate the importance of Sir 39:15 as a hermeneutical key both for understanding the role of music in Ben Sira’s pedagogy and the importance of music in pedagogical training in general during the Second Temple period. Sirach 39:15 depicts the sage as a singer of hymns and reveals training in song as a central part of scribal education as Ben Sira conceived it. In this conception, Ben Sira is not alone. I will further suggest that his depiction of the sage as a singer draws upon a common model of the teacher during the Second Temple period that has roots both in the Levitical scribal tradition and in Hellenistic education. Overall, I will contend that the use of hymns in oral educational settings by teachers as a means of transmitting their instruction and demonstrating their wisdom was quite common in antiquity, and scholarship on ancient Jewish pedagogy has largely missed the role of singing and music in antiquity. 10.1

Sirach 39:15 and Ben Sira’s Pedagogy

Sirach 39 begins by extoling the piety of the scribe and concludes with a theodicean poem concerning the benevolence of the cosmos for the pious. Linguistically terms such as διανοέοµαι (“to think, plan”) and ἐξοµολογέω (“to 1 I offer heartfelt thanks to Greg Schmidt Goering, Matthew Goff, and Samuel Adams for inviting me to present this paper at a conference in Virginia in the summer of 2017. This research also would not have been possible without the Fulbright U.S. Student program, Florida State University, and Reinhard Kratz, who supported my year abroad at the University of Göttingen. All errors are my own.

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praise”) link these two passages together.2 The one who meditates on the law (38:34) and hidden things (39:7), now meditates in song (39:12) and writing (39:32), and the one who acknowledges God in prayer (39:6), now does so in praise (39:15).3 Although Sir 39:12–35 is clearly a separate pericope, I contend that one should read this poem as a continuation of Ben Sira’s depiction of the ideal sage in 39:1–11. Taken together, Sirach 39 provides an example of how the ideal sage reveals the wisdom he inherited from God. In this case, the sage glorifies God not only in speech and in writing (v. 32), but also through song. The pedagogical value of song is particularly apparent in 39:15 where Ben Sira addresses the audience directly. Only MS B has the final bicolon of the verse, which states, “With songs of the thick lyre and all kinds of stringed instruments. Thus, you shall say with a loud voice” (‫]בש[ירות נבל וכלי מיני]ם[ וכן‬ ‫)תאמר בתרו ה‬. The Greek is quite similar though it states, “with songs on your lips” (ἐν ᾠδαῖς χειλέων) instead of “songs of the lyre” and “in acknowledgement” (ἐν ἐξοµολογήσει) instead of “in a loud voice.” As several commentators have suggested, the former may be a misreading of the chelys “lyre” (χελύων) as “lips” and the latter a misreading of ‫ בתרו ה‬as ‫בתודה‬, which would bring the Vorlage of the Greek closer to the Hebrew of MS B.4 Finally, the Syriac lacks references to the lyre altogether, and instead replaces the musical terminology with a general reference to praise and thanksgiving ( ‫ܘ ܘ‬ ‫ܒ‬ ). Although there are numerous differences between the versions, all three address the reader directly and suggest that he should sing in the following manner (‫ ;וכן תאמר‬οὕτως ἐρεῖτε; ‫)ܘܗܟ ܐ ܐ ܪܘ‬. This adverbial clause is important pedagogically because it implies not only that what follows in vv. 16–31 is a sample hymn that a sage should sing, but it also suggests that teaching how to praise was a component of Ben Sira’s pedagogy. Sirach 15:10 already allocated praise as the specific domain of the wise and suggested that only the wise can teach it, but here Ben Sira doubles down on the fact that through proper praise, the sage reveals his wisdom. The adverb “like this” (‫ ;כן‬οὕτως) in 39:15 also assumes that singing praise to God was something Ben Sira’s audience already took part in, and the reference to doing so to the accompaniment of the lyre suggests that musical training in this instrument was something Ben Sira himself taught his students. In this regard, I am not arguing that Ben Sira taught his students how to sing and play musical instruments. Rather, Ben Sira used the

2 For an analysis of Sir 39:12–35 that reads it together with 38:24–39:11, see Liesen, Full of Praise, 115–30. 3 Ibid., 115–19. 4 For these observations, see Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 1:1, 3; Smend, Weisheit, 357.

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musical acumen his students had already obtained in order to accentuate the demonstration of wisdom through song. While one could contend that I am reading too much into one adverbial phrase, there are references to musical training elsewhere in the book of Sirach. In 40:21, after referencing wine and strong drink (MS B) or wine and music (LXX), Ben Sira states, “the double-pipe (‫חליל‬/αὐλός) and the thick-lyre (‫נבל‬/ψαλτήριον) make a song delightful.” The combination of the wine, doublepipe, and lyre suggests a connection with the Greek symposium, a context in which all three were present. The combination of wine and music also points back to 32:1–6, which not only assumes familiarity with the symposium but also suggests active participation in it by Ben Sira’s implied audience. Rather than being a braggart, Ben Sira advises his students not to interrupt the singing (‫ ;תמנ שיר‬µὴ ἐµποδίσῃς µουσικά). MSS B and F also add that a banquet should not be “without a psalm/song” (v. 4; ‫)בלא מ מר‬, and they extol “the sound of a psalm/song with the pleasantness of new wine” (v. 6; ‫)קול מ מור ל נו ם תירוש‬, which may allude to David’s “pleasant psalms” (‫ )קול מ מור הנ ים‬or “sweet melody” (γλυκαίνειν µέλη) in Sir 47:9 in Bmarg and the LXX. Furthermore, the reference to the wine feasts in 32:5 relates to banquet psalms in the eulogy of Josiah in 49:1 (‫)מ מור ל משתה היין‬. Nevertheless, MSS B and F also add a qualifier not present in the Greek of 32:5. While participating in banquets, the symposium in which Ben Sira’s students sing should contain “songs to God” (32:5; ‫שירת אל‬/‫)שיר‬. While this qualifier may be a pious addition to the Hebrew added later in order to justify participation in the symposium, its presence in the Syriac ( ‫ܬ ܒܘܚ‬ ‫ ) ܐ‬suggests this reading is quite old. Regardless, by accentuating the importance of music at the banquet and assuming participation in it, Ben Sira also implies that his audience has received the necessary musical training in both the lyre and double-pipe necessary for participation in the symposium. Furthermore, if the qualifier in the Hebrew and Syriac of 32:5 is original, these “pious banquet songs” also provide a context for the performance of the wisdom hymn in Sir 39:16–31. In other words, Ben Sira’s students were accustomed to singing songs at banquets to the accompaniment of the thick lyre, and he provides them with a song to sing in order to demonstrate their newfound wisdom acumen.5 This reflection on the goodness of creation and the 5 In his Paedagogus, Clement of Alexandria approves of the use of the lyre at dinner parties by citing Ben Sira’s own call to praise God in this manner in Sir 39:15 and suggests that the singing of skolion at banquets was similar to the singing of Jewish psalms (Ἑβραϊκῶν κατ’ εἰκόνα ψαλµῶν ᾆσµα τὸ καλούµενον σκολιὸν ᾔδετο; Paed. 2.4.43–44). For more on music and education in Clement, see Cosgrove, “Clement of Alexandria,” 255–82.

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allotment of good and evil to their proper time provided his students a readymade answer to wisdom instruction in Job and Qoheleth and also served as a spiritual exercise in which reflection on the cosmos should lead to reflection on oneself, which is something that is quite common in the Stoic tradition.6 The vehicle of song would have allowed Ben Sira’s students to easily memorize this instruction and popularize it among a general audience.7 Finally, the phrases ‫ נבל‬and ‫ בתרו ה‬in 39:15 may provide a context that helps explain Ben Sira’s depiction of the sage as a singer of hymns. First, the phrase ‫ נבל‬occurs in 47:9 in Bmarg in the singular and most likely in the plural in the main text in reference to David arranging accompaniment on stringed instruments (‫ )נגינות‬for the songs before the altar.8 The parallel between the sage as a singer and the eulogy of David is even more apparent if one combines 39:15 with 39:35 that frames the wisdom song. In this passage, Ben Sira again addresses his readers and commands them “to sing for joy” (‫ ;הרנינו‬ὑµνήσατε) “with all one’s heart” (‫ )בכל לב‬and bless God. Similarly, in 47:8–10, Ben Sira also depicts David as a singer of hymns who “gives thanks” (‫ ;נתן הודות‬ἔδωκεν ἐξοµολόγησιν), “sings for joy” (‫)רנן‬, and “praises” (αἰνέω) God’s holy name (‫שם‬ ‫ ;קדשו‬τὸ ἅγιον ὄνοµα αὐτοῦ) “with all his heart” (‫ בכל לבו‬ἐν πάσῃ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ). This parallel suggests more than identifying the wisdom poem in 39:16–31 as “a ‫ מ מ ר‬like the ones which David composed,” as Jan Liesen contends (pointing in the original).9 Rather, by using the same terminology for the scribe and David, Ben Sira implicitly makes David an exemplar of the ideal scribe, which is a correlation one finds explicitly in 11Q5 27 in which David is called a ‫סו ר‬ 6 See, for example, the famous Stoic dictum from Cicero homo ortus est ad mundum contemplandum et imitandum (Nat. d. 2.38). For discussion of this passage and its relation to Sirach, see Wicke-Reuter, “Ben Sira und die Frühe Stoa,” 272–77. 7 Another factor that connects the command to sing in 39:15 with the symposium setting in 32:1–6 is the gender of ‫ שיר‬in Bmarg and MS F in 32:5 (‫ )שירת‬and in 39:15 (‫)שירות‬. While the former is a feminine singular construct and the latter a feminine plural, the use of the feminine ‫ שירה‬is quite distinctive and may denote a separate category of songs compared to ‫שיר‬. Jeremy Penner (Daily Prayer, 207) has suggested that this genre refers to the use of songs outside a psalmic collection in non-sacrificial rituals by teachers and community leaders. If these observations are correct, then the use of ‫( שירות‬LXX ᾠδαῖ) rather than ‫ שיר‬in Sir 39:15 may be intentional, and such a genre would lend itself well to the creation of new songs by both teachers and students in Ben Sira’s context. Furthermore, if Ben Sira uses the feminine ‫ שירה‬to refer to “pedagogical songs” rather than cultic ones, then it explains why he concludes his work in Sir 51:29 by not only inviting students to listen to his instruction but also to not be ashamed of his song (‫)לא תבושו בשירתי‬. 8 The main text appears to have ‫נבלים‬, which the marginal hand corrects to the singular. Along with ‫ נבל‬another marginal reading written vertically on the edge of the leaf is ‫קול מ מור הנ ים‬, which agrees with the LXX’s καὶ ἐξ ἠχοῦς αὐτῶν γλυκαίνειν µέλη. 9 Liesen, Full of Praise, 138.

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and ‫חכם‬. This suggests further that one should understand Ben Sira’s depiction of the ideal scribe in the same light as the book’s depiction of David as a scribe. For Ben Sira, David serves as a type for scribal piety, and Ben Sira copies this type by collecting and performing his own songs in the course of his instruction. Second, the combination of ‫ נבל‬with ‫ בתרו ה‬in MS B suggests that Ben Sira may also be influenced by the model of the Levitical scribal singers in Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. In 1 Chron 15:16–29, when David brings the ark to Jerusalem, he specifically appoints singers and musicians among the Levites who “sing” (‫ ;שיר‬v. 16) with “a thick lyre” (‫ ;נבל‬vv. 16, 20, 28) and “with shouting” (‫ ;בתרו ה‬v. 28), which are the same terms found in Sir 39:15 in MS B almost verbatim. Along with their musical expertise, both the Chronicler and Ezra-Nehemiah make the Levites sages or scribes (and sometimes judges, see 1 Chron 23:4; 2 Chron 19:8–9), where they also figure predominately as teachers (2 Chron 17:7–8; 34:12–13 calls them ‫ ;סו רים‬cf. Neh 8:9).10 If the additions of musical and teaching responsibilities to the Levites are part of the contemporary experience of the Chronicler, which he then injects into his presentation of monarchial history, it is thus natural to suppose that the pedagogy of the Levites would have had some sort of singing or musical component. In this light, the reference to the “righteous” and “upright” (‫ )ישרים ;צדקים‬singing “a new song” (‫ )שיר חדש‬with lyres (‫ )בכנור בנבל שור‬and shouting (‫ )בתרו ה‬in Psalm 33 may be a reference to the type of song the Levitical singers could have sung, and its emphasis on the creation of the world by God’s word (vv. 6, 9) may have had a direct influence on the theology of Ben Sira’s song in 39:16–31, which utilizes similar terminology (cf. Ps 33:6; Sir 39:17).11 Finally, the conflation of Davidic and Levitical traditions in the character of the ideal sage in Sir 39:15 also occurs in the scribal depiction of David in 11Q5 27. As Timothy Lim has demonstrated, the phrase “through prophecy” to describe David’s words also refers to the prophesying of the Levitical singers in 1 Chronicles 25 in which both the composition and performance of songs revealed the sage’s inspired status.12 It is well known that Ben Sira uses this phrase to describe his own teaching in 24:33 (ὡς προφητείαν; ‫) ܒ ܘܬ‬, which suggests not only a similar scribal template based on Chronicles utilized by 10

11 12

In the LXX of Chronicles, both ‫ סו ר‬and ‫ שו ר‬are translated as γραµµατεύς except in two passages where they appear side by side and the Greek renders ‫ שו ר‬as κριτής (2 Chron 26:11; 34:13). The translation of ‫ שו ר‬as γραµµατεύς also occurs throughout the Pentateuch. See Schams, Jewish Scribes, 71–83. Psalm 33 is also attributed to David in the LXX and in the Cave 4 Psalm collection 4Q98 (4QPsq). Lim, “‘All These Composed Through Prophecy’,” 70–71.

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Ben Sira and the author of 11Q5 27 but also that Ben Sira’s characterization of inspired speech as “prophecy” included a singing component as well. There is also a close parallel, at least conceptually, between Sir 39:12–35 and the maskil in the Maskil Hymn (1QS 9:26–11:22) that concludes the Serek ha-Yaḥad in most versions. In column 10 of 1QS, the Community Rule commands the maskil to lead the community in morning and evening prayers and concludes with a sample hymn similar to the Teacher Hymn in the Hodayot in column 10. 1QS 10:8–9 states: ‫ובכול היותי חוק חרות בלשוני ל רי תהלה ומנת ש תי‬8 ‫א מרה בד ת וכול נגינתי לכבוד אל וכנור נבלי לתכון קודשו וחליל ש תי אשא‬9 ‫בקו מש ו‬

8 And in all my existence the precept will be engraved on my tongue to be a fruit of eulogy (lit. psalm), and a portion (or offering) of my lips. 9 I will sing with knowledge and all my stringed music shall be for the glory of God, and the playing of my lyre (lit. thin lyre of my thick lyre) according to his holy order and the double-pipe of my lips I shall tune to its correct measure.13 In this example hymn, the speaker refers to the engraving of God’s statutes as fruit of praise on his tongue (‫)חוק חרות בלשוני ל רי תהלה‬, and a litany of musical references with which he will sing to God with knowledge (‫ )א מרה בד ת‬including ‫נגינה‬, which is a term for stringed instruments associated with demon expulsion (1 Sam 16:16, 23; 18:10; 19:9) and prophecy (2 Kgs 3:15), a “thin lyre” (‫)כינור‬, a “thick lyre” (‫ )נבל‬and the pipe of his lips (‫)ש תי חליל‬. The combination of phrases in this passage echoes 1QHa 19:26 and creates an image of a teacher well-versed in musical instruction. The idea of a teaching figure who sings hymns also occurs in the Therapeutae whose depiction in Philo relates closely to the Essenes and the Qumran community. In paragraph 80 of De vita contimplativa, Philo refers to the president (his term for a leadership office in the group) specifically singing hymns to God (καὶ ἔπειτα ὁ µὲν ἀναστὰς ὕµνον ᾄδει πεποιηµένον εἰς τὸν θεόν) during the communal meal, some of which are new songs of his own creation (ἢ καινὸν αὐτὸς πεποιηκὼς) and others that are songs of the ancient poets (ἀρχαῖόν τινα τῶν πάλαι ποιητῶν). This depiction of the teacher as a singer of hymns again fits well both with the ideal sage in Ben Sira, and the maskil who is connected 13

My translation follows García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1.527.

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173

most often with liturgical texts in the scrolls and presumably had to memorize and teach them.14 Returning to the Serek ha-Yaḥad, the combination of musical instruments is particularly insightful, especially if one reads only the Cave 4 Serek texts in which the ‫ כנור‬is absent and the ‫ נבל‬is the only stringed instrument utilized (4Q258; 4Q260). The combination ‫ נבל‬and ‫ חליל‬occurs as well in Sir 40:21, which is not a common combination in the Hebrew Bible, but these instruments are combined in the archaeological evidence in the Hellenistic period. For example, musicologist Joachim Braun contends that “it is now the simple or double-reed instruments with one or two pipes that appear most often in the Hellenistic-Roman period.”15 Braun also suggests that an amalgamation of new and traditional music practices was representative of the musical culture in ancient Israel in the Hellenistic period,16 which would also explain why the ‫ נבל‬becomes more prominent alongside the ‫ חליל‬if it is representative of a more local lyre tradition as opposed to the ‫כנור‬, as musicologist Bathja Bayer argued almost half a century ago.17 In other words, based on musicological and archaeological evidence, the reference to the double pipe and thick lyre in musical performance in Sirach and the scrolls may represent actual musical practice in the Second Temple period. Finally, if one reads the eulogy of David in Sir 47:8–11 alongside the framing device to the wisdom poem in Sir 39:15 and 35, the correlation between these passages and the Maskil Hymn is even stronger. In both, the maskil and David give thanks (‫ ;הודות‬Sir 47:8; 1QS 10:23/4Q260 5:5) and arrange songs (‫הכין‬/ ‫ ;תיקן‬Sir 47:9; ‫ תכון‬in 1QS 10:9/4Q258 9:8/4Q260 3:1), which are terms also used for the Teacher in Qoh 12:9 who arranges proverbs (‫)תקן משלים‬.18 Similarly, the allusion to David in the prologue to the Praise of the Ancestors in 44:5 calls him an “examiner” or “collector of songs” (‫ ;חוקרי מ מור‬cf. Qoh 12:9) with 14

15 16 17

18

The term maskil occurs 4x in the Hodayot, 1x in Hodayot-like Text A (4Q433a), 7x in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 1x as a heading in Words of the Maskil to All the Sons of Dawn (4Q298), and 2x in the Songs of the Maskil (4Q510–511) For this list and more on the maskil, see Hempel, “Maskil(im) and Rabbim: From Daniel to Qumran,” 133–56. Braun, Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine, 222–23. Ibid. Braun suggests that the lack of harps in the archaeological evidence in Israel prior to the advent of Hellenism indicates that the ‫“ נבל‬was a particular kind of lyre of local Near East provenance.” Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine, 23–24. From this perspective the larger lyre on the Bar Kokhba coins is likely a ‫נבל‬. Braunn’s interpretation utilizes the evidence from Bayer, “Biblical Nebel,” 89–131, who compares the marked difference between lyres in Bar Kokhba coins with other evidence from the ANE. For an attempt to distinguish the ‫כנור‬ and the ‫נבל‬, cf. Josephus, Ant. 8.12.3. Smend, Weisheit, 418–19, 451.

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the Masada text stating that David does so “by verse” (‫) ל קו‬. The phrase ‫ל‬ ‫ קו‬also occurs in the Serek ha-Yaḥad for the songs produced by the maskil (1QS 10:9/4Q258 9:9/4Q260 3:1) and in 1QHa 9:30–31 where God sets words “by verse” (‫ ) ל קו‬and “by measure” (‫)במדה‬.19 The sheer volume of these parallels is illuminating, but even more so is the fact that they occur in two texts with different epistemological frameworks. Ben Sira and the writers and redactors of the Serek ha-Yaḥad would not have agreed in the content of their teaching, which makes their agreement on the depiction of the teacher even more salient.20 In other words, despite their differences, both Ben Sira and the Serek ha-Yaḥad appear to draw on a common model of the teacher in the Second Temple period, which demonstrates two different points of continuity with older pedagogical traditions that involve music. 10.2

Singing as Pedagogy in Antiquity

I have thus far examined the image of a singing teacher in Sirach and the Dead Sea Scrolls on a purely textual level, with a brief reference to the archaeological abundance of double-pipes in the Hellenistic period. Nevertheless, even if the depiction of the sage as a singer of hymns was a common model, one must still determine how to understand this construction. Is the combination of song and wisdom simply an extension of the image of David and Solomon as song writers from the Hebrew Bible (1 Kg 5:12 MT), or does the predominance of this metaphor in the Second Temple texts mentioned above suggest that Hebrew teachers utilized songs in the course of their instruction? Based on comparative evidence of the role of music in education in antiquity, I prefer the latter. When one examines the evidence for education in the ancient world, it becomes apparent that hymns and prayers were not only employed in the domain of the cult but were also utilized in educational contexts. For example, based on the references to musical training in Examination Text A, the dialogue Enkitalu and Enkihegal, and the Babylonian tuning texts, most Assyriologists 19

20

Sirach 44:5 is also instructive because of its location in the prologue to Praise of the Ancestors where it appears to present all the patriarchs recounted in chs. 44–49 not only as authors but composers of songs. The musical component of this verse is even more apparent in the LXX and the Syriac with the former referring to examiners of musical melody (ἐκζητοῦντες µέλη µουσικῶν) and the latter to rulers who explore with their songs by means of kitharas and lyres ( ‫ܘܟ‬ ‫ܒ ܗܘ ܥܠ ܐ ܝ‬ ‫ܘ‬ ‫)ܘ ܠ ܐ‬. For the differences between Sirach and the Community Rule, see Newsom, Self as Symbolic, 271–72.

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assume some form of musical training occurred in the edubba or scribal school in the second millennium.21 Scribes also utilized hymns and prayers in the first millennium in Mesopotamia, and at least in the case of the Enuma Elish, excerpts of cultic text could be re-appropriated in an educational context.22 Similarly, based on the reference to “chanting the signs” in the Instruction of Merikare and “verse points” in papyrus from the Middle Kingdom onward, one can make a similar argument for Egyptian scribal training.23 While these parallels are important, the strongest and more contemporaneous evidence for training in music in ancient education comes from ancient Greece. Here I will use two brief examples both from Plato: (1) the Athenian ideal of an Aner Mousikos; and (2) the use of music in Greco-Roman philosophy. In Republic 349e, Plato refers to an “educated” (φρόνιµος) man as a “musical man” (µουσικὸς ἀνήρ). This was a common term to denote someone of good education in Classical Athens, and this equation coincides with Plato’s accentuation of musical training as the core of proper education (Resp. 399a–402a; Laws 653c–54d).24 For example, the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws suggests to Clinias that education has its origins in Apollo and the Muses (παιδείαν εἶναι πρώτην διὰ Μουσῶν τε καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος), and he goes on to classify the “uneducated” (ἀπαίδευτος) as one “without choral training” (ἀχόρευτος) and “the welleducated” (ὁ καλῶς πεπαιδευµένος) as “one who is able to sing and dance well” (ᾄδειν τε καὶ ὀρχεῖσθα δυνατὸς ἂν εἴη καλῶς). The time period Plato depicts is the fifth century BCE, in which numerous vase paintings (e.g., Berlin F285), reveal “schoolroom” scenes where the student receives training in singing to the accompaniment of the lyre as well as playing the aulos, which one would then utilize in a symposium setting.25 One sees a similar interconnection between 21

22 23

24 25

Cf. Sjöberg, “Old Babylonian Edubba,” 168–70; Lucas, “Scribal Tablet-House,” 317; Vanstiphout, “Old Babylonian,” 7; Kilmer, “Musik,” 467–68; Krispijn, “Musik in Keilschrift,” 467–69; Volk, “Musikalische Praxis,” 2:22–23; Waetzoldt, and Cavigneaux, “Schule,” RA 12 (2009): 304; Charpin, Reading and Writing in Babylon, 25; Ziegler, “Music, the Work of Professionals,” 305. For strong opposition to this consensus, see Michalowski, “Learning Music,” 199–239. Sjöberg, “Old Babylonian Edubba,” 171–72 and Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien, 174–83. Cf. Williams, “Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt,” 214–21 (216); Wente, “The Scribes of Ancient Egypt,” in CANE 4:2211–21 (2215); Baines, Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt, 146–78. Parkinson, Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt, 112–17. For an extensive overview of the verse points in New Kingdom texts, see Tacke, Verspunkte als Gliederungsmittel in ramessidischen Schülerhandschriften, 137–74. Bundrick, Music and Image in Classical Athens, 49. For an extensive treatment on music, vase paintings, and education in fifth century BCE Athens, see Bundrick, Music and Image, 49–101. Despite his idolization of the archaia paideia, Plato also condemns those who sing to the gods without knowledge (Ion 533b–35a) and

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writing and music in the fifth century BCE in burial artifacts, and inscriptions from the Hellenistic period reveal evidence for continued training in music in the education, such as the third century BCE inscription from Teos in Ionia (SIG3 578.8–20), in which a benefactor sets prices for both teachers of letters and grammar and a music teacher who could teach the playing of the lyre with the plectrum and finger plucking.26 Plato also emphasizes the importance of music as a pedagogical tool among certain philosophical schools. The most influential on Plato is Damon, whom Plato credits with discovering the relationship between the musical modes and ethos (Resp. 398c–401a; 424c–25a).27 Furthermore, Damon is not the only sophist that utilized music according to Plato. Protagoras states in Plato’s dialogue of the same name that other sophists taught music (318e) and even accused Damon’s teacher (Laches 180d), Agathocles, of using “music as a front (πρόσχηµα), as did Pythoclides of Ceos, and many others” (316e) in order to disguise the fact that they were sophists.28 Finally, in Phaedo, even Socrates becomes a musician. Because of dreams compelling him to do so, Socrates puts the fables of Aesop into verse and composes a hymn to Apollo (Phaedo 60d–61b).29 Richard P. Martin argues that Socrates represents an “endpoint” of a tradition of sages as performers in multiple spheres, which included poetry, proverbs, and public demonstrations of their wisdom via symbolic acts.30 For Martin, this presocratic depiction of the Seven Sages as poets and performers embodied in Socrates continued even when the sages evolved into philosophers in Greek tradition, as is seen by the depiction of Solon, Thales, and other sages as singers and creator of songs in Diogenes Laertius.31 Particularly interesting

26

27 28 29 30 31

use impermissible musical modes (Leg. 656c), or improper songs in general (Resp. 605c– 8b), which often included Homer (e.g. 377d–78e; 379c–80c; 380e–83c; 599c–600e). Plato approves of only hymns to the gods and praise of good men (ὅσον µόνον ὕµνους θεοῖς καὶ ἐγκώµια τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ποιήσεως παραδεκτέον εἰς πόλιν; 607a). Also, cf. Leg. 801d–e. For the Daphni tombs, see Pöhlmann and West, “Oldest Greek Papyrus,” 1–16. Also, cf. Pöhlmann, “Excavation, Dating and Content,” 7–24. For the Teos inscription, and music and education in Greece and Rome in general, see Hagel and Lynch, “Musical Education in Greece and Rome,” 401–12. For Damon, see Wallace, “Damon of Oa: A Music Theorist Ostracized?” 249–68. Translated from Lombardo and Bell, “Protagoras,” in Plato, 753. Socrates praises the musical knowledge of the sophist, Hippias, in a more positive light (Hipp. Ma. 285d; Hipp. Mi. 368d). Socrates also calls philosophy the greatest kind of music (ὡς φιλοσοφίας µὲν οὔσης µεγίστης µουσικῆς). Martin, “Seven Sages as Performers,” 124. Here Martin is referring not to the historical reality of the sages but how ancient sources depicted and thus imagined their teaching activity. Ibid.

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is the depiction of Solon as a poet and singer in Diog. Laert. 1.61, where Solon also provides instruction in singing with similar terms to Sir 39:15: “Sing like this” (ὧδε δ᾽ ἄιεδε). According to Martin, these sages utilized symbolic acts as a demonstration of their wisdom, and many Greek traditions depict them (and other singers and sophoi) in competition with one another during Panhellenic festivals and banquet settings (e.g., Plutarch, Symposium of the Seven Sages).32 Although we have no evidence for how sophists and philosophers used music didactically, it is easy to imagine that hymns could function as a component of piety and a teaching tool for one’s philosophical ideals, which one sees quite obviously in a much later philosophical school: Stoicism. For example, Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus is both a paean to Zeus and Stoic cosmology in a hymnic garb. One can see other such examples of “philosophical hymns” in Aristotle’s Hymn to Virtue, Aratus’s Hymn to Zeus, and Lucretius’s On the Nature of the Universe.33 Many Neo-Platonists also refer to hymns as a synonym of philosophy, and Proclus composed several hymns as a means of assisting the divine ascent of the soul.34 If philosophers used various “spiritual exercises” to inculcate virtues, then there is no reason for music and song not to have served a similar function.35 Furthermore, Cicero gives the example of the blind philosopher Diodotus who lived with him for a time and played the harp ( fidibus) in the Pythagorean style (Tusc. 5.113). Although not much is known about them, these musical philosophers provide the strongest example of the image of the “scholar singer” in antiquity. While none of this evidence proves the use of music in an educational context in Sirach or the Dead Sea Scrolls, it does show that music was a common pedagogical tool in the ancient world. If Ben Sira and other educated elites in Jerusalem were trained in accordance with traditional Greek education, then they would have received education in both lyres and the double-pipe in order to participate in the symposium. In this pedagogical model, musical acumen was crucial in order to reveal one’s status as an educated elite. For example, besides the references to musical education in Plato mentioned above, there 32 33

34 35

Ibid., 123. Martin (p. 124) also contends that “agonistic behavior” “motivates the corporate representation of sages.” For the Panhellenic centers as meeting places for the sophists and its root in the Seven Sages, see Tell, “Sages at the Games,” 252–60. For the concept of “philosophical hymns,” see Gordley, Teaching through Song, 73–107. For his analysis of didactic hymns in the New Testament and early Christian writing, see ibid., 269–382. Along with Gordley’s analysis, one could add the Hymn of the Bride and the Hymn of the Pearl in the Acts of Thomas, and the use of madrashe by Ephrem, which he utilized in response to Bardaisan (e.g., CH 54). Van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns, 13–34. I borrow this term from Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 81–125. Hadot refers to the exercises enumerated by Philo: reading, listening, research, and investigation.

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is a famous story about Themistokles, in which he is thought of as uneducated for refusing to play the lyre at the symposium. (Plutarch, Them. 2.3; Cicero, Tusc. 1.2.4; Quint. Inst. 1.10.18). The importance of training in music and knowledge of hymns as a status of education provides explanatory power for the inclusion of hymns along with proverbial instruction in Ben Sira as well as the explosion of hymnody in the Second Temple period in general. In this regard knowledge of traditions including music and performance were part of the cultural capital that allowed Ben Sira’s students to be recognized as members of the educated elite. Overall, I suggest that one should imagine Ben Sira not only as a didactic teacher but as a singer of wisdom. Songs served as important vehicles for the moral and intellectual formation for Ben Sira and his students, which should challenge the text-focused models of scribalism and pedagogy in the Second Temple period. If one uses peripatetic sages and philosophers as a model, then one can place Ben Sira’s sung pedagogy in a similar category as the philosophical hymns examined. Not only did Ben Sira compose and circulate songs, but he performed them as well. As one such example, I have contended that the song in Sir 39:12–35 is a spiritual exercise and a model form of piety, which served as a sample performance that Ben Sira’s students could utilize in a banquet setting. Finally, I have contended that the depiction of the sage as a singer in other Second Temple texts along with the Hellenistic ideal of music literacy as a symbol of education suggests that this trope is not simply a literary phenomenon. The increased pairing of the lyre and double-pipe, which one finds in Israel in the Hellenistic period both archaeologically and textually (Sirach, 1QS, 1QHa), suggests that the model of the sage as singer is an image drawn from actual pedagogical practice. 10.3

The Pedagogical Value of Song

I would like to end my discussion with a brief examination of the pedagogical value of song, which I will elucidate with examples from Sirach and the scrolls. First, songs served as important mnemonic devices that facilitated recollection of the teacher’s instruction. Rhythm (meter in a Greek context and parallelism in a Hebrew context) gives musical expression its form. This, and other poetic devices such as word association and repetition, helps make what is sung more memorable, which is one reason music played a central role in pedagogy. In the Genizah manuscripts of Sirach, vowel points occur throughout, and MSS B, E, F and Masada are divided stichometrically fairly consistently. It

Sages as Singers in Sirach and the Second Temple Period

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is possible that this arrangement of the text provides evidence for its use in oral performance, which may stem from the oral performance of hymns and proverbs in Ben Sira’s own pedagogical context.36 Second, if verbal performance was crucial for how a sage demonstrated his wisdom, then the use of songs could also be a helpful recruitment tool that allowed a teacher to display his charisma. Through public performance of songs, a sage established his ethos and demonstrated the validity of his teaching, which would, in turn, allow him to attract followers. If it was publicly performed, perhaps we should think of the Hymn to Wisdom in Sirach 24 and the prophetic claim that follows to be such a public demonstration. Third, the use of songs in a more agonistic and performative model of education suggests that we should think of hymns pedagogically in terms of both embodiment and enculturation. On the one hand, physically hearing and participating in music through singing are both embodied acts that have different effects on one’s somatic and neurological processes. On the other hand, the act of singing a community’s own set of songs creates a sense of solidarity as well as separation from those who do not belong to the in-group. Regarding education in such an environment, Plato’s observation on children and song in Laws 659d and 797b is still relevant.37 Through the embodied 36

37

There may also be a corollary here to the tradition attested in b. Meg. 32a, “Concerning anyone who reads [from the Torah] without a melody or studies [the Mishnah] without a song (‫)כל הקורא בלא נ ימה ושונה בלא ימרה‬, the verse states: ‘So too I gave them statutes that were not good’ (Ezek 20:25).” Koren Talmud, 12, 413. Plato states, “The soul of the child has to be prevented from getting into the habit of feeling pleasure and pain in ways not sanctioned by the law and those who have been persuaded to obey it; he should follow in their footsteps and find pleasure and pain in the same things as the old. That is why we have what we call songs, which are really ‘charms’ for the soul. These are in fact deadly serious devices for producing this concord we are talking about; but the soul of the young cannot bear to be serious, so we use the terms ‘recreation’ and ‘song’ for the charms, and children treat them in that spirit … If you control the way children play, and the same children always play the same games under the same rules and in the same conditions and get pleasure from the same toys, you’ll find that the conventions of adult life too are left in peace without alteration.” Translation from Saunders, “Laws,” in Plato, 1350–51, 1465–66. This view of education in Plato is similar to the role of education in Althusser’s concept of the “Ideological State Apparatus,” in which the school takes over the role of the church in cultivating cultural conformity. In his analysis, Althusser does not speak of the role music plays in perpetuating the interests of the nation-state and creating a national habitus, but it is clearly present. Although a sectarian community is obviously not a “nation state,” music can play a similar role in “naturalizing” a community’s identity and creating a process of enculturation. See Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 127–86.

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act of play and performance, a community subtly reinforces its ideology and can bring about conformity to its values without overt knowledge of the indoctrination process. In other words, hymns are a major component of the naturalization process of identity formation. This process can be used to cultivate conformity towards the temple-state and traditional scribal ideals in the case of Ben Sira, or in the case of sectarianism and the Qumran community, music may have also served as a means of legitimization and self-identity. There are numerous historical examples of religious groups intentionally composing new music and collecting songs as a means of separation from the “parent group.”38 Overall, I suggest that hymn creation was not simply a textual phenomenon for both Ben Sira and the Qumran community but instead relates to a more embodied practice of knowledge in which the sage indoctrinates his students into the good life.39 The sage as a singer of hymns was a crucial component of this indoctrination process, and the roots of this tradition both in the Levitical scribal singer and in Hellenistic education suggests a crosspollination between Hellenistic and Hebraic thought at the level of pedagogical practice. Bibliography Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards An Investigation.” Page 127–86 in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review, 1970. Baines, John. Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Bayer, Bathja. “The Biblical Nebel.” Yuval 1 (1968): 89–131. Braun, Joachim. Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. 38

39

As one example among many, see the role music played in the formation of various Protestant denominations in America and Europe. Cf. Stowe, Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans, 17–40; Brown, Singing the Gospel, 52-73; and Kevorkian, “Pietists and Music,” 171–200. For a different take on Ben Sira as a teacher with an emphasis on the embodiment of wisdom in everyday life through spiritual practices, see Uusimäki, “Formation of a Sage according to Ben Sira,” 59–70. Also, cf. eadem, “Maskil among the Hellenistic Jewish Sages.” While I agree with much of Uusimäki’s assessment regarding Ben Sira and the maskil in relation to spiritual exercises and the value of Pierre Hadot, she does not mention music, which is something I hope to have brought to the forefront. For a different reading of wisdom acquisition in Ben Sira in light of Hadot, see Rey, “Knowledge Hidden and Revealed,” 259–63.

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Brown, Christopher Boyd. Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation. HHS 148. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. Bundrick, Sheramy. Music and Image in Classical Athens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Charpin, Dominique. Reading and Writing in Babylon. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Cooper, John M., ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. Cosgrove, Charles H. “Clement of Alexandria and Early Christian Music.” JECS 14 (2006): 255–82. García Martínez, Florentino, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997–98. Gesche, Petra D. Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. AOAT 275. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000. Gordley, Matthew. Teaching through Song in Antiquity: Didactic Hymnody among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians. WUNT 2.302. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2011. Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Translated by Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Hagel, Stefan, and Tosca Lynch. “Musical Education in Greece and Rome.” Pages 401–12 in A Companion to Ancient Education. Ed. W. Martin Bloomer. BCAW 120. Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey 2015. Hempel, Charlotte. “Maskil(im) and Rabbim: From Daniel to Qumran.” Pages 133–56 in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honor of Michael A. Knibb. JSJSup 111. Ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith Lieu. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Kevorkian, Tanya. “Pietists and Music.” Pages 171–200 in A Companion to German Pietism, 1660–1800. Ed. Douglas H. Shantz. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Kilmer, A. D. “Musik, A: philologisch.” RLA 8 (1997): 463–82. Krispijn, Theo J. H. “Musik in Keilschrift: Beiträge zur altorientalischen Musikforschung 2.” Pages 465–79 in Archäologie früher Klangerzeugung und Tonordnung: Musikarchäologie in der Ägäis und Anatolien/The Archaeology of Sound Origin and Organization: Music Archaeology in the Aegean and Anatolia. Ed. Ellen Hickmann, Anne Draffkorn Kilmer and Ricardo Eichmann. OrA 10/SM 3. Rahden: Leidorf, 2001. Lévi, Israel. L’Ecclésiastique ou la Sagesse de Jésus, fils de Sira. Texte original hébreu. 2 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901. Liesen, Jan. Full of Praise: An Exegetical Study of Sir 29:13–35. JSJSup 64. Brill: Leiden, 2000. Lim, Timothy. “‘All These Composed Through Prophecy’.” Pages 61–73 in Prophecy after the Prophets? The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Understanding of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Prophecy. Ed. Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange. Leuven: Peeters, 2009.

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Lucas, Christopher J. “The Scribal Tablet-House in Ancient Mesopotamia.” HEQ 19 (1979): 305–32. Martin, Richard P. “The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom.” Pages 108–28 in Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece. Ed. Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Michalowski, Piotr. “Learning Music: Schooling, Apprenticeship, and Gender in Early Mesopotamia.” Pages 199–239 in Musiker und Tradierung: Studien zur Rolle von Musiker bei der Verschriftlichung und Tradierung von literarischen Werken. Ed. Regine Pruzsinszky and Dahlia Shehata. WOO 8. Berlin and Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2010. Newsom, Carol A. The Self As Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran. STDJ 52. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Parkinson, Robert. Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt: A Dark Side to Perfection. London: Continuum, 2002. Penner, Jeremy. Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism. STDJ 104. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pöhlmann, Egert. “Excavation, Dating and Content of Two Tombs in Daphne, Odos Olgas 53, Athens.” GRMS 1 (2013): 7–24. Pöhlmann, Egert, and M. L. West. “The Oldest Greek Papyrus and Writing Tablets Fifth-Century Documents from the ‘Tomb of the Musician’ in Attica.” ZPE 180 (2012): 1–16. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Knowledge Hidden and Revealed: Ben Sira between Wisdom and Apocalyptic Literature.” HeBAI 5 (2016): 255–72. Schams, Christine. Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period. JSOTSup 291. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Sjöberg, Ä. W. “The Old Babylonian Edubba.” Pages 159–79 in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7, 1974. Ed. Stephan J. Lieberman. AS 20. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach erklärt. Berlin: Reimer, 1906. Smith, John Arthur. Music in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. Steinsaltz, Adin, trans. Koren Talmud Bavli Noé, Vol 12: Taʾanit, Megilla. Jerusalem. Koren, 2014. Stowe, David W. Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Tacke, Nikolaus. Verspunkte als Gliederungsmittel in ramessidischen Schülerhandschriften SAGA 22. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 2001. Tell, Håkan. “Sages at the Games: Intellectual Displays and Dissemination of Wisdom in Ancient Greece.” ClAnt 26 (2007): 249–75.

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Uusimäki, Elisa. “The Formation of a Sage according to Ben Sira.” Pages 59–69 in Second Temple Jewish ‘Paideia’ in Context. Ed. Jason M. Zurawski and Gabriele Boccaccini. BZNW 228. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017. Uusimäki, Elisa. “Maskil among the Hellenistic Jewish Sages.” JAJ 8 (2017): 42–68. Van den Berg, R. M. Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary. PhA 90. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Vanstiphout, H. L. J. “On the Old Babylonian Curriculum.” Pages 3–16 in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East. Ed. Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald. Leiden, Brill: 1995. Volk, Konrad. “Musikalische Praxis und Theorie im Alten Orient.” Pages 3–46 in vol. 2 of Geschichte der Musiktheorie. Ed. Thomas Ertelt, H. von Loesch, and Frieder Zimmer. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006. Waetzoldt, Hartmut and Antoine Cavigneaux. “Schule.” RA 12 (2009): 294–309. Wallace, Robert W. “Damon of Oa: A Music Theorist Ostracized?” Pages 249–68 in Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousikē’ in the Classical Athenian City. Ed. Penelope Murray and Peter Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Wente, Edward F. “The Scribes of Ancient Egypt.” Pages 2211–21 in vol. 4 of Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Ed. Jack M. Sasson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Wicke-Reuter, Ursel. “Ben Sira und die Frühe Stoa: Zum Zusammenhang von Ethik und dem Glauben an eine göttlich Providenz.” Pages 268–81 in Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference: Durham—Ushaw College 2001. BZAW 321. Ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. Williams, Ronald J. “Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt.” JAOS 92 (1972): 214–21. Ziegler, Nele. “Music, the Work of Professionals.” Pages 288–312 in Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. Ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

chapter 11

Sirach and Imperial History: A Reassessment James K. Aitken It is undoubtedly true that the book of Sirach is an important witness for its time period.1 From the perspective of Jewish Hellenistic history, we have few works that are to be dated before the Maccabean revolt. Yet, the praise of the high priest Simon (Sir 50:1–21) and the dating alluded to in the preface to the Greek translation point to the completion of this work in the early second century BCE, some decades before the revolt. Within the broader historical framework Sirach falls into that important period of transition from Ptolemaic to Seleucid administrative control of Palestine. It is a time period when cultures meet and identities are shaped. As a result, the temptation to presume the historical background as generative of the text is strong. Scholarship is familiar with broad depictions of this period as one of political turmoil, malicious Hellenism, hidden conflict, or simply a time of dangerous foreign influence, that are frequently still summoned up as the setting for the book.2 To derive historical references from Sirach, however, is very difficult, since the book’s gnomic material is by nature non-specific and applicable to many circumstances.3 More often than not, such familiar historical summaries of the period are externally applied to account for the wording of the book, while internal historical evidence is not elicited from the book itself.4 The establishment of a historical context for any literature is always a speculative and uncertain task. It is subject to changing historical perspectives in scholarly discussions and requires an abstraction of complex phenomena into a simplified account. Provision of a context for a book means placing it within a narrative that is informed, intentionally or not, by ideologies of our own time and place. In the case of Ben Sira there are certainly trends in the scholarly discussion, and most notable of all in the twentieth century has been the positioning of the book in relation to an abstract and ill-defined Hellenism. The realities of the Hellenistic world were more diverse and complex than any such 1 Cf. the remarks of Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23, 28–29. 2 See, e.g., Calduch-Benages, “Fear,” 87. 3 For an example of how the gnomic purpose overrides the application to specific sociohistorical settings, see Aitken, “Ben Sira’s Table Manners,” 418–38. 4 Mitchell, “Chronicles and Ben Sira,” 12, wisely warns of the danger of circularity in these arguments.

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abstraction would allow.5 There are signs that scholars today are seeking new ways of thinking through how we place the book of Sirach in its time. However, these new modes of thinking are also prone to abstract and monolithic understandings of the Hellenistic world and are built upon older historical frameworks for Sirach. Taking account of recent historical studies can lead to an upturning of the interpretation of passages and a fresh reading of the text. 11.1

Ben Sira in Historical Perspective

It is well-known that in the twentieth century and continuing into the twentyfirst century Ben Sira has been presented as an opponent of Hellenism, and this has been expressed in relation to many different aspects of the work.6 However, to demonstrate the contingency of our own readings, it is worth observing how this has not always been the norm in the interpretative history of the book. Before the turn of the twentieth century, there is little trace of the image of the conservative Ben Sira reacting to Hellenistic forces. It is ironic that this picture seems to have been established at the same time that the discovery of the Hebrew manuscripts allowed for a greater appreciation of the book’s poetic style and biblical allusions. The Hebrew manuscripts generated a renewed focus on the work and in so doing stimulated fresh discussion of the purpose and contexts of the book. In the nineteenth century, while some scholars attempted to date Sirach to the Maccabean period and some much earlier at the beginning of the third century BCE, most were content to locate him in the early second century near to the time of Simon II.7 It was recognized as the period after Alexander the Great’s conquests, when the Jews had been influenced by Greek culture. This was not seen, however, as necessarily a negative influence. William Ferrar, for example, concluded that the resulting effect of this contact was that the Jews had learned “to make wisdom or knowledge the root-principle of virtue.”8 The travels of Ben Sira (apparently alluded to in Sir 31[34] and 39) are also seen as a benefit: “Its writer is evidently one who has travelled and figured in the highest society of his day; he is no mere student cut off from the experience 5 See, e.g., Alexander, “Hellenism and Hellenization,” 63–80. 6 Most prominent has been Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism. 7 Hitzig places the book in the time of the Maccabees, owing to historical allusions (4:28; 10:8– 20; 32:22; etc.), while Scholz thinks it is 300 BCE. For discussion, see Davidson, Text of the Old Testament, 1026–27. 8 Ferrar, Uncanonical Jewish Books, 30.

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of life.”9 The political context was identified in the book by Samuel Davidson, who recorded what he saw as allusions to a military threat, noting how the author speaks of the suffering of the nation (36:9, etc.) and how the high priest fortified the city and protected the temple (50:1–4).10 These military allusions are seen, however, as intimations of the persecution of Ptolemy Philopator as recorded in 3 Maccabees, an event to which few would today ascribe an unquestioned historical reliability. Overall, Davidson saw the book as addressed to the middle classes, among whom the author counted himself. He detected little influence of Greek culture and philosophy, and instead concluded that the “Jewish mind of Palestine” is reflected throughout.11 On the whole Ben Sira was viewed in the nineteenth century as accommodating in one way or another to Greek ethical principles in his presentation of Hebrew virtues.12 This did not mean that Jews coexisted peacefully with Greeks, since historians of the time portrayed Jews in the diaspora as being in tension with their neighbours. Emil Schürer spoke of Hellenistic Judaism in a continual state of war (Kriegszustand) with the rest of the Hellenistic world: “it had ever to draw the sword in its own defence.”13 He ascribed this to the “peculiarities of the Jews” that were apparent in public life. Nevertheless, these were the experiences of the diaspora and were not seen as relevant to Ben Sira or his contemporaries in Palestine. The obsession of the twentieth century does not seem to have played much of a part in the nineteenth century. The defining difference in the twentieth century seems to have been Rudolf Smend’s commentary (1906) wherein he developed a theory that is summed up in the oft-quoted designation of the book of Sirach as “die Kriegserklärung des Judentums gegen den Hellenismus.”14 Ben Sira’s ethical teachings are placed in the wider context of diasporic Judaism, in that potential tensions between Jews and Greeks are interpreted not as mere social conflicts in particular times or places, but as ontological: the essential nature of Judaism as a religion, on the one hand, and the lifestyle of Hellenism, on the other, were by nature different realities that could never be compatible. In this Smend was drawing 9 10 11 12 13 14

Ibid. Davidson, Text of the Old Testament, 1026. Davidson, Text of the Old Testament, 1030. Cf. Schürer, Geschichte. Ibid., III: 528. Smend, Die Weisheit, xxiii (“the Jewish declaration of war against Hellenism”). These words have been quoted, for example, by Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:138; Snaith, “Ecclesiasticus,” 171, who suggests that Smend is being contentious if generally accurate; deSilva, “The Wisdom of Ben Sira,” 443, n. 27.

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upon nineteenth-century conceptions of Hellenism,15 and using the polarity of Judaism to Hellenism as the basis of a new understanding of Palestinian Judaism. Smend was a direct influence on Martin Hengel,16 and it is through these two important and influential authors that portrayals of Ben Sira as an anti-Hellenist have been developed. Although this is familiar to many, it still remains an unquestioned assumption in some scholarship. While Hengel sought to bridge the divide between Judaism and Hellenism and show that they were not incompatible even in Palestine, his thesis built upon an understanding of Ben Sira as the last of the anti-Hellenists.17 The divide still existed in this one case, and in contrast to the earlier but enlightened Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth). More important than the specific reading of Sirach, however, is how Hellenism as a concept forms part of a wider discourse of depicting the book’s historical background, and how this discourse is placed within our cultural framework. J. G. Droysen sought to rehabilitate the Hellenistic era after it had been neglected in favour of the Classical.18 His model of the Hellenistic era as a pivotal transition between paganism and the predestined triumph of Christianity privileged Hellenism as a political-cultural synthesis. This was achieved through the apparent universalizing of Hellenism, and thus became the cultural equivalent of the unifying monarchy of Alexander.19 Within the discourse on Hellenism, European-centric models of history come to the fore, as it has been traced especially in discussion of the Greeks in Egypt,20 but also brought out by Susan Sherwin-White and Amélie Kuhrt in their work on the Seleucid empire.21 Hellenism on this understanding becomes the intellectual and cultural positive ingredient that coalesces with the Middle East. The East is subordinated to a Western superiority, one that exoticizes the East and imposes an intellectual superiority for European culture. It has to be admitted that this begins as early as Herodotus in his depiction of non-Greek nations and Aeschylus’s portrayal of the Persians, and it is a tendency that is hard to avoid in writers.22

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

For an overview see Rajak, “Jews and Greeks,” 535–57. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:138. For a helpful placing of Hengel within the history of scholarship, see Frey, “‘Judaism’ and ‘Hellenism’,” 96–118. Droysen, Geschichte. See Aitken’s retrospective review, “Hengel’s Judentum und Hellenismus,” 331–41. See, e.g., Vasunia, Gift of the Nile. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis. See, e.g., Said, Orientalism, 56–58.

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This cultural imperialism, as it is viewed, is then followed and actualized by a real imperialism under the conquests of Alexander the Great.23 The positive force of Hellenism is then associated with negative domination. A reflex of this is seen in the terms applied to Hellenism, often drawing upon military and imperialist vocabulary. Smend’s “Kriegserklärung” is clear on this, as is Alexander Di Lella’s wording that presents cultural forces in the terms of a marauding army: “the spirit of compromise and syncretism that was rampant at the time.”24 The association between culture and empire is clear in the introduction to Patrick Skehan and Di Lella’s commentary: “It was a Hellenistic world—a world dominated by Greek ideas and ideals, customs and values, art and excellence; a world in which the Jews of Palestine were not politically free but subject to Egyptian or Syrian kings.”25 Here we see a clear expression in imperial terms of cultural transformation, using the verb “dominated” for the influence of ideas and values. This intellectual domination is then closely allied with a political subjection of the people that follows in the subsequent clauses. Notable here are the themes of domination, subjection, and denial of political freedom that seem to typify the practice of the Hellenistic monarchs. Within Jewish studies Hellenism takes on a further connotation. It has become the equivalent of paganism (or in Di Lella’s words, “humanism”),26 and what has been replaced as a simplistic model in the study of the ancient world still has some life within it in Jewish studies.27 The portrayal of the dominance of Hellenism in the ancient Near East lies in an Orientalist view of the East, in which Western civilization conquered, both physically and culturally, the barbaric East.28 And yet, in Jewish studies this is then reversed, and the European-centred discourse is supplanted by a monotheistic-centred discourse. Hellenism itself becomes abstracted, and the Greeks are the new barbarians, resulting in Occidentalism. Now the Jews are the civilizing force and the “Greeks” are the foreigners requiring improvement. Jewish studies seem 23 24

25 26 27 28

See Moyer, Egypt; Vasunia, Gift of the Nile. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 50. For an extreme expression of the idea, see the wording of Johnson “How were Jews to react to this cultural invasion, which was opportunity, temptation and threat all in one? … when the noose of Greek cities around Judah began to tighten” (History, 98–99). Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 12. Italics are ours. Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 16. The problem lies in the association, already believed in late antiquity, between Hellenism and paganism. The two terms are identified by the early lexica: see Bowersock, Hellenism, 9–10. Cf. Said, Orientalism, 57.

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to have reversed an Orientalism into an Occidentalism.29 But this reversal is not by chance, since the Greeks in the current discourse are the Hellenistic kingdoms that themselves are adopting older Eastern empires, be it that of the Persians or the Egyptians. The danger is that we can easily fall into the language of Orientalism, given its prominence in recent Western discourse, where it has cultivated an image of the Middle Eastern dictator in the popular imagination, framing Islam as antidemocratic. This has been bolstered by recent events in the Middle East, wherein the media and the Western political systems have portrayed the Arab leaders in similar fashion. Thus, in the 2012 US presidential primaries, the primary Republican winner Mitt Romney was for the most part subtle in his presentation of the issues. But in one interview he spoke with some disappointment of the Arab spring:30 The Arab spring is not appropriately named … It occurred in part because of the reluctance on the part of various dictators to provide more freedom to their citizens. President Bush urged Mubarak to move toward a more democratic posture, but President Obama abandoned the freedom agenda and we are seeing today a whirlwind of tumult in the Middle East in part because these nations did not embrace the reforms that could have changed the course of their history, in a more peaceful manner. He associates directly “these nations,” a blanket reference to the Middle East states, with violence in their inability to find more peaceful means (“a whirlwind of tumult”). The reference to the “freedom agenda” of Bush is a form of Orientalism, presenting democracy as a gift from the West to be given to people unable to develop themselves. They are unable, since the dictators are reluctant to give such freedom. The lack of a historical basis to his words is apparent from the fact that the Egyptian people themselves (the democratic people) were actually responsible for overthrowing a US-supported dictatorship. What is striking about the themes underlying Romney’s words is that they are the same themes found in Skehan and Di Lella’s summary of the Hellenistic empires, quoted above, and they undergird much of the scholarship on Sirach. The political leaders of the Middle East are dictators, denying freedom or democracy to their subject peoples, and resorting to war or other savage means of punishment. 29 30

See the essays in Kalmar and Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews. Quoted and discussed in Dimaggio, Selling War, 195.

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Colonialism and Postcolonialism

It is understandable given the scholarship on Sirach, and its relation to the Hellenistic Empires, that it has recently been observed how postcolonial theory could be used to explicate Ben Sira’s ideology.31 Indeed more recently there have been such attempts to view the book in terms of postcolonialism. This is already touched upon in the work of Richard Horsley,32 and one can see the seeds of some of it in writings on the historical context of Sirach.33 In reading Sirach through postcolonial eyes, there is a tendency to apply a historical model that is no different from that of earlier generations. A simple historical perspective is now given a more sophisticated postcolonial interpretation, but without reconsideration of that underlying historical assumption itself. The scholarship assumes a postcolonial position in which the dominant elite and the subjugated cultures coexisted in a state of tension and sometimes conflict.34 Thus, strong terms are evoked: Ben Sira’s life was one spent “under the domination of two Hellenistic foreign powers” and he found himself within “a context of hegemonic rule by foreign powers.”35 The enticement of the foreign way of life or the foreign cult continues the traditions of presenting pagan cults as dangerous and even alluring.36 This is itself a continuation of earlier models of presenting Hellenism as something dangerous and alluring.37 Furthermore, an inherent danger is presumed to lie within the so-called dominant power. Hence, an assumption is that both Jews and native Egyptians “lived under the close supervision of their Ptolemaic overlords.”38 It is further underlined by the use of the concept of “hidden transcripts” that is often invoked in discussions of postcolonialism.39 The implication of a text being a 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39

Mitchell, “Chronicles and Ben Sira,” 2–3. Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries. E.g., Wright, “Fear the Lord,” 189–222; “Put the Nations in Fear,” 77–93. E.g., Newman, “Hybridity,” 157–76. Wright, “What does India,” 136 and 137, using the language of Spivak. Thus Newman, “Hybridity,” 157–76, examines the diaspora context in Egypt where Sirach 24 might have been enacted to reduce the enticement of the Isis cult. Cf. Wright, who frames a need at the time for “seeking ways to resist those same powers and their attendant discourses” (“What does India,” 137). See for example the expression “the allurements of Hellenistic learning” in Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 194. Newman, “Hybridity,” 160. See, e.g., in the volume Divination, ed. Lenzi and Stökl, the use of the term in the papers by Casey A. Strine, (95, 105), Göran Eidevall (125–27), and Alex P. Jassen (178); Ehud Ben Zvi in the same volume (155), takes a slightly different position by rightly making the distinction between the Persian and Hellenistic empires, in that by the early Hellenistic period

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hidden transcript suggests both the need for resistance and combined with it the implied threat that could come from the dominant power.40 For example, the idea that the use of the Hebrew language allows Ben Sira “to avoid the attention of the colonial powers”41 implies an inherent danger that must be secretly eluded. This is despite the fact that we have little evidence of censorship under the Hellenistic monarchs, and very few cases of punishment for critical remarks directed towards the monarch.42 In sum, this new preference for postcolonial theories is to be welcomed for its attention to interculturality over unidirectional approaches seen in the language of Hellenization, acculturation, or assimilation.43 However, the postcolonial language leads to the portrayal of political dominance over subjugated cultures without sensitivity to the historical-cultural context.44 It presents a strong hierarchical portrayal of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires. While then scholars today are seeking new paths for understanding Sirach, the tendency over the past century has been to paint a rather simple picture of the Hellenistic setting under the empires, and this simple picture is being too easily adopted into recent studies. Much of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship on the Hellenistic world was shaped in the context of colonialism, and sometimes the connections were explicitly made. French, British, and German scholars have been the most influential and happen to come from countries with strong colonial histories.45 The colonial image presented is taken from modern colonial situations without attention to pre-industrial colonial societies.46 At the same time there is an unquestioning acceptance that the domination of the Hellenistic kings, and the consequent dangers and subjugation they brought about, was typical (as illustrated by Di Lella’s quotation above). In some ways we might say that the older image of a Hellenism that was rampant and had to be accommodated or resisted has simply been replaced by an imperialism that is to be equally accommodated or resisted.

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

the need for hidden transcripts would have ceased. See also Perdue and Carter, Israel and Empire, 23. E.g., “Ben Sira wanted to resist and render illegitimate foreign domination over Israel” (Wright, “What does India,” 156). Wright, “What does India,” 151. See Weber, “Hellenistic Rulers,” 147–74; cf. Aitken, “Poet and Critic,” 190–204. Newman, “Hybridity,” 175. It is notable that the one positive discussion in the volume Divination, Politics and Ancient Near Eastern Empires, by Ben Zvi is informed by studies of Hellenistic history (163 n. 55). See Moyer, Egypt, 9–10, on differences in the modern empire building of Napoleon. See Bagnall, “Decolonizing Ptolemaic Egypt,” 225–41.

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In the past sixty years there has been considerable reconsideration, however, of the nature and running of the Hellenistic empires. The Ptolemies’ active accommodation to Egyptian kingship and the Seleucid accommodation to Babylonian kingship set them apart from the Persian rulers and the later Romans, and allowed them to be seen as careful rulers. Older approaches have assumed despotic and dirigiste models that no longer correspond to the evidence we have. In earlier histories a strong, centralized state had been the assumption—as heirs of the Pharaohs, the kings were the only source of power worth analysing. The economic prosperity was seen as a mere tool to increase the power of the king. The term dirigisme could be applied to such an understanding, a term originally referring to the strong role of the state in the regulation of the French economy and applied pejoratively more widely to any centrally planned administration.47 This central organization underpinned Droysen’s classic formulation of the Hellenistic world in that he saw an important role for the unifying monarchy of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, overcoming the older national monarchies and creating a trans-national royalty. For him the Prussian unification of Germany was prefigured by the Hellenistic monarchies.48 The state history in Egypt has typically been viewed as dynastic history, with focus on the king and his court as the functioning centre of the state—a perspective that has also continued into the study of Islamic history. There is good reason for this as the state is the generator of the evidence and therefore presents a biased view of the state operations. It is true that the Ptolemaic state privileged those who prospered under it, whether they be soldiers, scribes, or priests, but this resulted from the adoption of ancient procedures of tax administration and governance of the land. Its aim was not focused solely on increasing the revenue of the king.49 Ancient states were complex, and there were constraints upon the ruler from the very complex administrative system involved. Since the New Kingdom period, strong temple estates and a strong standing army held in check the power of the king and his aims. The view of the centralised administrative state is bolstered by an understanding of Oriental despotism as the norm.50 The notion that Asian states are despotic has been a mainstay of European thought from ancient to modern times, since the image fits well with the distinction between East and West.51 47 48 49 50 51

Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 45. See Moyer, Egypt. Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 30–31. Briant suggests that this debate is now closed, even though it seems to continue in the assumptions of some scholars. See his “L’Économie royale,” 343–44. For an overview of the problem, see O’Leary, The Asiatic Mode.

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Its roots lie in Montesquieu’s classic study, The Spirit of the Laws (1746), in which he distinguished three forms of government: republican, monarchic, and despotic.52 The distinction lies in the adherence to laws, as the despot does not follow any fixed laws, and his behaviour is not governed by any state control. On this model it is the West that has the power to bring democracy to people and offer freedom from the uncontrolled despot, as we have seen in the language of Romney. Although the Hellenistic monarchs bring enlightened Hellenism, it is itself corrupted by its mixing with Eastern ideas. As early as Droysen this mingling of ideas was seen as the cause of their downfall. 11.3

The Evidence

The combination of the questioning of the contemporary contexts in which histories have been written and the recent discoveries of documentary evidence have led to a renewed thinking on how our historical accounts are written. At the same time, in the study of the Ptolemaic empire, there has been greater cooperation between Demoticists and Hellenists in seeing the evidence from both sides of the linguistic and cultural spectrum, namely both the native Egyptian and the Greek. For example, the Egyptian temples continued to thrive, and in the first centuries of Ptolemaic rule Demotic literature continued unabated. There was no immediate dominance of Greek language or culture, although there were strong economic benefits for learning Greek. The recent publication of tax censuses in both Demotic and Greek has shown the broad and complex financial system and social movement in Egypt of the third and early second centuries BCE.53 This is because the Ptolemies supported regional strategies of control without changing ancient institutional structures, when such change might have led to resistance. Instead, a system of regional and local elites ensured the running of the monetary economy, and the temples and cult practice embedded the ruler in local social networks.54 We see, for example, from the extensive Zenon archive from the third century BCE in the Fayum, how the powerful land-owner Apollonios was a man of influence, and the stratified roles of the different people in his employ. The relationship between the monarchy and the regional elites was complex, as there was only a loose connection between the administration and the king. Over time the monarchy weakened and the bureaucracy strengthened 52 53 54

See Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 39. Clarysse and Thompson, Counting the People. Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 34–35.

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such that while the king officially guaranteed stability, supported by a local mythology, this was more propaganda than the reality on the ground. Local institutions placed limits on the royal power through a strong bureaucratic system.55 While a top-down model has been bolstered by the view of a despotic and dirigiste regime and has led to the image of the king as the all-powerful centre of affairs, work on premodern states notes the gap between local and central elites, rule by consensus in villages, and authority imposed from on top. A colonial view of the Hellenistic kingdoms was bolstered by a missionary view of their role, as disseminators of Hellenism,56 which has now been questioned in the light of evidence of greater cultural interaction.57 While we cannot apply all the dynamics in Ptolemaic Egypt to the situation in Judea at the time of Ben Sira, surviving archaeological evidence suggests similar policies were in operation. In Judea, governance by the Ptolemies would have probably been even less centralized than in Egypt. For, in Egypt the Nile valley provided a controlled area where the people were concentrated as the only habitable and sustainable zone in the region. On the other hand, in Judea populations were dispersed and the geographic conditions of highlands and plains did not allow for close rule. We may presume nonetheless that the Seleucids after 200 BCE adopted a similar system to the Ptolemies before them, a system stretching back to Persian rule. The few pieces of evidence we do have, largely preserved in the form of inscriptions, paint a picture of non-interference and instead support of local governance.58 Antiochus III’s decree as recorded in Josephus (Ant. 12.142, 145– 46) allows for independence, offering government in accordance with “the laws of their country” which essentially re-establishes a right that Josephus, even if in imagination more than in reality, had presented Alexander the Great as establishing (11.338).59 This kind of status is confirmed by the Yavneh-Yam inscription, where in a second-century BCE inscription the Sidonians in Yavneh-Yam recall the privileges granted to their ancestors by Antiochus III for services rendered to him.60 55 56

57 58 59 60

Ibid., 36. Cf. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, who speak of Ben Sira’s need to “to resist the blandishments of Hellenistic culture and religion” (50). Calduch-Benages (“Fear,” 88) concludes, “Keen on the Hellenistic culture Antiochus wanted to hellenize Palestine at all costs.” Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 49–53. A different picture of the evidence is given by Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, who works from a postcolonial model that presumes a hegemonic dominance of the kings. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:271. Isaac, “A Seleucid Inscription,” 132–44.

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Another valuable Greek inscription spanning the time of the transition from Ptolemaic to Seleucid rule in Syro-Palestine is that found at Hefzibah near Scythopolis (SEG 29.1613).61 The inscription records nine letters over a period of years between Antiochus III and various officials including one Ptolemaios, who had changed allegiance from the Ptolemies, whom his father served (SEG 39.1426), to the Seleucids. Ptolemaios was a regional governor, officially titled “the stratēgos and high priest of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia” (OGIS 230). The inscription demonstrates how the power of the monarch and local elites entered a delicate negotiation in which both benefited. In a powerful study John Ma has indicated how careful language negotiation was at play in the relations between monarch and the people,62 and in this inscription we see on the ground how this operated. In the delicate period of new rule by the Seleucid king, the correspondence concerns local villages under the administration of Ptolemaios, and in one case regulates against improper treatment of the local villagers by troops. As Douglas Edwards summarises well,63 Antiochus had a secure base via a local elite formerly allied with his enemy. Ptolemaios received further guarantees of his local authority and a modicum of freedom for villages under his control from excessive intervention by outsiders. The correspondence also reveals the stratified nature of the administration mentioning a στρατηγός (B.5; D.11, etc.), διοικηταί (A.4), an οἰκονόµος (D.14), φρουράρχοι (D.16), and those in charge of the τόποι (D.16), or local districts. This general picture of regional administration is confirmed by other findings and most recently by the publication of the “Heliodorus inscription,” deriving from Maresha in Idumaea and dated to 178 BCE.64 It records directives from the Seleucid king Seleucus IV to his deputy Heliodorus and to two other subordinate officials. In the communication one Olympiodorus is appointed to be in direct charge of the temples in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, providing historical credence to a tale in 2 Maccabees 3, which also names an official Heliodorus. It is a further example of regional governance and the appointment of local administrators to manage affairs. It does imply some degree of state interference, but managed at the local level.

61 62 63 64

Landau, “A Greek Inscription,” 54–70; Bertrand, “Sur l’inscription d’Hefziba,” 167–74; Fischer, “Zur Seleukideninschrift,” 131–38. Ma, Antiochos III. Edwards, “Constructing Kings,” 285–86. Cotton and Wörrle, “Seleukos IV to Heliodoros,” 191–205; Gera, “Olympiodoros,” 125–55.

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Imperial Administration in Sir 9:17–10:18

We have spent some time laying out the assumptions behind historical reconstructions of the period, since when reading literature so much is imported from the start. An appreciation of the evidence that we do have can lead to a more subtle reading of the sources and even a proper use of the literature as historical evidence itself. For, the consequences of this thinking about the Hellenistic empires can be applied to one well-known example from the text of Sirach, a passage labelled by Prato as “a tract on government.”65 It is but one example for illustration, but it demonstrates how easy it is to impose a historical structure onto the interpretation of Ben Sira when other interpretations are possible. Indeed, a close reading of the text in the light of the social-historical context provides evidence itself of this new model, rather than the opposite picture that it has often been used to support. Sirach 9:17–10:18 is a unit on governance, beginning with two verses on the wise leader of the people (9:17–18), leading into a discussion on the proper behaviour of leaders in society (10:1–5), and then followed by two reflections, first on arrogance, especially as displayed by kings (10:6–11), and then on pride (10:12–18).66 Sirach 10:1–5 is a brief passage within this larger unit: MS A: ‫ם יוסד מו וממשלת מבין סרידה‬ ‫שו‬ ‫ם כן מליציו כרא יר כן י ביו‬ ‫כש‬ ‫מל רו ישחית יר ו יר נ שב בשכל שריה‬ ‫ביד אלהים ממשלת תבל ואיש ל ת י מד ליה‬ ‫ביד אלהים ממשלת כל גבר ול ני מחוקק ישית הודו‬

1 2 3 4 5

1 A judge of the people (Gr: κριτὴς σοφός “a wise judge”)67 provides foundations for (Gr: παιδεύσει “instructs”)68 his people, and the government of an intelligent person is ordered.69 65 66

67 68 69

Prato, Il problema, 369. The order of verses differs in the Hebrew from the Greek such that here we present them in the Greek order (Hebrew: 1, 3, 2, 5, 4). Some of the differences can be attributed to errors arising from homoioarchton, notably in verses 4 and 5 (see Schreiner, Jesus Sirach 1–24, 62). A recent discussion of these verses and how they present their messages in Hebrew and Greek is provided by Wright, “Sirach 10:1–18,” 163–88. Hebrew MS A reads ‫ ם‬, which has possibly been copied from v. 2; so Smend, Die Weisheit, 89. Both Greek and Syriac imply the more likely reading of ‫חכם‬. The Greek has mistaken a resh for dalet in ‫יסד‬, although there is ambiguity in the meaning of παιδεύω. Here reading Hebrew ‫( סדורה‬cf. Sir 50:14); see Smend, Die Weisheit, 89.

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2 As the judge of his people so are his spokespeople (Gr: οἱ λειτουργοί “ministers”), and as the head of the city so are its inhabitants. 3 A foolish king destroys a city, but a city is inhabited through the sagacity of its princes. 4 In the hand of God is governance of the world, and a person at each moment will take his place over it. 5 In the hand of God is governance (Gr: εὐοδία “success”) of all humanity, and before the law-giver (Gr: γραµµατέως “scribe”70) he will place his honour. 11.4.1 Historical Reconstructions Many of the topics in this passage are conventional, drawing upon biblical themes. For example, the book of Proverbs discusses poor rulers in a number of places and probably was the inspiration behind Ben Sira’s discussion (Prov 28:15–16; 29:2, 4; 31:3–5).71 The wisdom needed for good rule is implied in Prov 8:15–16, where Wisdom herself states that it is thanks to her that kings reign.72 The theme of God’s sovereignty in vv. 4–5 can be seen as an elaboration of biblical passages such as 1 Samuel 2 and Psalm 113.73 Others have taken the critique of kings as specifically the critique of foreign kings, and compare this subversion of foreign rule to Deuteronomy 17; 1 Samuel 8; and 9:10–17.74 The conventional nature of the themes has allowed one scholar to dismiss in a largely reductionist argument any allusions to contemporary historical events.75 For him, it does injustice to the generic tone of the passage.76 Others have taken a different approach, however, and have inevitably drawn contemporary historical connections from the focus on leaders and kings. Middendorp even moves beyond the general themes of poor monarchy and sees a precise allusion in the Hebrew. He proposes that the odd expression in 10:3a ‫מל רו‬

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Smend, Die Weisheit, 90, suggests that the Greek misunderstands the expression. For comparison of the verse he cites Isa 24:23 and Ps 96:6. Wright (“Sirach 10:1–18,” 173) takes it as an example of exegesis by the translator. See among commentaries, e.g., Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 223; Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 81; Marttila, Foreign Nations, 219. The comparison is made by Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 223; Schreiner, Jesus Sirach 1–24, 62. For personified wisdom, see also the essay in the present volume by Gregory. Marttila, Foreign Nations, 220. Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 83. Marttila, Foreign Nations, 219–20. Ibid., 221.

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“stupid king” is a sound-play on the Pharaonic royal title and hence is a veiled allusion to the Ptolemies as the new Pharaohs of Egypt.77 In drawing thematic connections with historical events, scholars have identified three aspects of this passage that warrant attention. First, is the criticism of kings (e.g., v. 2) that could be seen as an allusion to the Hellenistic empires.78 Ben Sira’s presentation of rulership in the hands of God (10:4–5) has been taken as indicative of the contemporary “flagrant injustices and the continuous abuses of power.”79 Second and more specifically, the emphasis on divine sovereignty is seen as a critique of Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings who considered themselves to be gods.80 Di Lella actually describes this belief as “blasphemous arrogance,”81 alluding to the discussion of arrogance to come (Sir 10:8; cf. vv. 6–7, 9) and bringing us back to the notion of the Hellenistic kings as beyond the laws (and hence “blasphemous”). Indeed, a similar presentation of them as autocratic is found in Wright’s assertion that the Hellenistic kings were not bound by the constraints of Deuteronomic laws,82 leaving the impression that they were not controlled by any laws. Di Lella’s final comment that “Ben Sira’s allusions to the pagan kings are sufficiently veiled so as not to get him into trouble”83 is not only an admission that the allusions are not explicit but a further underlining of the autocratic nature of the kings that they were to be treated with caution. It is reminiscent of more recent comments on hidden transcripts, and a reflection of the ongoing presentation of the dictatorial command of the kings. Third, many point to the theme of arrogance in v. 8 as a direct allusion to the empires, especially with the reference to transfer of power that could imply the changes after Panion in 198 BCE when the Seleucids wrested control over Syro-Palestine from the Ptolemies: ‫מלכות מגוי אל גוי תסוב בגלל חמס‬ ‫ ;גאוה‬βασιλεία ἀπὸ ἔθνους εἰς ἔθνος µετάγεται διὰ ἀδικίας καὶ ὕβρεις καὶ χρήµατα “Sovereignty passes from nation to nation on account of violence and pride” (Gr: + and money). Prato suggests the structure of the passage serves to actualize the ethical principles in a concrete situation by referring to this transfer of

77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Middendorp, Die Stellung, 140. Cf. Schreiner, Jesus Sirach 1–24, 62. E.g., Sauer, Jesus Sirach, 104–5; Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 82; Schreiner, Jesus Sirach 1–24, 62. Calduch-Benages, “Fear,” 95. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 223–24; Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 83. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 224. Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 83. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 224.

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power, and in this he is followed by others.84 In other words, the author uses the current historical situation to illustrate his ethical values, something that can be demonstrated elsewhere in Ben Sira.85 In summary, the ethical warnings are outwardly a critique of the foreign rulers, who were known to have behaved in the ways portrayed. While other historical allusions are suggested for individual verses, it is difficult to make specific connections from the general verses.86 It is true that many of the themes are conventional, but traditional imagery does not necessarily mean no contemporary engagement. It is possible that there are historical allusions here—it would be hard to escape from one’s own time period—but it is important to distinguish the correct steps in understanding this. Violence and pride are not typical of the Hellenistic monarchs, unless one imputes despotic rule as the norm. Therefore, this is not the place to begin. It is a generic statement about the nature of rule, and any assumption of it being a critique of contemporary kings would have to take into account both the exegesis of the passage and the wider historical context. 11.4.2 The Ideology of Rule There has been a tendency in scholarship to identify pride of the king as a marker of the Hellenistic monarchs, but this is to confuse rhetoric with historical reality. The clearest historical reference may be the mention of the transfer of sovereignty, but even this could be generic and not refer to the specific situation of early second-century BCE Judea. Likewise, the statement on violence and pride is a critique of monarchy but only in a stereotyped fashion. It is therefore helpful to examine the thrust of the passage as a whole to understand the ideology that is being promoted. All of the verses from 9:17 to 10:5 focus on the wisdom and good sense required for proper administration of a state. It is therefore perhaps incorrect to isolate verses 4 and 5 on divine sovereignty as an attack on the ruler cult, when the whole passage is concerned with good rule. As a counterpoint to successful rule, the opposite of rule by pride establishes a typical wisdom contrast. The condemnation of pride is common in many forms of literature, both in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Isa 13:11, ‫ )גאון דים וגאות ריצים‬and early Jewish literature.87 84 85 86 87

Prato, Il problema, 370; see too Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 224; Wright, “Ben Sira on Kings,” 83; Wright, “‘Put the Nations in Fear of You,’” 81–82. So Aitken, “Ben Sira’s Table Manners,” 418–38. See, e.g., Prato, Il problema, 370; Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 225; Sauer, Jesus Sirach, 105. Most recently Gregory, “Historical Candidates,” 589–91. See the theme of the angry tyrant in Rajak, “The Angry Tyrant,” 110–27.

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It serves as a general warning on human behaviour and in particular on the dangers of improper governance. For the larger theme of wise rule, the influence of Proverbs has already been noted, but there is a broader biblical motif of divine appointment of wise officials underlying this. Solomon’s words in 1 Kgs 3:9 reflect the wisdom stance to rule: ‫ונתת ל בד לב שמ לש את מ להבין בין וב לר כי מי יוכל לש את מ‬ ‫“ הכבד ה ה‬Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” (NRSV). Solomon requests the ability to rule wisely, something that is underlined in various places in the Solomon narrative of 1 Kings, and this is to be granted him by God. Wise rule was also a theme in Hellenistic Greek tracts on kingship.88 In Sirach, since governance of the world (‫ )ממשלת תבל‬and of humanity is ascribed to God, it is thought that this is a direct substitution for the rulership by Hellenistic kings. However, the first thing to note in these verses is the attention to the universal nature of divine rule. Solomon himself is said to have surpassed all other kings on the earth (1 Kgs 10:23–24; cf. 5:14), and we see in other texts attention to rulers over the earth. This reflects a theme that is to be found in Psalm 2 as a criticism of earthly monarchs as rulers of the earth (v. 2, ‫)מלכי אר‬. It is a phrase that is picked up in 1 Maccabees as a portrayal of the Hellenistic kingdoms: καὶ συνεστήσατο πολέµους πολλοὺς καὶ ἐκράτησεν ὀχυρωµάτων καὶ ἔσφαξεν βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς· καὶ διῆλθεν ἕως ἄκρων τῆς γῆς καὶ ἔλαβεν σκῦλα πλήθους ἐθνῶν “He fought many battles, conquered strongholds, and put to death the kings of the earth. He advanced to the ends of the earth, and plundered many nations” (1 Macc 1:2–3). Later, in the Wisdom of Solomon (1:1; 6:1) it is a neutral and broadly applied term to all rulers, although it may have its basis in the language of Ps 2:2.89 It is God who has rulership of the world according to Sirach, but it is explicitly stated that he appoints individuals to govern under him (10:4). This is not necessarily a diminution of the status of the monarchs but an indication of their divine authority by which they may become rulers of the earth. The passage is concerned with the wisdom required to rule, and in the biblical tradition that wisdom is given by God. Divine sanction of the monarchs is not an unusual theme, and indeed, rather than being a critique of the Hellenistic 88

89

See, e.g., Aitken, “Poet and Critic,” 190–204. While in the Sirach passage there are some differences in the Greek from the Hebrew, those differences are largely supported by the Syriac. It is not possible therefore to make a case of consistent exegesis on the part of the translator in the light of Hellenistic ideology. Dimant, “Use and Interpretation,” 411.

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kings, would have been something that the Ptolemies and Seleucids would equally have endorsed. Religious ideology was an important underpinning of the Hellenistic monarchs, and this included divine sanction for their rule.90 The portrayal of the Ptolemaic kings, for example, in the hieroglyphs and carvings of Egyptian temples was an important statement for them that they continued the old religion, but also was an expedient recognition of their rule from the Egyptian priests. Their position was endorsed by the old religion and status established by divine fiat. The extensive adoption of divine titles and statements of divine acceptance were very important to them, seen for example in the excessive listing in the Rosetta stone (OGIS 90). The stone records a decree by Egyptian priests in the old capital of Memphis, thereby providing religious justification for Ptolemaic rule, which is drawn out in the many titles and divine references, as for example: … καθάπερ ὁ Ἥλιος, | µέγας βασιλεὺς τῶν τε ἄνω καὶ τῶν κάτω χωρῶν, ἐκγόνου θεῶν Φιλοπατόρων, ὃν ὁ Ἥφαιστος ἐδοκίµασεν, ὧι ὁ Ἥλιος ἔδωκεν τὴν νίκην, εἰκόνος ζώσης τοῦ ∆ιός, υἱοῦ τοῦ Ἡλίου, Πτολεµαίου | αἰωνοβίου, ἠγαπηµένου ὑπὸ τοῦ Φθᾶ (OGIS 90A.2–4) … just as Helios the great king of the upper and lower regions, offspring of the Father-Loving Gods, the one whom Hephaistos approved, to whom Helios gave the victory, living image of Zeus son of Helios, Ptolemy Ever-Living, Beloved of Ptah. The ideology of the Ben Sira passage fits into this broader ancient Near Eastern ideology of the divine sanction of kings. The ideology, however, masks the reality of the system of local rule and divested power that we have already discussed. There are, however, in the passage various references to individuals that suggest a more complex social reality, and these have been overlooked in some of the scholarship. 11.4.3 Social Reality in Sirach A different presentation of this passage is provided by Horsley and Patrick Tiller, and they are followed in this by Greg Schmidt Goering.91 Goering suggests that it is unlikely that ‫ מל‬refers to Ptolemaic or Seleucid kings,92 accepting Horsley 90 91 92

This is well established in scholarship; see Hölbl, History, ch. 3, for an overview. Horsley and Tiller, “Ben Sira,” 74–107; Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 114–16. Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 114.

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and Tiller’s argument that it was impossible for the ordinary Judean to petition a king. Goering suggests Ben Sira is talking about an indigenous Judean king, even though one did not exist at the time, or a de facto ruler. This in itself is a misleading conclusion. Petitions in Egypt are notionally addressed to the king. One of innumerable examples is this one from 158–57 BCE: βασιλεῖ Πτολεµαίωι καὶ βασιλίσηι93 Κλεοπάτραι τῇ ἀδελφῇ θεοῖς Φιλοµήτορσι χαίρειν | Πτολεµαῖος Γλαυκίου Μακεδὼν τῆς ἐπιγονῆς τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Ἡρακλεοπολίτου … To King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra the sister, Mother-Loving Gods, greeting from Ptolemaios son of Glaukias, Macedonian of the Epigone, of the Herakleopolite (nome) … (UPZ 1.14, r.5–6). The petition from Ptolemaios, now unemployed, goes on to request his younger brother be enrolled in a garrison to support them both. Eventually this is granted through a round robin of correspondence.94 The individual would never have met the king himself, but notionally they made application to him. Even in Judea this was not impossible, at least for the priestly Tobiad family (as seen in Josephus’s “Tobiad romance” and in P.Cair.Zen. 1.59075 and 59076). Leaving aside whether appeal to a king was historically plausible or not, Goering makes the important observation on how Ben Sira employs a broad set of terms for leaders from which a picture emerges of Judean society.95 Even in this one passage on the role of kings and leaders we see a number of terms in use. Beginning with Sir 9:17–18 we find the terms “ruler” (‫ ;מו ל‬v. 17), and then in 10:1–5 there is “magistrate” (10:1, 2; ), the “ministers” (λειτουργοὶ in the Greek version, 10:2), the “city leader” (‫ ;רא יר‬10:2), the “king” ( ‫;מל‬ 10:3), “prince” (‫ ; ר‬10:3), a person in charge (‫ ;איש‬10:4), and the “legal secretary” (‫ ;מחוקק‬10:5). It is notable how little the title for king, ‫מל‬, actually appears had this been intended as an attack on the Hellenistic kings. Horsley and Tiller provide a survey of titles for rulers and priestly aristocracy in Sirach, and many of them appear in this one passage.96 In addition to these designations, we can note the terms “noble” (‫)נדיב‬, “exalted one” (‫)נ א‬, “officer” (‫)נ יא‬, and “leader” (‫)נגיד‬. The Greek has such terms as δυνάστης (ruler), ἄρχων (ruler), µεγιστάν 93 94 95 96

Read: βασιλίσσηι. Many studies have been made of this petition, not least because of its demonstration of the complexity of the bureaucratic system. See, among others, Thompson, Memphis, 212–65; Ray, Reflections of Osiris, 130–52; Manning, The Last Pharaohs, 148. Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 115–16. Horsley and Tiller, “Ben Sira and the Sociology,” 81–84.

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(prince), ἡγούµενος (ruler, used here), κριτής (magistrate, as used here), and γραµµατεύς (scribe). Even the Greek translation’s choice of γραµµατεύς for ‫( מחוקק‬10:5) is deliberate. While a ‫ מחוקק‬could be a ruler or law-maker, the Greek has taken the root ‫ חקק‬as indicating one who writes, and hence a scribe. Wright suggests the possibility that this is an interpretive move by the translator to elevate the status of the scribe.97 It may also be a simple understanding of the Hebrew by the translator, seeing the whole passage as speaking of different roles in society. Marböck proposes that the scribe must be royal rather than a temple personnel,98 although the two are not so easily divided. Whatever particular office the scribe held, he would have had a role in the administration of cities and regions. Examination of the passage as a whole reveals how the dialectic on governance encompasses a hierarchy of roles from lowly officials, to the king and on to God.99 Verse 1 identifies the important place of wise officials, who in v. 2 are responsible for ensuring a soundly ordered city and nation. In this the local perspective of the city is presented. The warnings of an ill-disciplined king are set against the benefits of a good ruler in v. 3. In v. 4 it is recognized that ultimate rule rests in the hand of God but that this is manifest by rulers appointed by him on earth. In similar fashion v. 5 recounts that all human success rests in God and that officials are given their powers through him. The passage does not say that earthly rulers are surpassed by God but that their rule is dependent upon him. This is no different from other ideologies of the Hellenistic world where earthly rule is guaranteed and supported by divine approval.100 The mistaken idea that the Hellenistic rulers were gods confuses the complexity of different kingdoms and time periods and the subtlety of language used.101 The kings received honours equal to the gods (e.g., SEG 14.71; 236–35 BCE: ὁ δῆµος ἐτίµησεν {τι} τιµαῖς ἰσοθέοις), which by its very wording implies they were not actually gods. The kings offered protection and benefits and in that way resembled the gods (cf. the role of the high priest in Sir 50:4). Similarly, in Sir 10:4–5 the officials rule as representatives of God on earth. Ben

97 98 99 100 101

Wright, “Sirach 10:1–18,” 173. Marböck, Jesus Sirach 1–23. While Calduch-Benages, “Fear,” 87–102, also recognizes the multiplicity of titles, she presents it as a simple opposition between the powerful and the powerless, rather than a network of social relations. For an example from the Achaemenid period, see Silverman, “Was There an Achaemenid ‘Theology’,” 172–96. See Chaniotis, “The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers,” 431–45.

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Sira’s treatment is not set against the wider Hellenistic world but is part of a similar ideological discussion. What we in fact see in Sirach 10 is a complex web of social positions, without exclusive focus on the monarchy. Much more than a homily on rulers, the passage is rather a presentation of a social system. It appears that Ben Sira’s understanding of his world is a picture similar to that described for the Hellenistic monarchies. It is not a world in which power and the economy are in the hands of the king or head of state, which would imply a dirigste system of state control, but a world where there is a network of social relations, layers of administration, local elites (‫ ;רא יר‬v. 2), and trade. Sirach is therefore confirmation of the modern readings of the running of the ancient empires, and not a critique of them. It might be asked at this point how this relates to the presentation of the high priest as the supreme head of state in Sirach. Does this image fit within a picture of local distributive governance? We have earlier had call to note how the Hellenistic monarch is presented as all powerful, a guarantor of stability and peace, built upon a mix of political and theological propaganda. The reality behind such an image allows one to see that there was a complex network of relations that are simplified in ancient sources building upon that royal ideology. The high priest in Sirach is a counterpoint to a Hellenistic monarch,102 and is likewise built upon a foundation of ideology that did not reflect the reality. Horsley and Tiller, followed by Goering, derive the references to rulers in Sirach as referring to local rulers of the Jewish temple state, and being part of the temple state they are for Goering charged with the transmission of wisdom and its preservation.103 Horsley and Tiller conclude that the high priest was a political ruler of the temple state, and all the other officials mentioned must therefore have been members of the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem. In the same volume as Horsley and Tiller, John Halligan focuses on the Jerusalem temple and argues that new power groups had to be accommodated to the structure of a dominant high priesthood.104 The ideology of Ben Sira represents the “Jerusalem consensus” that hides the divisions in society. In both of these reconstructions the high priest is seen as assuming the power and centralizing the autocracy of the state. This is visible in Ben Sira’s focus upon the high priesthood (e.g., Aaron in Sirach 45) and in his praise of Simon II (Sirach 50). However, as with the presentation of the Hellenistic monarchs, the reality needs to be stripped down of the ideology built around the figures. 102 103 104

Cf. Aitken, “Biblical Interpretation,” 191–208. Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed, 115–16. Halligan, “Conflicting Ideologies,” 108–15.

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In such pictures by modern scholars there is little concession to local rule and negotiation. The focus in Sir 9:17–10:18 is on an array of officials and not necessarily the high priest or king. Ben Sira is more aware of local networks than our scholars allow, and while his book reflects the state ideology of the power of the high priest, it also does not hide descriptions of daily life and the realities of the time. The high priest was the political and theological figure head, but his rule would have required regional governance and consensus from local elites. 11.5

Conclusion

Historical reconstruction of the Hellenistic empires is a difficult task where the evidence is partial, but sources, notably in the form of documentary papyri and state inscriptions, are now more available than ever. As a result, refined understandings of the Hellenistic world have been written by historians, but scholarship on Sirach has preserved an old understanding of the historical period. It has been suggested that the background of dominant Hellenistic monarchies is a legacy of ideas inherited from modern concerns, and they have been unthinkingly projected upon the text of Sirach. Indeed, the ideas could be said to come from the same stable as the misused concept of Hellenism and should equally be put out to grass. Research in recent decades has shown how complex and non-autocratic the Hellenistic monarchies were, and how local elites often shared the power through their administrative and economic management. Assumptions about dominant monarchies, lack of freedom, abuse of subject populations, uncompromising ruler cults, or the transferred supremacy of the high priest, are abstractions that would require considerable historical justification. Rather there resides in Sirach a text that is typical of the Near East in Hellenistic times. It is a text drawing upon Hebrew tradition but shaped by the circumstances of its day. The concerns of divinity and sovereignty do not negate the wider world, but help to justify the Jews’ place within it. Ben Sira shares with Hellenistic sources an ideology that supports the ruling elite in expressing the divine sanction of monarchy and emphasizing the power of the local ruler—in this case the high priest. And yet, his text is a child of its time. It is itself an important document of Hellenistic history witnessing to the similar real life experience of the empires. While it buttresses the ideology of a centralised power, it presents evidence of local networks and power divested through local individuals. In this way, it is not a subversion of Hellenistic empires but a neglected source for Hellenistic history.

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Bibliography Aitken, James K. “Ben Sira’s Table Manners and the Social Setting of His Book.” Pages 418–38 in Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar. Ed. John Jarick. London: T&T Clark, 2016. Aitken, James K. “Biblical Interpretation as Political Manifesto: Ben Sira in his Seleucid Setting.” JJS 51 (2000): 191–208. Aitken, James K. “Poet and Critic: Royal Ideology and the Greek Translator of Proverbs.” Pages 190–204 in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Ed. Tessa Rajak, Sarah Pearce, James Aitken, and Jennifer Dines. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Aitken, James K. “Review of Hengel’s Judentum und Hellenismus.” JBL 123 (2004): 331–41. Alexander, Philip S. “Hellenism and Hellenization as Problematic Historiographical Categories.” Pages 63–80 in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide. Ed. T. Engberg-Pedersen. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001. Bagnall, Roger S. “Decolonizing Ptolemaic Egypt.” Pages 225–41 in Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History and Historiography. Ed. P. Cartledge, P. Garnsey, and E. Gruen. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Bertrand, J. M. “Sur l’inscription d’Hefziba.” ZPE 46 (1982): 167–74. Bowersock, Glenn W. Hellenism in Late Antiquity: Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1990. Briant, Pierre. “L’Économie royale entre privé et public.” Pages 343–51 in Approches de L’Économie hellénistique. Ed. R. Descat. Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges: Musée archéologique de Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, 2006. Calduch-Benages, Núria. “Fear for the Powerful or Respect for Authority?” Pages 87–102 in Der Einzelne und seine Gemeinschaft bei Ben Sira. Ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Ingrid Krammer. BZAW 270. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998. Chaniotis, Angelos. “The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers.” Pages 431–45 in A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Ed. Andrew Erskine. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Clarysse, Willy, and Dorothy J. Thompson. Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt. Volume 1: Population Registers (P.Count). Volume 2: Historical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Cotton, Hannah M., and K. Wörrle. “Seleukos IV to Heliodoros: A New Dossier of Royal Correspondence from Israel.” ZPE 159 (2007): 191–205. Davidson, Samuel E. The Text of the Old Testament Considered, with a Treatise on Sacred Interpretation, and a Brief Introduction to the Old Testament Books and the Apocrypha. London: Longman, 1856. deSilva, David A. “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Honor, Shame, and the Maintenance of the Values of a Minority Culture.” CBQ 58 (1996): 433–55.

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Dimaggio, Anthony R. Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015. Dimant, Devorah. “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.” Pages 379–419 in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Ed. Martin J. Mulder. CRINT 2/1. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988. Droysen, Johann Gustav. Geschichte des Hellenismus: Band 1. Geschichte der Nachfolger Alexanders. Hamburg: Perthes, 1836. Edwards, Douglas. “Constructing Kings—from the Ptolemies to the Herodians: The Archaeological Evidence.” 283–94 in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Ed. Tessa Rajak, Sarah Pearce, James Aitken, and Jennifer Dines. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Ferrar, William. The Uncanonical Jewish Books: A Short Introduction to the Apocrypha and other Jewish Writings 200 B.C.–100 A.D. London: SPCK, 1918. Fischer, Thomas. “Zur Seleukideninschrift von Hefzibah.” ZPE 33 (1979): 131–38. Frey, Jörg. “‘Judaism’ and ‘Hellenism’: Martin Hengel’s Work in Perspective.” Pages 96–118 in Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World. Ed. Mladen Popović, Myles Schoonover, and Marijn Vandenberghe. JSJSup 178. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Gera, Dov. “Olympiodoros, Heliodoros and the Temples of Koilē Syria and Phoinikē.” ZPE 169 (2009): 125–55. Goering, Greg Schmidt. Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel. JSJSup 139. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Gregory, Bradley C. “Historical Candidates for the Fallen King in Sirach 10,10.” ZAW 126 (2014): 589–91. Halligan, John M. “Conflicting Ideologies Concerning the Second Temple.” Pages 108– 15 in Second Temple Studies III. Studies in Politics, Class, and Material Culture. Ed. Philip R. Davies and John M. Halligan. JSOTSup 340. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. Trans. John Bowden. London: SCM, 1974 (English translation from 2nd German edition of Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jhs. v. Chr. WUNT 10.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969). Hölbl, Günther. A History of the Ptolemaic Empire. London: Routledge, 2001. Horsley, Richard A., and Patrick Tiller. “Ben Sira and the Sociology of the Second Temple.” Pages 74–107 in Second Temple Studies III. Studies in Politics, Class, and Material Culture. Ed. Philip R. Davies and John M. Halligan. JSOTSup 340. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

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Horsley, Richard A. Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007. Isaac, Benjamin H. “A Seleucid Inscription from Jamnia-on-the-Sea: Antiochus V Eupator and the Sidonians.” IEJ 41 (1991): 132–44. Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. Kalmar, Ivan Davidson, and Derek Jonathan Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Landau, Yehuda H. “A Greek Inscription Found Near Hefzibah.” IEJ 16 (1966): 54–70. Lenzi, Alan and Jonathan Stökl, ed. Divination, Politics and Ancient Near Eastern Empires. ANEM 7. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2014. Ma, John. Antiochos III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Manning, Joseph G. The Last Pharaohs: Egypt Under the Ptolemies, 305–30 BC. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Marböck, Johannes. Jesus Sirach 1–23. HThKAT. Freiburg: Herder, 2010. Marttila, Marko. Foreign Nations in the Wisdom of Ben Sira: A Jewish Sage between Opposition and Assimilation. DCLS 13. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. Middendorp, Theophil. Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Mitchell, Christine. “Chronicles and Ben Sira: Questions of Genre.” Pages 1–26 in Rewriting Biblical History: Essays on Chronicles and Ben Sira in Honour of Pancratius C. Beentjes. Ed. Jeremy Corley and Harm van Grol. DCLS 7. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Moyer, Ian S. Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Newman, Judith H. “Hybridity, Hydrology, and Hidden Transcript: Sirach 24 and the Judean Encounter with Ptolemaic Isis Worship.” Pages 157–76 in Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World. Ed. Mladen Popović, Myles Schoonover, and Marijn Vandenberghe. JSJSup 178. Leiden: Brill, 2017. O’Leary, Brendan. The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical Materialism and Indian History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Perdue, Leo G., and Warren Carter. Israel and Empire: A Postcolonial History of Israel and Early Judaism. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Portier-Young, Anathea. Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Jewish Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. Prato, Gian Luigi. Il problema della teodicea in Ben Sira: composizione dei contrari e richiamo alle origini. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1975. Rajak, Tessa. “Jews and Greeks: The Invention and Exploitation of Polarities in the Nineteenth Century.” Pages 535–57 in The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction. Ed. Tessa Rajak. AGJU 48. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

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Rajak, Tessa. “The Angry Tyrant.” Pages 110–27 in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Ed. Tessa Rajak, Sarah Pearce, James Aitken, and Jennifer Dines. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Ray, John. Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978. Sauer, Georg. Jesus Sirach, Ben Sira: übersetzt und erklärt. ATD Apokryphen 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Schreiner, Josef. Jesus Sirach 1–24. NEchtB 38. Erschienen Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 2002. Schürer, Emile. Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1886–90 (originally published as Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte [1874]). Sherwin-White, Susan, and Amélie Kuhrt. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire. London: Duckworth, 1993. Silverman, Jason. “Was There an Achaemenid ‘Theology’ of Kingship? The Intersections of Mythology, Religion, and Imperial Religious Policy.” Pages 172–96 in Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire: Emerging Judaisms and Trends. Ed. Diana Edelman, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, and Philippe Guillaume. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 17. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Skehan, Patrick W., and Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt. Berlin: Reimer, 1906. Snaith, John G. “Ecclesiasticus: A Tract for our Times.” Pages 170–81 in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton. Ed. John Day, Robert P. Gordon, and Hugh G. M. Williamson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thompson, Dorothy J. Memphis under the Ptolemies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Vasunia, Phiroze. The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Weber, Gregor. “Hellenistic Rulers and their Poets. Silencing Dangerous Critics?” Ancient Society 29 (1998–99): 147–74. Wright, Benjamin G. “‘Put the Nations in Fear of You:’ Ben Sira and the Problem of Foreign Rule.” Pages 77–93 in Seminar Papers: Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting 1999. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999. Wright, Benjamin G. “Ben Sira on Kings and Kingship.” Pages 76–91 in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Ed. Tessa Rajak, Sarah Pearce, James Aitken, and Jennifer Dines. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Wright, Benjamin G. “Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest: Ben Sira as Defender of the Jerusalem Priesthood.” Pages 189–222 in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research. Ed. P. C. Beentjes. BZAW 255. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997.

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Wright, Benjamin G. “Sirach 10:1–18: Some Observations on the Work of the Translator.” Pages 163–88 in Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach. Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuches. Ed. Gerhard Karner, Frank Ueberschaer, and Burkard M. Zapff. SBLSCS 66. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2017. Wright, Benjamin G. “What does India have to do with Jerusalem? Ben Sira, Language, and Colonialism.” Pages 136–56 in Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World. Ed. Mladen Popović, Myles Schoonover, and Marijn Vandenberghe. JSJSup 178. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

part 4 The Reception of the Book and Figure of Ben Sira in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

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chapter 12

Ben Sira’s Pseudo-Pseudepigraphy: Idealizations from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages Benjamin G. Wright III and Eva Mroczek 12.1

Ben Sira, Authorship, and Pseudepigraphy1

For those of us who are interested in the history of literary concepts, Ben Sira holds pride of place as the first Jewish author who has revealed his own name. In a Second Temple Jewish literary culture where pseudepigraphic or anonymous texts were the norm, this self-identification stands out as a watershed. Despite the differences between the Greek and Syriac translations of Sir 50:27, the verse where Ben Sira reveals his name, scholars do not doubt that we have in this passage the name of the “author” of the book. Moreover, the earliest receiver of the book, the Greek translator, also identifies the author by name.2 Does Joshua Ben Sira represent the birth of authorship as we know it in the history of Jewish literary production? And how do we explain why this secondcentury sage decided to reveal his identity, when his predecessors had written instead either anonymously or under the guise of legendary heroes of the ancient past? Scholars have labored to explain the workings of pseudonymous attribution,3 but Ben Sira’s “onymity” (to use Gerard Genette’s term) also 1 The authors wish to thank the organizers and participants of the July 2017 gathering, “The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing: A Virginia Conference on the Book of Sirach and its Contexts,” especially Samuel Adams, Greg Schmidt Goering, Matthew Goff, James Aitken, Jean-Sébastien Rey, Eric Reymond, and Jacqueline Vayntrub, for their engagement with our work and valuable feedback that helped us refine it. We also thank Anna Cwikla for her excellent editorial assistance. 2 The Hebrew of MS B from the Cairo Geniza (50:27) identifies the author as Shimon ben Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, whereas the Greek calls him Jesus son of Sirach, Eleazar, the Jerusalemite. The translator simply calls him “my grandfather/ancestor Jesus” (l. 7), hence the usual scholarly designation of Jesus ben Sira. On the name Shimon, see Wright, “Character,” 380–82. See the discussion of this verse, with its significant differences in our Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac witnesses below. 3 See, among many others, Mack, “Under the Shadow”; Smith, “Pseudepigraphy”; Najman, Seconding Sinai, 1–40; Najman, Manoff, and Mroczek, “How to Make Sense”; Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 51–85; Reed, “Pseudepigraphy”; Stuckenbruck, “Epistle of Enoch,” 364–70.

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requires explanation.4 The naming of an individual author of a work is the default practice in our culture, so it has been naturalized, and thus we tend to project into antiquity our modern conceptions. Irene Peirano, writing of Greek authorship, remarks: The signature is perhaps the most visible and yet the least examined mark of authorial presence. The deceptive simplicity and ordinariness of the author’s referencing of his own name … belies a complex and far from obvious nexus of functions associated with the author revolving around issues of authentication, fiction, genre, and reception.5 It is almost as if it was only pseudepigraphy that needed explanation, as if pseudepigraphy was an “add-on,” a cover-up, or the concealment of a basic bare fact—the ordinary knowledge about who really wrote the work. But since the revelation of Ben Sira’s name is, in fact, outside the norm for his culture, we must attempt to account for it. Most commonly, scholars have tended to see the identification of Ben Sira’s name as a radical shift in literary values that can be explained by Greek influence. So, for example, Burton Mack writes: Finally, a suggestion about the possible significance of Ben Sira’s awareness of what it meant to be an author should be given. This is certainly one of the more remarkable traits about him. In contrast to the authorship of Jewish works before his time and to the pseudonymity of much of the literature after his time, Ben Sira’s consciousness and acknowledgment of being an author is a strange and wonderful anomaly. It was no doubt the result of his learning about texts, education, and authorship on the model of the Greeks [emphasis added]. This conception of authorship expected that the author be responsible for his utterances, and it rewarded him for their sagacity.6 Further, the revelation of Ben Sira’s name is taken to be a sign that he emerges as a specific person with a biography and a personality. Martin Hengel, for instance, cites Sir 50:27 to argue that “Ben Sira was the first to venture to emerge clearly as a personality … Here is the beginning of a new development,

4 Genette, Paratexts, 39–42. 5 Peirano, “Ille ego qui quondam,” 253. 6 Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic, 186–87.

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for the stressing of the personality of the individual teacher derived from Greek custom.”7 In this Greek-influenced model of authorship—at least, the way a Greek model has most commonly been understood in scholarship on early Judaism, a point we will complicate at the end of this essay—the authority of the named individual writer became not only how texts were legitimated and authenticated but also how they became conceptualized as both the product of the individual’s creative genius and that individual’s intellectual property. Galen, in a treatise called On My Own Books, railed that texts were circulating for sale under his name in altered, forged, or otherwise unauthorized forms, providing an excellent example of how the author’s name is linked to the author’s text in a relationship of property and authenticity.8 These are, in fact, two of the major touchstones of the modern concept of authorship as we know it. But can we explain Ben Sira’s “authorship” by pointing to the influence of such a model? In fact, we do not have to subscribe to Mack’s conclusion that authorship in any modern conception and the revealing of Ben Sira’s name must be related, and we do not have to think of the naming of a real author as a phenomenon that is somehow “foreign,” a new development based on Greek “influence.” Neither do we have to see it as a phenomenon directly tied to the modern concept of authorship as property, personality, and authentication. It seems there are some quite different dynamics at play. Although scholars have worked hard to say something about Ben Sira the specific historical individual, we have not so much the voice of a particular “real person” but the constructed voice of an exemplary sage. Benjamin Wright writes about that the “autobiographical I” of the book: While it is tempting to see the “real” or autobiographical Ben Sira as the primary subject of these passages [i.e., the first person passages of the book], and most scholars read the book this way, we cannot assume that this is the case. Besides whatever personal experience might be reflected here, these sections offer a deliberate self-presentation. That is, through his authorial “voice” we hear how Ben Sira wants his reader to perceive the “I” who speaks here, and … the “I” passages serve a specific function in the book. Consequently, we should exercise caution when claiming that we can gain any significant insight into Ben Sira’s personality, since upon

7 Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:79. 8 Galen, Lib. Prop. prol., esp. 9–10. On Galen see e.g., Hanson, “Galen: Author and Critic,” 25–35, and discussion in Larsen, Gospels Before the Book, 28–34.

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reflection we find the “I” of Ben Sira to be just as constructed as the “I” of Moses in Jubilees or the “I” of Ezra in 4 Ezra.9 Ben Sira’s constructed “I” allows us to glimpse very little of his “actual” personality and biography. As Elias Bickerman noted long ago, “There are no selfrevelations in Ben Sira”: in stylized and conventional language, he channels the voice of tradition.10 If it were not for the revelation of his name and the grandson’s prologue, which has shaped our reception of Ben Sira as a “real person” with a biography and progeny, we might have as vague a sense of his individual personality as we do of the various first person speakers in the book of Proverbs.11 Second, it does not seem as if Ben Sira attaches his name to his work as a way to claim it as his own proprietary creation—as if it was his copyright. In fact, the way that Ben Sira describes the transmission of tradition and his own work as a tradent shows that he considered his work neither original nor complete. Instead, he presents it not as an originary and completed product, but as an unfolding and ongoing project of wisdom and instruction that began long before him and will continue after he is gone.12 The metaphors and images he uses to describe the work of tradition are those of movement and flux. He is a gleaner after the grape harvesters (33:16–17), continuing an ancient legacy. Perhaps the most telling is this water imagery for the source of his wisdom and instruction in Sir 24.25–34: 25 It [i.e., the Law] fills wisdom like Pishon and like Tigris in days of new things. 26 It supplies understanding like Euphrates and like Jordan in days of harvest. 27 It shines forth understanding like light, like Geon in days of vintage. 28 The first man did not complete knowing her [i.e., Wisdom], and so the last one did not track her out; 29 for her thought was filled from the sea, and her counsel from the great abyss. 30 And I, like a canal from a river and a water channel, issued forth into an orchard.

9 10 11 12

Wright, “Ben Sira on the Sage as Exemplar,” 169. Bickerman, Jews in the Greek Age, 204. See Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 96–100. Ibid., 93–96.

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31 I said, “I will water my garden, and I will drench my flower-bed.” And look! The canal turned into a river for me, and my river into a sea. 32 Still I will again make education enlighten like dawn, and I will shine them forth to far off. 33 Still I will again pour out teaching like prophecy, and I will leave it behind for generations of eternity. 34 See that I have not toiled for myself alone but for all who seek it out. (NETS) Ben Sira imagines “the tradition he inherits as something without beginning or end, continuously overflowing, and he can describe himself as one of its channels”:13 [T]he fact that he mentions his own name does not necessarily mean that he considers his text to be his own coherent, fixed intellectual creation, extends his authority over it, and identifies it as both originating and coterminous with his own textual activity. Rather, Ben Sira presents himself by name as the recipient and heir of some revealed wisdom and received instruction. He considers himself to stand in continuity with earlier inspired figures and sages, and he understands his work as collection and transmission. He presents his persona as an ideal scribe, a gleaner following his predecessors, and a channel for the great sea of revealed wisdom.14 So, if we do not really understand the revelation of Ben Sira’s name the way that Mack or Hengel do—as a result of a specific scholarly conception of Greek influence that creates a notion of authorship tied to individual personality, authenticity, and property—how do we understand what his name means, how it is related to the first person voice in the text, and why Ben Sira has disclosed it? It is a departure from the norm, and it requires explanation. But what we would like to show is that we can contextualize the revelation of the name as a development or variation within Jewish literary culture—not as a radical, externally motivated departure. It can be understood as a variation on the practice of pseudonymous attribution: Ben Sira is attributing his collected wisdom to himself as its exemplary tradent so that his name becomes one of the celebrated ones in the ongoing story of Israel’s sacred writing. Thus, he is making an audacious claim for himself to attain the status of one of Israel’s exemplary figures. 13 14

Ibid., 94. Ibid., 103.

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This is what we want to call pseudo-pseudepigraphy. Our argument is not that in Ben Sira’s case the literary conceit of attribution to a legendary figure fell away, to reveal the unembellished historical truth, the “real author,” which is, for us in the modern world, the default, basic, or naturalized way attribution works. That is, it is not the case that Ben Sira is simply not bothering to hide his identity with this overlay of fictionality. Instead, the text’s creator wanted to become one of these legendary figures himself, claiming the privileges of such figures—particularly the postmortem continuation and development of his memory, a traditionary afterlife where the figure is linked to the ongoing transmission of a textual corpus. Ben Sira does not “drop” the secondary pretense of pseudepigraphy in favor of what we have understood as a Greek-influenced focus on the authority of the real historical personality or the real author’s claim to authenticity and intellectual property. Instead, he expands the practice of attribution that we have come to call “pseudepigraphic” in a radical way—he wants to include his own name in that tradition. 12.1.1 Excursus: Sir 50:27 and Ben Sira’s Use of the First Person One issue that complicates the discussion is the text-critical problem of whether in Sir 50:27 Ben Sira is referred to in the first person or the third person. In his critical edition, Joseph Ziegler opted for the third person verb and preposition ἐχάραξεν ἐν, agreeing with Rahlfs on the strength of two minuscule manuscripts (336 and 358), the corrector of a third (613c), and the Vulgate. Ziegler’s a group (minuscules 149, 260, 606) reads ἐχάραξε (without ἐν, presumably due to parablepsis). The remainder of the Greek manuscript tradition, including all the major uncials, has the first person ἐχάραξα ἐν.15 The Syriac translation, which was made from a Hebrew Vorlage, does not report the author’s name, and there 50:27 reads simply, “All the sayings and riddles of the wise men are written ( ‫ ;ܟ ܒ‬cf. Gr ἐχάραξα) in this book” (cf. Prov 1:6). Finally, MS B from the Cairo Genizah, the only Hebrew manuscript to preserve this verse, does not have a main verb and reads, “Instruction, understanding, and relevant proverbs of Shime’on ben Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira who poured out with interpretation to a son (‫ )אשר ניב ב תור לבן‬and who made utterances with understanding (‫)ואשר הבי בתבונות‬.” The textual situation as we have outlined it here is more complicated than Ziegler’s critical apparatus suggests. First of all, in the Vulgate, which was translated from Greek, the manuscript tradition is divided between third person 15

The verb χαράσσω is rare in the Jewish-Greek translations, only occurring in Sir 50:27 and 4 Reigns (2 Kings) 17:11, where it has no clear translation equivalent but seems to mean “engraved.” In 3 Macc 2:29 it means “branded.”

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(scripsit in) and first person (scripsi in), which points to the same differences that we see in the Greek manuscripts, and thus, they are not decisive. With respect to the Greek tradition, we do not see a good reason to prefer the third person of the minuscules and some Vulgate manuscripts to the remainder of the Greek manuscript tradition, including all of the major uncials.16 Although he does not note it here, in all likelihood because MS B has no verb at all, one suspects that Ziegler might have had his eye on the Hebrew when making his textual decision. Second, 50:27 in MS B does record a name for the author, even if it does not have a main verb. We cannot presume a priori that MS B’s text was that of the translator. In fact it almost certainly was not, given the form of the author’s name (Shimeʾon), the lack of a verb—compare the Syriac and Greek, which both have a verb for writing—and what looks like a doublet in cola c and d of the Hebrew (employing the same verb ‫)נב‬. The word ‫ לבן‬in the Hebrew of colon c, ‫אשר ניב ב תור לבן‬, is likely a corruption, given the Greek translation of ἀπὸ καρδίας αὐτοῦ. Moreover, at the end of colon a, the Hebrew ‫מושל או נים‬, usually translated “apt/fitting proverbs,” might be an allusion to Prov 25:11, where the same term serves adverbially to modify the verb ‫דבר‬, that entered the text in the course of its transmission.17 The verse in its MS B version looks like a scribal colophon, and perhaps a first person self-reference took on the form of a colophon in the course of transmission as an attempt to neutralize the book and its importance, although this is speculation.18 Given the nature of the Syriac translation, the lack of a name might be better attributed to the Syriac translator rather than to the Hebrew Vorlage that he used. In the end, from a text-critical viewpoint, it seems most prudent to follow the Greek manuscript tradition and to prefer the weight of the majority of the Greek

16 17

18

For this reason, 50:27 in NETS reads, “Instruction of understanding and knowledge I have inscribed in this book.” Pietersma and Wright, New English Translation, 761. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 556, argue with regard to the plural ‫ או נים‬with ‫ מושל‬that “a dual is being supposed,” and they refer to Prov 25:11 as a parallel. For the phenomenon of harmonization to biblical language and passages in the Hebrew of Sirach, see Beentjes, “Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew,” 288–89, and Wright, “Preliminary Thoughts,” 95–100. Moreover, if this were a third-person colophon originally, that would suggest that chapter 51 was a later addition to the book, since colophons tend to end texts rather than come in media res. Since some scholars see chapter 51 as a later addition, usually based on the appearance of verses from that chapter in 11Q5 from Qumran, this does not strengthen the argument being made here and cannot adjudicate the status of chapter 51 in this essay.

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manuscripts in reading the first-person verb: ἐχάραξα ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ, “I have written in this book.”19 12.2

Onymity as a Development within the History of Pseudepigraphy

One does not need to look beyond the author’s own tradition to understand the rationale for including his name. In this section, we will not contextualize Ben Sira’s revelation of his own name not as the product of “foreign influence,” but we will situate it within Jewish practices of pseudonymous attribution, understood as a phenomenon that combines the idealization and memorialization of a figure over time and that figure’s link to a developing textual tradition. In other words, Ben Sira’s offering of his own name can be understood as a development within the history of early Jewish pseudepigraphy: Ben Sira does not want to take on the name and persona of a great figure—he wants to become such a figure himself, joining the ranks of the remembered “famous men.” Our argument will proceed in the following way: (1) Ben Sira’s “pseudopseudepigraphy” can be understood as part of a complex set of problems he is dealing with in the text as a whole—questions of memory, post-mortem existence, glory, and praise. (2) These concerns move the notion of the revealed name far away from modern authorship as a proprietary concept. Ben Sira’s revelation of his name makes a claim for belonging to the list of famous men and textual tradents who live on in cultural memory, particularly as revealed in the praise of the scribe in ch. 39 and in the beginning of the Praise of the Ancestors in ch. 44. (3) Ben Sira’s move works: his name does indeed become that of a kind of legendary figure and textual tradent, not by accident of history but, we think, by his own design. Through a long history of reception, Ben Sira becomes a renowned and developing character linked with a textual tradition, not so different from pseudepigraphic figures like Moses, David, or Ezra. The grandson-translator wants Ben Sira’s book to be counted among the writings of the ancients; rabbinic and medieval texts treat him as a character linked to a loose tradition of wisdom literature, with developing narratives about his life and work; and modern scholars also construct distinctive identities and biographies for a figure about whom we actually know very little besides his name.

19

One could argue that the presence of the author’s name might have compelled the Greek translator to change a third person verb to a first person verb, but this argument cuts both ways—a first person verb could easily have become a third person in transmission, as we suggest as a possibility to account for the text of MS B.

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The name itself seems to generate much of this drive to develop, expand, and continue the legacy of Ben Sira as an exemplary sage. Ben Sira’s pseudopseudepigraphy is successful: he has, by his own design, been remembered as a legendary exemplar and textual tradent. (4) We then reconsider the question of Greek authorship with an eye toward whether what we are critiquing—the common idea that Ben Sira’s name is the result of a foreign Greek-style, and also a modern, understanding of authorship as property, legitimation, and personality—is really the right way to understand the motivations behind Greek/Hellenistic authorial practices. As we reconsider Ben Sira’s “onymity” as connected to memory and postmortem life, we eventually return anew to Greek notions of authorship and find that we were able to see those non-Jewish ideas in that light as well. Perhaps, neither Ben Sira nor Hellenistic Greek writers can really be considered the direct precursors of modern authorial ideology, but instead, a consideration of their practices the other way around, as variations or developments of pseudepigraphy, might help us see them more clearly on their own terms. Before we move on to unpacking the relationship between Ben Sira’s name and the text that bears it, we must acknowledge that it is not quite right to say that Ben Sira is an outlier in his pseudonymous literary culture, as if practices of pseudepigraphy were one monolithic whole. In fact, scholars have falsely conflated a variety of practices under one category, perhaps influenced by the history of collections of “Pseudepigrapha” as an artificial corpus of texts that have little in common besides not being part of a canon.20 Among those texts that link a new piece of writing with the name of an ancient hero, the practice takes a variety of forms: we are dealing with a number of distinct modes of framing literary works. Some texts originate anonymously and come to be attributed to an ancient figure secondarily over time, such as biblical Psalms with Davidic headings that later take on an authorial meaning, and Solomonic Proverbs, where the figure whose name is secondarily linked with the text is external to the content of the text itself. For others, like 4 Ezra or Ps 151, the attribution is not secondary but a key part of the text’s creation; the figure is internal to the text as a speaker and central character. Some texts categorized as “pseudepigraphic” are placed in the mouth of the pseudonymous “author” in the first person (1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra), while others are third person narratives that present revelations purportedly given to a particular figure but that do not explicitly credit him with their own

20

See Reed, “Modern Invention,” 434–36.

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composition (e.g., Jubilees).21 As Annette Reed writes, the “pseudonymous writer is not so much creator or author as tradent and guarantor”;22 pseudepigraphy does not always look like modern authorial attribution, but it can include texts where an ancient figure acts as a major tradent or a first person narrator. As Hindy Najman has argued, a pseudepigraphic hero can become a figurehead or representative patron of a developing literary genre.23 Eva Mroczek explores how we can see a pseudepigraphic figure as a literary character whose story keeps being updated and expanded with new episodes, rather than an authorial figure (we will return to this idea).24 There are also other modes of attribution that are even harder to assimilate into a straightforward model of “false authorship”; one notable “outlier” that we might in another sense also call “pseudo-pseudepigraphy” is Qoheleth’s quasi-Solomonic attribution, which gives rise to wildly varied afterlives that speculate about the relationship between the name “Qoheleth,” the persona of the Solomon-like king, and the voice(s) in the text.25 This attribution takes on some of the features of pseudepigraphy in that it inscribes its speaker into a tradition of Solomonic wisdom but it does not actually use Solomon’s name, instead offering a new enigmatic one. Thus, to contextualize Ben Sira as “pseudopseudepigraphy,” as we do here, is to position him as a somewhat more radical revision of an already varied set of ways that texts could be related to figures and not as a single, odd departure from a monolithic norm. 12.3

“Ben Sira” among the “Famous Men”

Both Ben Sira’s self-identification and the motivations for revealing his name connect both to cultural practices of pseudepigraphy in ancient Judaism in general and to the broader concerns of his book with respect to memory and post-mortem existence more specifically. In arguing that Ben Sira’s name can be understood as a variation on pseudepigraphy, we are thinking not so much of pseudonymous attribution as an authorizing strategy. Rather, we focus on those aspects of pseudepigraphy that have to do with the idealization and

21 22 23 24 25

See the varieties of pseudepigraphy discussed in Stuckenbruck, “Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” 191–200. Reed, “Pseudepigraphy,” 477. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 1–16; see also Najman’s recent work tracing the figure and genre idea to Nietzsche on Homer in “Configuring the Text,” and Losing the Temple, 34–62. Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 51–85. Bolin, Ecclesiastes.

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memorialization of a figure over time, a memorialization that is created largely through a figure’s link to a developing textual tradition. The connection between writing, memory, and cultural continuity was an important topic of reflection in Second Temple Judaism. Reed points to the genre of testament literature as a key locus for reflections on how cultural continuity was possible and on how spoken teaching and written documents acted as “technologies of memory” that safeguarded the survival of tradition and instruction. Reed voices the key questions she sees in the testamentary tradition: “How long can the name, words, or model of a man resound upon the earth? By what means and mechanisms? For whom, and among whom? Who closes the gate between death and forgetting, and who guards it against oblivion?”26 While testamentary literature (Aramaic Levi, Test. Amram, Test. Qahat, Test. of the Twelve Patriarchs) explores various “mechanisms” for guarding against oblivion, such as transgenerational teaching, priestly succession, and ethical emulation,27 a key novelty in such texts is that many of them turn biblical figures into authors, highlighting the importance of writing as a safeguard for a figure’s legacy. (Of course, such a move is widespread in Second Temple Judaism far beyond testaments—we need only point to the book of Jubilees, which rewrites the history of Israel as a kind of historical bibliography, turning many of its patriarchs into literary tradents and its relationship with the divine as a history of multiple stages of sacred written revelation.)28 Jacqueline Vayntrub takes up the connection between textual transmission and postmortem memory in a study of Qoheleth, which, on her reading, is deeply engaged with the question of the status of wisdom and instruction when they are detached from the living voice of the teacher, and she grapples with issues of “the individuality of the speaker’s voice, the speaker’s connection to or detachment from a line of dead ancestors, and the meaning of individual death.”29 Unlike the testaments, which in Reed’s analysis capture the moment immediately before the death of the speaker both to worry about and to safeguard the survival of his words, Ecclesiastes is not explicitly set as deathbed instruction of a specific biblical character. Instead, Vayntrub argues, it generalizes the problem of transmission beyond death to an abstract principle— and its unusual attribution, “Qoheleth,” the “Gatherer,” is part of this move: “The name of Qohelet is deliberately not Solomon. The name is, rather, part of the persona which the author constructs for the purposes of the literary 26 27 28 29

Reed, “Pseudepigraphy,” 381. Ibid., 400. See Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing,” 379–88. Vayntrub, “Ecclesiastes and the Problem of Transmission.”

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work.”30 Qoheleth, Vayntrub writes, “has a transmission problem”: there is no trans-generational stability of words, deeds, and their consequences, and we can see this by how the epilogue has “mangled” some of the radical positions of Qoheleth on reward and value. In the case of Qoheleth and “pseudepigraphy,” we have neither attribution to a biblical figure nor the name of a “real author.” Instead, we have a kind of generic placeholder that illustrates the tension between a stream of tradition and the individual-but-lost voices who transmit it. The “Gatherer” is Solomon-like and invokes the trappings of Solomonic wisdom. But he is not a specific individual who can be placed in any particular historical moment. In a way, the name, which eventually becomes swallowed up into a Solomonic persona in much of the history of reception,31 illustrates Qoheleth’s cry that “there is nothing new under the sun”: the erasure of some of the radical claims in the text by their “mangled” version in the “summary” epilogue. What happens when we move to Ben Sira, who seems both more comfortable with being part of a “canal from a river,” channeling an ancient tradition, while also far more audacious in giving us his individual name? In other words, how do we understand the apparent tension between Ben Sira’s insistence that he is “merely” transmitting a wisdom project that is neither original nor complete and the fact that he nevertheless attaches his own name to his work? It seems, to be flippant, that “Qoheleth” gave up at the outset. Nothing really new can survive the repeating cycle of sunrises and sunsets, the flow of rivers into each other. No new name can survive the enormous pull of “Solomon.” This pessimism seems proven right by much of the history of reception—in fact, “Qoheleth” does not become a separate, individual character with his own interpretative afterlife, but he is essentially absorbed into Solomon. Ben Sira, however, does something different. He wants his memory to survive, and so he gives us his own name to take its place in the ranks of the “famous men.” But Ben Sira also knows that in order to survive, the new figure must be much like the old, must already be subsumed into a powerful stream of tradition and place itself in firm continuity with it, as a gleaner after the grape harvesters, a canal from a river (Sir 33:16–17; 24:30). As we will show below, the move is successful—unlike Qoheleth, Ben Sira, who stakes less of a claim to individuality, is the one who becomes his own full-fledged character in later interpretive history.

30 31

Ibid. Bolin, Ecclesiastes, esp. 20–35.

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Ironically, in a sense, Ben Sira’s claim to hitch his wagon to an existing stream of tradition is reminiscent of some of the motives scholars have put forth for the practice of pseudonymous attribution. In Najman’s formulation, new “discourses tied to a founder” inscribe themselves into an existing tradition linked to an exemplary figure and can claim to continue the same legacy. They appropriate that tradition’s established authority even as they present new, sometimes radically transformed material.32 In a variation of this move, Ben Sira attaches himself to the entire panoply of ancient heroes, not to a discourse tied explicitly to any specific founder. Claiming to be part of a current that is already flowing with its own momentum, he reveals his own name to secure his place in memory. By giving us his own name, then, Ben Sira makes a move that works in almost the opposite way from how we imagine pseudonymous attribution, but it achieves similar goals. Instead of a “real” person whose name is disguised by an ancient hero’s persona, here, a “real” person takes on the same kind of role, becomes the same kind of figure, and speaks apparently similar traditionally flavored wisdom, as an ancient persona. Ben Sira ensures the survival of his name, as the names of the legendary heroes have survived: his apparent humility—that he is a channel, dependent on and bringing forth traditional sources—ironically allows him to claim his individual place among them. Ben Sira’s claim to be a canal from a river lets his individual name be remembered (and, as we will show, turned into a distinctive character)—just as pseudepigraphic texts’ claims to be more of what was already revealed to an authoritative figure let them put forth new, innovative claims. This “pseudo-pseudepigraphy” is not so surprising when we consider the questions of memory, survival, and a glorious reputation that Ben Sira engages explicitly in the text. Two passages in the book link up to suggest that the revelation of Ben Sira’s name constitutes something of a defensive move on his part to safeguard his own place in the collective memory of Israel and thus assure the memory of his own name and reputation (‫כבוד‬/δόξα). At the end of the famous praise of the scribe, the poem, which describes how God will fill the scribe with “a spirit of understanding” (39:6 G), culminates with how the scribe will achieve fame, both pre- and post-mortem: 9 Many will praise his understanding, and it will never be blotted out; his memorial (τὸ µνηµόσυνον) will not depart, and his name will live for generations of generations. 32

Najman, Seconding Sinai, esp. 12–13, 18–20, 40.

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10 Nations will narrate his wisdom, and an assembly will proclaim his praise. 11 If he abides, he will leave behind a name greater than a thousand, and if he rests, it will be favorable for him (39:9–11 G, NETS). Here we see a central concern for Ben Sira, who does not envision personal survival past death. The devout person “survives” through a lasting and positive “name” or “memorial.” We find the same thought, using almost identical vocabulary, in Ben Sira’s introduction to the Praise of the Ancestors. In 44:7–9, Ben Sira contrasts the righteous and unrighteous of the past, and at the same time he perhaps reveals his own anxieties about his future fate: 7 All these in their generations were honored, and their splendor was in their days. 8 Among them were those who left a reputation, to be spoken of in their inheritance; 9 but among them were those of whom there is no remembrance, and they perished whenever they perished. They have become as if they had never existed, they and their children after them.33 In the following stanza, Ben Sira returns to the virtuous and their posterity, which consists of descendants and reputation: 12 In their covenant their offspring continued, and so have their descendants because of them. 13 To eternity their offspring will continue, and their honor will not be blotted out. 14 Whereas their corpse was buried in peace, their reputation lives from generation to generation. 15 The congregation will repeat their wisdom, and the assembly will recount their praise.34 The parallels of language in these passages reveal a connection between Ben Sira’s expectations of immortality as a scribe and that which the heroes of Israel’s past have already achieved. Understanding and honor that “will not be blotted out” (39:9//44:13), a reputation or name that will “live from generation to generation” (39:9//44:14), and the assembly that will “recount/proclaim” 33 34

Translation from the Hebrew reconstruction of Corley, “Sirach 44:1–15,” 169. Translation from the Hebrew reconstruction of ibid., 173.

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their praise (39:10//44:15; cf. 31:11) all stake Ben Sira’s claim to belonging among those who are/will be remembered among the heroes of Israel.35 12.4

Ben Sira’s Success: The Reception of the Revealed Name

The move that Ben Sira makes by revealing his name, to ensure that it and his reputation endure and to include himself among the famous of Israel, seems to have worked, since Ben Sira became a pseudo-pseudepigraphic figure in later reception, even as early as the translation of his book into Greek. In the course of Jewish reception, he became a character—one of those who deserve praise for education and wisdom, a rabbi, a prophet and healer, and a writer of an authoritative text, even a scriptural one, linked with a textual tradition of wisdom (and later prophecy as we shall see) rather than an “author” in any modern sense of the word. In some of these cases, the content of his book became somewhat beside the point; in others, the book (the object and the content) paved the way to creating or envisioning the character. Ben Sira generates different personae, who fill a variety of literary spaces and needs in later Jewish texts. The prologue to the Greek translation of Sirach represents the earliest reception of the book. The translator claims to be the grandson (or descendant) of the author, calling Ben Sira ὁ πάππος µου Ἰησοῦς. In the third of the three Κoine sentences that make up the prologue, the translator writes that he intended to translate the book from Hebrew for “those living abroad if they wish to become learned, preparing their character to live by the law” (ll. 34–36). In the first sentence, however, he situates Ben Sira’s book among the authoritative books of Israel’s literary heritage, “the Law, the Prophets, and the others that followed them” (ll. 1–2): Seeing that many and great things have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them, for which reason it is necessary to commend Israel for education and wisdom, and whereas it is necessary that not only those who read them gain understanding, but also that those who love learning be capable of service to outsiders, both when they speak and when they write, Iesous, my grandfather, since 35

Corley describes persuasively the way that reputation and memory function in 44:1–15, and he even remarks about the similarity to chapter 39. He does not, however, link them, as we do here, to Ben Sira’s concern for his own reputation and name and its connection to his use of his own name in 50:27.

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he had given himself increasingly both to the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the other ancestral books and since he had acquired considerable proficiency in them, he too was led to compose something pertaining to education and wisdom in order that lovers of learning, when they come under their sway as well, might gain much more in living by the law. (ll. 1–14; NETS) The translator comments specifically that Ben Sira had studied and learned these books in order to be of service. He then remarks that his grandfather “too was led (προήχθη καὶ αὐτός) to compose something pertaining to education and wisdom.” By using the adverb “too/as well” and reintroducing the terms “education and wisdom” and “lovers of learning,” the translator harks back to the first part of the sentence, rhetorically placing his grandfather’s book together with the authoritative books of Israel’s literary heritage.36 Through the grandson’s translation, Ben Sira’s teaching had become a book of “education and wisdom” that ranked with the great books of Israel’s past. Ben Sira’s appearances in some rabbinic texts continue the story of his transformation into a pseudo-pseudepigraphic figure in Jewish literary history. The Palestinian rabbis of the Amoraic period most often refer to Ben Sira as a person, often in the same way that they cite other rabbis.37 So, for example, a citation of Sir 3:21–22 in y. Hag. 2:1 is introduced with “R. Lazar in the name of Ben Sira” (‫ ;)ר ל ר בשם בר סירה‬a reference to Sir 38:4–7 in Gen. Rab. 10:6 (Gen 2:1) simply begins, “Bar Sira said” ( ‫)בר סירא אמ‬. The Babylonian rabbis, however, almost always refer to the book of Ben Sira—and not always very accurately, at least in the later amoraic period in Babylonia.38 Jenny Labendz has argued that the Palestinian rabbis referred to Ben Sira as a person, a “pseudorabbi,” for polemical purposes, that is, in order to distinguish his book from biblical books and not to accord any legitimacy to a book that was highly valued by Christians.39 Yet, as these texts were read and studied, it is not hard to envision how Ben Sira became a rabbinic figure, or at least a wise person of old who had wisdom to transmit, apart from any earlier polemical motivations on the part of Palestinian Amoraim. For later readers, Ben Sira already might have been a pseudo-pseudepigraphic character who had found a location in the rabbinic past.40 36 37 38 39 40

Wright, “Translation Greek,” 84. Labendz, “Book of Ben Sira,” 353–56. This section on the reception of Ben Sira is adapted from Wright, “Character in Search of a Story.” Labendz, “Book of Ben Sira,” 363. Labendz, “Book of Ben Sira,” 354, 368. Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 378–80.

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When we arrive at the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira, we encounter a fully rabbinic Ben Sira (as well as a few other Ben Siras, as we shall see). The medieval text usually called the Alphabet of Ben Sira is a collection of texts and traditions brought together under the name of Ben Sira.41 It comprises two parts, and the first contains “biographical” traditions about Ben Sira and is more properly known as the Toledot; the second records a list of Aramaic proverbs on the alphabet with additional homiletical material, the Alphabet per se. One story from the Toledot relates that Ben Sira was born with teeth and fully developed powers of speech. When Ben Sira was a year old, he went to a teacher to learn Torah. In a playful and parodic turn of the tables, Ben Sira’s teacher confesses to him all of the teacher’s troubles with women, and Ben Sira proceeds to teach the teacher through a series of alphabetic proverbs based on the citations of Ben Sira in b. Sanh. 100b. In this story, Ben Sira already knows everything that he needs to know at once, and the text tells us that by the age of seven “there was not a major or minor subject that he had not studied.”42 Here is Ben Sira the Wunderrabbi, as David Stern has described him—and with no overtly polemical edge (although the story perhaps marginalizes Ben Sira’s book somewhat by thoroughly integrating him into the universe of the rabbis).43 The Alphabet of Ben Sira provides an additional example of our pseudopseudepigraphical hero’s development in reception. It begins with the birth of Ben Sira, who is the progeny of the prophet Jeremiah and his daughter. The biblical prophet confronts some Ephraimites in a bathhouse who force him to masturbate. The water preserves his semen, which impregnates Jeremiah’s daughter when she bathes.44 In the subsequent narrative, Ben Sira speaks from the womb about his name, and when he finally emerges, he has the following conversation with his mother: “My son,” she said, “it is written, ‘That which has been is that which shall be’ (Eccl. 1:9). But who ever saw a daughter giving birth by her father?” “My mother,” he said, “‘There is nothing new under the sun’ (Eccl. 1:9). For just as Lot was perfectly righteous, so is my father perfectly righteous. For just as a similar occurrence happened to Lot under duress, so too it happened to my father.” “You amaze me,” she said, “How do you know such 41 42 43 44

Yassif, Sippurei ben Sira, 7–29. Stern, “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” 427–29. See Boyarin, “‘Changing the Order of Creation’,” on the Alphabet’s iconoclastic relationship to canonical traditions. Translation from Bronznick, “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” 177. Stern, “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” 446. For more detail on the latter point, see Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 382–86. The entire episode has Pesiqta Rabbati 26 at its heart, as Stern has demonstrated (Stern, “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” 434–37).

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things?” “Don’t be amazed at what I say. There is nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah my father did the same thing.” … [Here Ben Sira tells a story about Jeremiah speaking from the womb about what his name would be.] … “Just as Jeremiah came from the womb with the power of speech. Just as he came forth with the power of prophecy—as it is said, ‘Before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you; I have appointed you a prophet unto the nations’ (Jer 1:5)—I, too, have emerged from the womb with the power of prophecy. As he left his mother’s belly with his name, so have I; and as he composed a book arranged in alphabetical acrostics (= Lamentations), I, too, will compose a book of alphabets. So do not be amazed by my words.” “My son,” his mother said to Ben Sira, “don’t speak, for the evil eye might fix its power over you.” “The evil eye has no power over me. Besides, do not try to talk me out of doing what my father did. To me applies the proverb, ‘The ewe takes after the ewe, and the son follows the deeds of his father.’”45 The imitation of the prophet Jeremiah that originates in the genetic connection between the two claims the office of prophet for Ben Sira. In a later scenario, while seven years old, Ben Sira appears in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, à la the prophet Daniel, where he fashions an amulet that drives away Lilith from the king’s son and cures the king’s daughter of a severe case of flatulence. The Cairo Geniza manuscripts of Sirach offer suggestive evidence for how the persona of Ben Sira developed in different directions in early medieval Judaism. We begin with the anthological MS C. As is well known, MS C (12th c.?) is written in prose and does not contain a running text of the book. Rather it anthologizes Ben Sira’s teaching on a number of practical subjects, such as women and speech. If we can extrapolate from the fragmentary manuscript itself, it seems that for the anthologizer(s) who produced MS C, Ben Sira was a wise teacher who had valuable practical advice for how to behave properly and for how to deal with important aspects of their lives. Coming full circle in a way, there is evidence to suggest that some medieval Jews treated Ben Sira like a biblical writer, a persona that no doubt would have pleased the grandson/translator so many centuries before. Although we can only make a tentative case, two clues incline us in that direction. First is the witness of Saadya, the tenth-century gaon, who in his work Sefer Ha-Galuy discusses Sirach and cites several passages from the book. Saadya gives two indications that some medieval Jews treated Sirach similarly to biblical books. In describing the book of Sirach, he says that Ben Sira “composed (‫ )חבר‬a book of 45

Bronznick with Stern and Mirsky, “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” 170–72.

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instruction similar to the book of Proverbs with chapters (‫ ) רשיותיו‬and verses (‫) סוקיו‬, and he made it marked (‫ ;מסומן‬with vowels?) and accented (‫)מו ם‬.”46 A little later in the text, Saadya responds to criticisms of Karaites, who accuse him of trying to make his own writing equivalent to scripture by using vowels and accents. He writes: And when these wicked people saw that I had composed a book in Hebrew, divided into verses and provided with vowels and accents, they denounced me with mean slander, and said that this is pretension to prophecy [that is, they accused him of the ambition to imitate the Scriptures] … But this is only their folly, … for these things [i.e., the dividing of a Hebrew book into verses and providing it with vowels and accents] any man can do, as, indeed, Ben Sira did, Ben Iri, the sons of the Hasmonaeans, and the Bene Africa, but none of them pretended to prophecy.47 Clearly Saadya does not consider Sirach to be scriptural, but we learn three important things from him: (1) the Hebrew of Sirach was well known in rabbinic circles in the tenth century; (2) Sirach was written with both vowels and accents; and (3) some Jews regarded writing texts in this manner as reserved for scripture.48 The second clue comes in MS B from the Cairo Geniza, which bears all the marks of a text held in high regard.49 With respect to format, the manuscript has been ruled with a ruling board that marks right and left margins and the lines from which the copied letters descend. Each column has eighteen lines with verses ending in a soph passuq, and the copying has been executed in a fine book hand. Scribal interventions almost never occur in the space of the text itself but rather in the margins, and a great many of the marginal notations preserve alternative readings, including alternative verses and doublets, rather than corrections. At least two, and perhaps three, scribes worked on the manuscript.

46 47 48 49

Saadya wrote Sefer Ha-Galuy in Arabic and in Hebrew, and it survives in fragments. On the comparison with Proverbs, see Harkavy, Sefer Ha-Galuy, 150–51, where the Hebrew words are ‫ מוסר‬and ‫משלי‬. The translation comes from Schechter, “Fragment,” 3. See also Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 386–92. For more detailed argumentation, see Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 386–88. Certain aspects of MS A might also provide some clues. See the discussion and bibliography in Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 388–89.

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We should think of MS B as a critical text in the sense that the scribes have made every attempt to preserve different forms of the text, which suggests its importance. Jean-Sébastien Rey remarks about this practice: Un tel procédé témoigne non seulement d’une certain liberté, mais surtout d’un véritable travail critique sur le text qui relativise d’un certain manière sa dimension sacrée. Cette sacralité du texte n’en est pas pour autant absente, mais elle s’exprime différemment. En effet, un indice intéressant de cette sacralité est la volonté du scribe de maintenir ou d’ajouter en marge des leçons qui, en tout vraisemblance, sont fautives.50 With Rey, we think that at least some Jews placed the book of Sirach somewhere in the universe of authoritative books. Who those Jews were, we cannot say for certain, but the point here is that some Jews seem to have thought so. They did raise questions about the delimitations of authoritative scripture all the way into the medieval period. It also shows how productive the character of Ben Sira as an “author” continued to be for more than a millennium after the earliest reception that we know, the translation into Greek. Finally, some modern scholarship presents us with the latest stage in the reception history of Ben Sira as a pseudo-pseudepigraphic character. Inspired by the revelation of his name combined with the first person voice of the text, scholars have attempted to construct a detailed biography and personality for Ben Sira. They believe they can discern specific details about his life, such as his teaching career and his own scribal school. This is tempting: in the words of Hindy Najman, pseudepigraphic texts “efface their own origins,”51 but with Ben Sira we seem to be on firmer ground when it comes to placing him as an individual in a specific time and place. But scholars have been given an inch—a name—and taken a mile—a personality and life story, turning the name into a full character. Perhaps the most striking example is an article by Paul McKechnie, who argues that the references to persecution (12:10–12, 25:7, 27:21–24, and 51:1–7) reveal information about particular events in the life of Ben Sira. Key to McKechnie’s biographical reconstruction is the mention of a false accusation 50

51

Rey, “Transmission textuelle et sacralisation,” 176 (“Such behavior testifies not only to a certain freedom, but especially to real critical work on the text which, in a way, qualifies its sacred dimension. This sacrality of the text is not as much absent as it expresses itself differently. In effect, an interesting index of this sacrality is the desire of the scribe to keep or to add marginal readings that, in all likelihood, are faulty.”). For more detail, see Wright, “Character in Search of a Story,” 388–90. Najman, “Reconsidering Jubilees,” 238.

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before the king (51:6). Based on such passages, McKechnie narrates a detailed biography: in about 200 BCE, Ben Sira left Jerusalem for Alexandria, where he was a courtier until he was accused of misdeeds before Ptolemy IV, V, or VI. He was then tried and exonerated, and when he retired from the king’s service, he opened a school and wrote his book. All this, McKechnie claims, took place in Alexandria.52 While less colorful than the Alphabet of Ben Sira, this elaborate narrative also constructs Ben Sira as a full character with a biography and a personality that has barely more textual and historical credence than the plot of the Alphabet. The references to persecution and enemies are highly conventional and are better contextualized with such texts as the psalms of lament than taken as individual, personal revelations. Much is made of the reference to a king as an anchor to place Ben Sira in a specific time and place, but the king is found only in the Greek translation of Sirach; the only Hebrew witness [MS B] has “a deceitful tongue,” with no mention of a king at all. Even if the earliest version had contained a reference to betrayal by false accusations before a king, this would seem to echo some of the general didactic warnings about navigating the risky politics of a royal court, such as those in the book of Proverbs (16:10, 13; 19:12; 20:2; 24:21–22; 23:6–8)—rather than a particular historical encounter between Ben Sira and one of the Ptolemies in Alexandria. More specifically, in McKechnie’s hands, Ben Sira has become another legendary Joseph, Daniel, or Ahiqar—taking his place in a long tradition of the sage in a foreign court, this time inflected through the language of modern scholarship. While this is an extreme example, it does illustrate a common scholarly desire to turn a writer about whom we actually know very little into a character with a distinct personality and life story—cobbled together from biblical quotations, over-interpreted from conventional motifs, and inspired by older figures: a pseudo-pseudepigraphic character indeed. We might put the success of Ben Sira’s pseudo-pseudepigraphy into relief by contrasting it with the afterlife of Qoheleth. The speaker of Ecclesiastes makes a number of unusual, even radical, and certainly memorable claims; the “I” voice has a distinctive personality; and the epilogue describes the speaker as a teacher and compiler. In addition, he stakes out an individual, distinctive position vis-à-vis the tradition he inherits, often departing from it in surprising and idiosyncratic ways. And yet, though “he” is arguably more interesting and more distinctive as a personality, Qoheleth does not become a character in the history of reception the way that Ben Sira does. He is subsumed—or neutralized—into a Solomonic or generic royal persona. Ben Sira, however, 52

McKechnie, “Career,” 1–26. For further analysis, see Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 99–100.

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becomes a personality and a colorful character with an afterlife of his own— maybe not despite but because he had, at the very outset, hitched his wagon to the momentum of the great river of wisdom and instruction. 12.5

Conclusion

We have situated Ben Sira’s name within the history of pseudepigraphy, rather than within the sphere of “Greek influence”—individual authorial attribution as proprietary and authorizing. But what if we are not quite right about what Greek or Hellenistic authorial attribution was all about? We could ask if the practice of Greek authors of revealing their names functions in a similar way to what we have called “pseudo-pseudepigraphy” or at least does not function in the sense of modern authorship. That is, does our point about Ben Sira’s intent to inscribe himself in a history of legendary figures also help us to revise our assumptions about Hellenistic authorship more broadly? Perhaps there is no reason to assume that Greek authors who identify themselves are any more “modern” than Ben Sira is; perhaps concepts of authenticity and intellectual property do not drive their naming. The rhetorician Isocrates (5th–4th c. BCE) provides one example of an ancient Greek author’s motivation to link his name to a text. Isocrates understood rhetoric/discourse to be a competition, and the rhetorician who succeeded in such rivalry earned fame and immortality.53 The author’s enduring reputation, then, played a central role in the practice of onymity in Greece. In several passages Isocrates articulates a deep concern for his reputation. For example, in the Panathenaicus, Isocrates complains that sophists have accused him of “doing away with all the learning and teaching of others” (19), and he laments that these false reports have caused his “failure to attain the reputation that I deserve” (21).54 The reputation about which Isocrates worries has nothing to do with personal post-mortem survival; rather, he wants to assure the survival of his name throughout time, as he says in To Philip 134: “Keep in mind that we all have a body that is mortal, but we partake of immortality according to others’ goodwill and the praise we receive and the reports that circulate about us and the memory [τὴν µνήµην] we leave that lasts through time [our emphasis].

53 54

For more detail on authorship norms in Isocrates, see Behme, “Norms of Authorship,” 89–110. Translation comes from Norlin, Isocrates.

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This is what we should desire, no matter what we suffer to obtain it.”55 Or, from the Panathenaicus 260: For it seems to me in your life that you will not have gotten a reputation [δόξαν] greater than you deserve—that would be hard—but one will be recognized by more people and more unanimously approved than it is now. When you die, you will have a share of immorality [ἀθανασίας], not that of the gods, but the kind that creates memories [µνήµην] of those who have excelled in some noble deed for those who come afterward.56 Here Isocrates identifies the author with heroes who do noble deeds and whose names last throughout time—and here we might recall Ben Sira’s connection of his own name with the “heroes” of Israel’s past. For Isocrates, even though authorship has a proprietary aspect to it, the anxiety about one’s words has to do with the persistence of one’s name and reputation. As Irene Peirano writes, self-naming in Greek literature enacts “memory and celebration,”57 and this focus on cultural afterlife—the aspiration to become a renowned hero that we think Greek authors and Ben Sira share—can help us reconsider even those Greek examples that reveal a proprietary understanding of authorship. The revelation of an author’s name is called a sphragis, “seal,” after a passage in Theognis of Megara (6th c. BCE): Kyrnos, let a seal be placed on the present lines by me as I practice my art, and they will never be stolen without detection, nor will anyone substitute something inferior for the good thing that is there. And so will everyone say: “these are the lines of Theognis of Megara, named among all men” (19–23).58 A “seal” suggests an ancient version of “copyright,” but what motivates it? Theognis—like Galen long after—is anxious that inauthentic texts will be linked to his name and that these would be inferior to what he actually did write, and thus they would compromise his glorious memory as one who is “named among all men.” He is also worried that someone else could gain fame 55 56 57 58

Translation from Behme, “Norms of Authorship,” 108. Ibid. “Self-naming is not a value-free activity; on the contrary, it evokes and arrogates the cultural capital of the genre through which memory and celebration are enacted” (Peirano, “Ille ego qui quondam,” 263, speaking here of Homer). Translation from Peirano, “Ille ego qui quondam,” 262.

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through his superior words by stealing them without attribution. (Interestingly, Ben Sira may have used Theognis’s lines on friendship—but, Theognis got his wish, at least among contemporary scholars who have noticed this: his words have in fact not been appropriated without detection, and his fame is assured.)59 This anxiety does not reflect a concern for proprietary content in the modern sense but a concern for a glorious memory that inferior forgery could compromise. We do not see such anxiety about authentic words in Ben Sira, who seems more concerned with insisting he is not doing anything new but merely bringing the great river of ancestral tradition forward—even as he leaves us his individual name, which he successfully inscribes in the ranks of “famous men.” Ben Sira is participating in a broader discourse on authorship to the extent that “memory and celebration” are key; his desire to be remembered among the heroes of Israel converges with the Greek discourse on authorship for fame and the immortal name, though in the Greek context that fame is also threatened by inauthentic works. We have reoriented our understanding of Ben Sira’s onymity as an appropriation of ancient Jewish pseudonymous attribution—what we have called pseudo-pseudepigraphy. Ben Sira reveals his real name so that he can eventually become a legendary character like Enoch or Ezra, which, to an extent, he does. We began by saying that this move can be understood as an adaptation of Jewish literary practices, not the result of external Greek influence. But considering how Ben Sira fits into Jewish practices helped us also to complicate the standard “proto-modern” model of Hellenistic authorship, common in much scholarship on ancient Judaism. We are beginning to see in what ways Ben Sira participates in broader discourses of naming, and in what ways his onymity is expressed within a distinctly Jewish literary imagination. Bibliography Beentjes, P. C. “The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: Preliminary Remarks towards a New Text Edition and Synopsis.” Pages 283–91 in “Happy the One who Meditates on Wisdom” (Sir. 14,20): Collected Essays on the Book of Ben Sira. CBET 43. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Behme, Timothy Donald. “Norms of Authorship in Ancient Greece: Case Studies of Herodotus, Isocrates, and Plato.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2007. 59

On Ben Sira’s use of Theognis, see the list of parallels in Middendorp, Die Stellung, 13–17 and the discussions in Sanders, Ben Sira and Demotic Wisdom, 29–38 and Wright, “Ben Sira and Hellenistic Literature,” 83–86.

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Bickerman, Elias J. The Jews in the Greek Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Bolin, Thomas M. Ecclesiastes and the Riddle of Authorship. New York: Routledge, 2017. Boyarin, Shamma. “‘Changing the Order of Creation’: The Toldot Ben Sira Disrupts the Medieval Hebrew Canon.” Pages 336–48 in Talmudic Transgressions: Engaging the Work of Daniel Boyarin. Ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert et al. JSJSup 181. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Bronznick, Norman, with David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky. “The Alphabet of Ben Sira.” Pages 167–202 in Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature. Ed. David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Corley, Jeremy. “Sirach 44:1–15 as Introduction to the Praise of the Ancestors.” Pages 151–81 in Studies in the Book of Ben Sira: Papers of the Third International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books. Ed. G. Xeravits and J. Zsengellér. JSJSup 127. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by J. E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hanson, Ann Ellis. “Galen: Author and Critic.” Pages 22–53 in Editing Texts-Texte edieren. Ed. Glenn Most. Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. Harkavy, Abraham E. Sefer Ha-Galuy. St. Petersburg: 1892. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period. Trans. J. Bowden. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974. Labendz, Jenny. “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature.” AJSR 30 (2006): 347–92. Larsen, Matthew D. C. Gospels Before the Book. New York: Oxford, 2018. Mack, Burton L. Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira’s Hymn in Praise of the Fathers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Mack, Burton L. “Under the Shadow of Moses: Authorship and Authority in Hellenistic Judaism.” Pages 299–318 in SBL Seminar Papers, 1982. SBLSP 21. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982. McKechnie, Paul. “The Career of Joshua Ben Sira.” JTS 51 (2000): 1–26. Middendorp, Th. Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973. Mroczek, Eva. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity. New York: Oxford, 2016. Najman, Hindy. Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Najman, Hindy. “Configuring the Text in Biblical Studies.” Pages 3–22 in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. Ed. Eric F. Mason et al. JSJSup 153. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

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Najman, Hindy. “Reconsidering Jubilees: Prophecy and Exemplarity.” Pages 229–43 in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees. Ed. G. Boccaccini and G. Ibba. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009; repr. in Hindy Najman. Past Renewals: Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelation, and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity. JSJSup 53. Leiden: Brill, 2010, 189–204. Najman, Hindy. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. JSJSup 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Najman, Hindy. “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and its Authority Conferring Strategies.” JSJ 4 (1999): 379–410. Najman, Hindy, Itamar Manoff, and Eva Mroczek. “How to Make Sense of Pseudonymous Attribution: The Cases of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.” Pages 308–36 in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism. Ed. Matthias Henze. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Norlin, George. Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in Three Volumes. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press/William Heinemann Ltd., 1980. Peirano, Irene. “Ille ego qui quondam: on authorial (an)onymity.” Pages 251–85 in The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity. Ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pietersma, Albert, and Benjamin G. Wright, eds. A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included Under that Title. New York: Oxford, 2007. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “The Modern Invention of ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.’” JTS 60 (2009): 403–36. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “Pseudepigraphy, Authorship, and the Reception of ‘the Bible’ in Late Antiquity.” Pages 467–90 in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006. Ed. L. DiTommaso and L. Turcescu. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Rey, Jean-Sébastien. “Transmission textuelle et sacrilisation: Quelque charactéristiques de la pratique des copistes de ms. A et B du texte hébreu de Ben Sira.” Pages 163–77 in Littérature et sacré: La tradition en question. Ed. V. Litvan. Littérature et Spiritualité. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016. Sanders, Jack T. Ben Sira and Demotic Wisdom. SBLMS 28. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983. Schechter, Solomon. “A Fragment of the Original Text of Ecclesiasticus.” The Expositor 4 (1900): 1–15. Skehan, Patrick W. and Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Smith, Morton. “Pseudepigraphy in the Israelite Tradition.” Pages 189–215 in Pseudepigrapha I. Ed. K. von Fritz. Vandoeuvres-Geneve: Fondation Hardt, 1972.

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Stern, David. “The Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Early History of Parody in Jewish Literature.” Pages 423–48 in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel. Ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman. JSJSup 83. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Stuckenbruck, Loren T. “Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.” Pages 179–203 in Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview. Ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Stuckenbruck, Loren T. “The Epistle of Enoch: Genre and Authorial Presentation.” DSD 17 (2010): 387–417. Vayntrub, Jacqueline. “Ecclesiastes and the Problem of Transmission in Biblical Literature.” In Writing and Scribalism: Authors, Audiences, and Texts in Social Perspective. Ed. Mark Leuchter. London: T&T Clark, forthcoming. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “A Character in Search of a Story: The Reception of Ben Sira in Early Medieval Judaism.” Pages 378–98 in Wisdom Poured Out Like Water: Studies on Jewish and Christian Antiquity in Honor of Gabriele Boccaccini. DCLS 38. Ed. J. Harold Ellens et al. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “Ben Sira and Hellenistic Literature in Greek.” Pages 71–88 in Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism. Ed. Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. JSJSup 174. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “Preliminary Thoughts about Preparing the Text of Ben Sira for a Commentary.” Pages 89–109 in Die Septuaginta: Text—Wirkung—Rezeption. Ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Martin Karrer. WUNT 325. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “Translation Greek in Sirach in Light of the Grandson’s Prologue.” Pages 75–94 in The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira: Transmission and Interpretation. Ed. Jan Joosten and Jean-Sébastien Rey. JSJSup 150. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Wright, Benjamin G., III. “Ben Sira on the Sage as Exemplar.” Pages 165–82 in Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint. JSJSup 131. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Yassif, Eli. Sippurei ben Sira Bi-Yemei Ha-Beinayim. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984.

chapter 13

The Act of Reading Ben Sira as a Generative Context for Jewish Liturgical Poetry and the Book of Ben Sira Itself Matthew Goff 13.1

Introduction1

Originally published in 1832, the second edition of Leopold Zunz’s Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, which appeared in 1892—thus before Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson brought Solomon Schechter that famous Hebrew fragment of Sir 39:15–40:8 (B ix; Or. 1102) in May 1896—suggests that Sir 50:5–8 is a source for a mussaf, or “additional” prayer, sung at Yom Kippur.2 The first anthology in English of Avodah piyyut, a type of poetry composed for recitation on Yom Kippur during the synagogue service, published in 2005, makes essentially the same claim. Writing about the same prayer discussed in Zunz, called Emet Mah Nehedar, the editors Michael Swartz and Joseph Yahalom write that it “has its origins in the apocryphal Book of Ben Sira … which served as perhaps the most influential model for the Avodah genre.”3 If this opinion is correct, the book of Ben Sira is a source for the production of piyyut—a term that derives from the Greek ποιητής and denotes a vast corpus of poetry written for use in the synagogue liturgy that flourished in Byzantine and early Islamic Palestine and shaped liturgical traditions that became standardized in Ashkenazi and Sephardic services.4 1 I thank all the participants of the conference “The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing: A Virginia Conference on the Book of Sirach and its Contexts” that convened in the summer of 2017 for their insights and conversation. Discussions with them enriched the quality of this essay. Unless otherwise stated, translations of Ben Sira are, often with some modification, from Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira. 2 Zunz, Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge, 109. Zunz reports a suggestion regarding the book of Ben Sira made by S. J. Rapoport in a Hebrew journal (‫ )בכורי ה תים‬in 1829. See also Cowley and Neubauer, The Original Hebrew, x. 3 Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 343 (see also pp. 17, 368). Another recent edition of Avodah piyyut is Yahalom, Az be-ʾEn Kol. 4 For scholarship on the piyyut tradition, see, for example, Lieber, Yannai on Genesis; van Bekkum, “The Hebrew Liturgical Poetry of Byzantine Palestine”; Mirsky, Ha-Piyut.

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In this essay, I address how the book of Ben Sira can be understood in relation to Jewish liturgical texts. Some of the parallels between this composition and later Jewish writings are indeed striking. The vast majority of the scholars who have weighed in on the topic regard the Hebrew of Ben Sira as older than the liturgical texts to which it is compared. The extant Hebrew texts of Ben Sira are in general understood as reflecting a composition from the second century BCE, or at least from antiquity, and thus earlier than any synagogal poetry. While the Ben Sira material from Masada, which is no later than the first century CE, demonstrates that some form of the composition was transmitted in Hebrew in antiquity, most of our Hebrew texts of Ben Sira are medieval documents from the Cairo Genizah.5 The B manuscript in particular, which dates to the twelfth century, is important for this issue. This manuscript is the only textual witness to the book of Ben Sira that includes the so-called “Hymn of Divine Names” (51:12a–o). While scholarship on this hymn, and on chapter 51 in general, has often focused on the issue of whether the historical Ben Sira composed this material or not, the inclusion of this hymn in a medieval manuscript offers a unique opportunity to assess how Ben Sira, both the sage and the book, was understood in later Judaism. My core argument is this: producers of piyyut were interested in reading and producing poetic depictions of worship from the days of the temple. They were also interested in Ben Sira, in no small part because the book that bears his name offers in chapter 50 an account of the High Priest offering blessings at the temple. This helps explain why the Hymn of Divine Names (51:12a–o) became attached secondarily to the book—it was easily understood, I suggest, as providing an impression of the kinds of blessings uttered by the High Priest Simon in Ben Sira 50. The production of this hymn may have been influenced by the Amidah, a major Jewish prayer, as I discuss below. Ben Sira, regarded in rabbinic Judaism as a sage from the days of the temple, was considered a legitimate source for accounts of worship at the temple.6 This should not only be taken into consideration when we assess the relationship between the book of Ben Sira and liturgical texts. It should also impact how we understand the book of Ben Sira itself in its Hebrew transmission. The book is not simply a text from the second century BCE that exerted influence on later Jewish liturgical poems. The book of Ben Sira that later poets would have turned to was itself shaped—as is evident in the B manuscript—by how Jews in later periods imagined worship at the temple before its destruction.

5 Lowe, “Ben Sira.” 6 For the figure of Ben Sira, see also the article in the present volume by Wright and Mroczek.

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The phenomenon of hymnic material being attached to the book of Ben Sira is more extensive than the Hymn of Divine Names. This is evident from the hymn of thanksgiving (51:1–12), the poem about loving wisdom (vv. 13–30), and also the colophon in the B manuscript, which includes unique material that matches text from the Masoretic psalter (89:53; 113:2), all coming after what is easily read as the “ending” of the book in 50:27, which gives the name of Ben Sira and summarizes the work as a whole.7 Since they are both attested in the Greek and Syriac, Sir 51:1–12 and 13–30 indicate that the phenomenon of hymns being attached to the end of the book of Ben Sira occurs early in its transmission. This process cannot be recovered fully but it clearly continues in rabbinic Judaism, a context in which the hymnic and poetic quality in the latter section of the book, as evident in 42:15–43:33 and the Praise of the Fathers (chs. 44– 50), in particular the hymnic praise found at the end of chapter 50 (vv. 18–24), is amplified. The Jewish reception of the book, particularly among payyetanim, can itself be reasonably considered a generative context that helped produce the hymnic material that became attached to the composition.8 The Hymn of Divine Names, as I hope to show, is the core example of this phenomenon. 13.2

Evaluating Ben Sira as a Source for Jewish Liturgical Poetry

Analysis of the book of Ben Sira as a source for Jewish liturgical poetry has often focused on Avodah piyyut. It is common for scholars to understand Ben Sira 50, with its elaborate account of the High Priest Simon leading worship, as recounting liturgy performed during Yom Kippur.9 Avodah poems, such as Azkir Gevurot Elohah (“Let me Recount the Wonders of God”), often start by extolling God’s creation of the world. They then typically recount critical events and figures in the history of Israel and end with an extensive portrayal of an unnamed high priest, describing his lavish clothing and his killing of a goat as part of the Yom Kippur ritual. Avodah poetry, a genre that was popular in Palestine during the fourth and fifth centuries CE, comprised a liturgical effort 7 I engage 51:1–12 and 13–30 in more depth in “The Temple Songs of Simon and Ben Sira.” 8 Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Deuxième partie),” 482. 9 Many but not all scholars understand Ben Sira 50 as reflecting rituals conducted at the temple during Yom Kippur. This liturgical background is not explicit but is suggested by the text’s emphasis on the High Priest uttering the divine name (v. 20). The parallels between Ben Sira 50 and Avodah piyyut marshalled in the present discussion indicate that at the very least this chapter was understood by later Jewish readers as expressing observance of Yom Kippur. See Mulder, Simon the High Priest, 168–75; Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 550–51; Ó Fearghail, “Sir 50,5–21.”

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to re-imagine worship from the days of the temple. As such the production of these poems can be understood as a way to cope with the destruction of the sanctuary, producing an imagined continuity with the past.10 An article by Cecil Roth from the 1950s, “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service,” has been and remains influential in terms of how scholars have understood the book of Ben Sira in relation to these Avodah texts.11 Roth rightly stresses that the mishnaic tractate Yoma was important in the development of this genre. The text identified as the earliest extant Avodah poem, Shivʿat Yamim (“Seven Days”), dated to perhaps the fourth or fifth century CE, poetically reworks this tractate for liturgical use.12 But, Roth reminds us, key elements of these Avodah poems cannot be explained by appeal to m. Yoma. Panegyric of the glorious attire of the high priest is found in Avodah poetry written by various authors at various times, such as Yose ben Yose in Palestine in the fifth century or Meshullam ben Kalonymus in Italy in the tenth century.13 Roth asserts that this trope has no analogue in m. Yoma but that it does have a strong parallel in Ben Sira 50, particularly vv. 5–10.14 He argues that these verses constitute a source used in the composition of all these disparate poems. All this poetry, written in Palestine, Italy, and elsewhere over several centuries, he posits, derives from a common prototype which he calls the “primitive ʿAbodah,” a base poem that consisted of the key parts of Yoma and the praise of the high priest in Ben Sira 50.15 He further observes that the core structure of Avodah poems, with their movement from creation to biblical history to the praise of the priest, is itself 10 11

12

13 14 15

Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 3. Roth, “Ecclesiasticus.” For scholars who turn to Roth to argue for the use of Ben Sira by payyetanim, see, e.g., Weinberger, Jewish Hymnography, 28; Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 17, 343; Swartz, The Signifying Creator, 51; Segal, The Complete Book of Ben Sira, 42; Labendz, “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature,” 353; Lehmann, “Yom Kippur,” 120; Mirsky, The Poetry of Yose ben Yose, 29–31; Kister, “On the Margins,” 126. Kister has also argued that 5Q13 would be a better candidate for an ancient prototype for Avodah poetry than Ben Sira. See his “5Q13 and the ‘Avodah,’” 145. Note also Zeidman, “The Order of the Seder Avodah”; van Bekkum, “Qumran Hymnology,” 353; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 217; Marx, “Ben Sira 42–50.” For the use of the book of Ben Sira in Jewish liturgy, see also Wieder, “Ben Sira and the Praises of Wine.” While the exact text of m. Yoma that should be understood as its source remains a critical problem, the relationship between the two texts is amply clear in the edition of the poem in Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 53–67 (see also p. 17). They put in boldface parts of the piyyut that does not accord with the tractate. Roth, “Ecclesiasticus,” 172. M. Yoma indeed includes no lengthy descriptions of the raiment of the High Priest. But the tractate does, however, recount his opulent clothing (3.4, 7; 7.3–5). Roth, “Ecclesiasticus,” 174.

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reminiscent of the final portion of the book of Ben Sira, chapters 42–50, a bloc that goes from a poetic recitation of the created order to a review of patriarchal history from Noah to Nehemiah, culminating in a description of the high priest.16 The framework of the Avodah genre for Roth should also be traced back to this “primitive ʿAbodah.” All this, he asserts, indicates that Yoma and Ben Sira are sources for Avodah poetry—the praise of figures from biblical history and the high priest derives from the book of Ben Sira and much of the rest is from Yoma. “The conclusion seems obvious,” says Roth.17 It is obvious that Roth, writing in the 1950s, has uncritically applied to Jewish liturgical texts the source criticism that was de rigueur in biblical studies at the time. Rather than J or P, hypothetical sources for the Torah, we now have real texts, tractate Yoma and Ben Sira, which are regarded as sources for a hypothetical text, Roth’s Avodah prototype. It does not seem necessary to posit such an Urtext at all. It seems more productive to understand the poets who produced this material as being aware of the Avodah genre of poetry, not in the sense of a formal, fixed literary Gattung, but rather as a general framework in which individual poets had a great deal of freedom.18 It is overly reductionist to explain the generic similarities found throughout these Avodah poems, produced over a range of centuries in diverse regions, by positing that their authors all utilized a single textual source. But while Roth’s methodology has not survived well over time, he emphasized parallels between Ben Sira and piyyut that are indeed intriguing. The first poem he examines, the title of which he does not provide, is called ‫אמת‬ ‫“( מה נהדר‬Truly How Splendid”). It is an anonymous mussaf hymn that has been attributed to followers of Yose ben Yose and is still sung in the Ashkenazi tradition.19 It does not have the movement from creation to biblical history to description of high priest that one finds in the longer Avodot. It is a short, acrostic poem. Each line after its opening begins with a noun that is in alphabetic sequence, prefaced by a kaph preposition. The lines praise the physical description of the high priest, who is unnamed. Each line ends with the phrase 16 17

18

19

Ibid., 176. Ibid., 177. Roth is aware that some material in Ben Sira 44–50 does not fit well with the model he lays out, particularly the fact that much of it does not emphasize priestly figures. So he suggests his Avodah prototype might have utilized an older form of Ben Sira that went directly from 45:22 to 50:5 (thus going straight from Aaron to Simon). Perhaps genre in this sense should be understood not in the way literary classifications have been traditionally approached in biblical studies, as a type of form criticism that delineates precise and rigid definitions of literary types, but rather in ways the concept of genre has been approached in the field of music. See Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries. For this poem, see Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 343–47.

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‫מראה כהן‬, “the appearance of the priest.” He is likened to several things, such

as a rose in a garden, an angel, and a shining lamp. Roth was not the first to compare this poem to Ben Sira 50. The example of Zunz with which I began focuses on this text.20 The description of Simon leading worship in the Hebrew of Sir 50:5, is extremely similar to the beginning of the mussaf hymn ‫מה נהדר בהשגיחו מאהל‬ (“How splendid he was gazing forth from the tent”).21 The opening of Emet Mah Nehedar, the basis of its modern title, reads: “Truly how splendid (‫אמת מה‬ ‫ )נהדר‬was the high priest when he emerged from the holy of holies safely, without harm!” In vv. 5–10 of Sir 50, the lines begin with nouns, prefaced by a kaph or vav–kaph, that provide poetical similes that describe Simon, not unlike the Avodah poem. Unlike Emet Mah Nehedar, however, there is no acrostic structure. In one instance the two poems use the same image. Ben Sira 50:7b compares Simon to “a rainbow appearing in the cloudy sky” (‫)כקשת נראתה ב נן‬. Emet Mah Nehedar likens the high priest to “the image of a rainbow inside a cloud” (‫)כדמות הקשת בתו ה נן‬. 13.3

Understanding the Relationship between Emet Mah Nehedar and Sir 50:5–10

Should we conclude, with Zunz and others, that whoever produced Emet Mah Nehedar used Ben Sira 50 as a source? One could dismiss the fact that both texts compare the high priest to a rainbow on the grounds that both compositions could have turned to Ezek 1:28, which compares God on his throne to a rainbow in a cloudy sky. But even then the parallels between the two texts are still striking and extensive. The longer Avodah poems establish that the 20

21

Roth, “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service,” 172, only cites “Davis and Adler, pp. 166– 7” and does not specify what book is being cited. The source is Davis and Adler, Day of Atonement. Roth does not mention in his article that his core point, that Ben Sira is a source for Emet Mah Nehedar, is explicitly mentioned in the Davis and Adler volume. This poem is described in the volume’s table of contents with regard to authorship as “Unknown, but based on Ecclesiasticus ch. L.” The Simon in question is normally regarded as Simon II, who was high priest from 219 to 196 BCE, with the understanding that he would have served in that capacity during the lifetime of Ben Sira. See, for example, Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 9, 550; Mulder, Simon the High Priest, 344–48. James C. VanderKam reviews the evidence at length and suggests that the high priest Ben Sira describes is rather Simon I, who served about a century earlier than Simon II. See his From Joshua to Caiaphas, 137–57 (esp. 153). This historical point of difference does not bear directly on the reception of the book of Ben Sira in later Judaism.

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producers of these texts were very interested in the temple and the spectacle of the high priest in worship. In the context of Palestine in the Byzantine and early Islamic periods, when the composition of piyyut was occurring, there were extensive efforts to memorialize the temple. This is evident, for example, with the temple imagery on the walls of late antique synagogues.22 Piyyut, as poems that evoke the temple when sung in synagogues, offered an auditory complement to these visual images. Some piyyut were composed to honor the mishmarot, the courses that determined the divisions of temple duties to priestly families throughout the year. They were written to be sung during Shabbat in synagogues in Galilee, an area where descendants of these priestly families resided and were respected as custodians of temple traditions.23 Many payyetanim from this period are named Kohen, such as Shimeon ha-Kohen bar Megas (6th–7th centuries) or Pineḥas ha-Kohen be-Rabbi Yaʿakov of Kifra (near Tiberias; 8th century). Some of these poets in Byzantine and early Islamic Galilee were revered for being of priestly descent. Poets with such a priestly cachet would have taken a strong interest in Ben Sira 50, which we know was in circulation at the time in Hebrew.24 In the cultural world of late antique and medieval Judaism, Ben Sira was understood as a sage from biblical times.25 This is evident from the Alphabet of Ben Sira, which offers the most extensive portrait of the sage in rabbinic literature.26 This composition places him not in Maccabean or Hasmonean times but rather in the court of the King Nebuchadnezzar, a classic period of the Hebrew Bible. Any author of piyyut who would have read Ben Sira 50, while clearly aware it was not from a canonical book, would likely have understood it as an extensive depiction of the high priest at worship produced by someone who lived during the days of the temple. There is ample evidence that payyetanim were interested in writings attributed to Ben Sira. The Cairo Genizah has not only brought to light Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira. To date, several fragments from the Genizah have been published that are poetic reformulations of Ben Sira texts. Four of them are available in Ezra Fleischer’s 1990 book, The Proverbs of Saʿid ben Bābshād, 22 23 24

25 26

See, for example, Branham, “Mapping Sacrifice.” Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 14–15. Genesis Rabbah, a compilation of Palestinian midrashim that is generally dated to the 4th century CE, shows familiarity with some form of the book of Ben Sira (e.g., 10.6). See Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 304; Labendz, “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature,” 353. This is explored in further detail in Goff, “Ben Sira.” It has been dated between the 8th and 10th centuries, written in the Islamic world. See Yassif, Tales of Ben Sira, 20–27; Börner-Klein, Das Alphabet des Ben Sira, xiv–xvi.

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247

an edition of a compendium of proverbs produced by this late tenth-century Hebrew poet that became available thanks to the Genizah.27 These four texts are included in Fleischer’s volume as an appendix. The most well-known of them is perhaps MS Adler 3053, first published by Ralph Marcus in 1931, which contains a form of Sir 22:22–23:9 (a pericope otherwise not attested in Hebrew).28 It is reformulated so that the Hebrew rhymes. This is also the case regarding the three other poems in this appendix, T–S NS 108.43, 93.80, and 93.79, which correspond, respectively, to material in chapters 34–37, 39–40, and 42 of Ben Sira.29 A fragment that had been stored in Frankfurt as part of the Freimann Collection of Genizah fragments, an assemblage that was destroyed in World War II, has also been associated with these medieval paraphrases of Ben Sira (“Frankfurt 177”).30 It is the fifth text in the second appendix to Fleischer’s 1990 book.31 He also published in 1997 a Genizah fragment in the possession of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (HUC 1301), which is a rhymed paraphrase of material in Ben Sira 51 (more on this below).32 Böhmisch suggests that there are additional Ben Sira paraphrase texts among the Cairo Genizah fragments (e.g., T–S NS 193.99), and still more may be brought to light.33 These texts establish that some producers of liturgical poetry knew and were interested in the book of Ben Sira. They were also focused on the high priest and his role in 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

Fleischer, Proverbs, 264–79. See also Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems, 429. Marcus, “A Fifth Manuscript,” 238–40. A small portion of material from this pericope (Sir 22:22) is now available in MS C. Consult also the Hebrew website ‫( מאגרים‬http:// maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il/Pages/PMain.aspx; see also http://tinyurl.com/SBL 060467e); Böhmisch, “Die Vorlage,” 217; Elizur, “A New Hebrew Fragment,” 28. Fleischer, Proverbs, 267–79. The first of these texts (#2 in Fleischer’s appendix) was previously published in Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems, 438–39, and the other two (#3–4 in Fleischer’s appendix) in Fleischer, “A New Study,” 49–52. Frankfurt 177 was discovered by M. Zulay at the Schocken Institute in Jerusalem, which preserves a microfilm replica of this lost Genizah fragment. See Fleischer, Proverbs, 43; Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems, 436–37; Böhmisch, “Die Vorlage,” 217. Fleischer, Proverbs, 279–82. Fleischer, “Additional Fragments.” See the chart listing the relevant Genizah fragments in Böhmisch, “Die Vorlage,” 218–19. He is currently preparing an edition of the relevant fragments (p. 224). Böhmisch follows the view of Fleischer (e.g., “Additional Fragments,” 205), that the fragments at issue attest a single composition, a rhymed paraphrase of the book of Ben Sira, which he dates to the early thirteenth century. Further research will be welcome to corroborate whether we are dealing with a single work that survives in disparate fragments or rather evidence from several Ben Sira-related compositions. Veltri, “Mittelalterliche Nachahmung” (e.g., pp. 427, 430), compares the Genizah fragments that paraphrase Ben Sira to the so-called Cairo Genizah Wisdom Text. This strikes me as a fruitful direction for future research. For more on this sapiential text, see Rüger, Die Weisheitsschrift. Consult also Veltri, Libraries, 219.

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worship at the temple. So it is not impossible that Emet Mah Nehedar, with its account of temple worship and strong parallels to Ben Sira, was created by a Hebrew payyetan who was somehow inspired by Ben Sira 50.34 13.4

The Hymn of Divine Names and the Amidah

Another major issue with regard to Ben Sira and Jewish liturgy involves the socalled Hymn of Divine Names, the versification of which, rather awkwardly, is Sir 51:12a–o.35 This classification cumbersomely expresses that the hymn does not fit well with normative conceptions of the book. As previously mentioned, this fifteen line poem only appears in the B text from the Cairo Genizah, between the verses we call 51:12 and 51:13. Much of the scholarly debate on the poem has focused on the question of its authenticity, in the sense of whether it was written by the historical Ben Sira or not, or if the work at least represents a composition produced in antiquity.36 Ben Sira 51:12i is often utilized to argue for the poem’s antiquity: “Give thanks to him who has chosen the sons of Zadok as his priests.” It is not uncommon to assert that such a statement could have only been composed when the Zadokites were high priests, that is, before 152 BCE, when Jonathan Maccabee, according to 1 Maccabees 10, assumed that office.37 As I explain below, I do not consider this argument persuasive. The Hymn of Divine Names is presented as a distinct unit in the B manuscript, marked in the margins at its beginning with a pe, presumably an abbreviation for either ‫ תוחה‬or ‫ יסקא‬, signifying this as a new textual unit (B 20v.12); at its end, before 51:13, this sense is likewise conveyed with a blank

34

35 36

37

It is also possible that the parallels between these two texts are due to the fact that both in the piyyut tradition and the book of Ben Sira one finds cadences and literary tropes that circulated in Second Temple hymnody—a “source” in the most general sense of the term. This would explain why Avodah piyyut and Ben Sira 42–50 have the poetic sequence of creation to biblical history to high priest in common. Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o” (parts one and two); Mroczek, The Literary Imagination, 109–10. Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 569, for example, consider it to be a preHasmonean poem that was not authored by Ben Sira. Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras, 117, offers a similar opinion. Mulder, “Three Psalms,” 171, oddly considers the B text to contain the “most authentic version” of Ben Sira 51. Smend, Die Weisheit, 502, argued for the poem’s authenticity in part on the grounds that the poem forms a “notwendigen Schluss” to the hymn in Sir 51:1–12. For more on the history of scholarship on the authenticity of the Hymn of Divine Names, see Di Lella, The Hebrew Text of Sirach, 101–2. E.g., Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 569; Smend, Die Weisheit, 502.

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line.38 The form of 51:12a–o is directly structured along the lines of Psalm 136. Each line opens with an imperative, in the plural, to “give thanks” (‫ )הודו‬to God, just as the psalm does. The second stich of each line begins ‫כי ל ולם חסדו‬ (“for his mercy endures forever”). This is also the second stich of each line in Psalm 136. Moreover, the Hymn of Divine Names has clear verbatim correspondences with the Masoretic versions of other psalms. The expression that begins the hymn, ‫“( הודו לייי כי וב‬Give thanks to the Lord for he is good”), is not only how Psalm 136 begins; Psalms 106, 107, and 118 start with this language as well.39 The long last line of the hymn, 51:12o, accords word for word with the final verse of Psalm 148 (v. 14) in its Masoretic form: “He has raised up a horn for his people. There is praise for all his pious, for the children of Israel, a people close to him. Praise the Lord!” There are extensive engagements with scriptural verses throughout the book of Ben Sira but they are often not direct verbatim matches with the Masoretic text (MT).40 This suggests that the hymn originated, or at least was thoroughly reworked, after the MT had become the standard text of the Hebrew Bible, long after the time when the historical Ben Sira lived. While the structure of the Hymn of Divine Names is based on Psalm 136, the two texts are markedly different in terms of the sequence of divine names that are praised. As scholars have observed, the epithets in the Ben Sira hymn resonate powerfully with the divine names used in the Shemoneh Esreh, the Eighteen Benedictions.41 This prayer, also called the Amidah since one traditionally stands when reciting it, has long been and remains an important Jewish prayer. It praises God directly, addressed in the second person, and offers him petitions, often framed in the first person plural, to help Israel, asking, for example, for knowledge, redemption, and healing. Its opening benediction (Avot) concludes by referring to God as the “Shield of Abraham,” an epithet also found in Sir 51:12j. The expression is drawn from Gen 15:1. The ending of the seventh benediction calls the Deity the “Redeemer of Israel”; Sir 51:12e does as well. This phrase is from Isa 49:24. At the end of the tenth benediction (Qibbutz Galuyot; the Ingathering of the Exiles) one finds: 38 39 40 41

Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Deuxième partie),” 493; Mulder, “Three Psalms,” 183. Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Deuxième partie),” 486. Wright, “Biblical Interpretation.” These parallels were first extensively discussed by Israel Lévi in 1901. See his L’Ecclésiastique, 2.xlvii–l. Note also Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Première partie),” 361–65; Mopsik, La Sagesse, 326–29; Tabory, “The Precursors of the ʿAmidah,” 123–24; Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras, 117; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 38–53; Marmorstein, “Jesus Sirach 5112ff.” Translations of the Amidah are, with some modification, from Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, 2.455–59. Also consult this source for an overview of the historical development of this prayer.

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“Blessed are you, Lord, who gathers the dispersed of his people Israel ( ‫מקב‬ ‫)נדחי מו ישראל‬.” There is a very similar refrain in Sir 51:12f: “Give thanks to the one who gathers the dispersed of Israel (‫)מקב נדחי ישראל‬.” The fourteenth benediction (Binyan Yerushalayim; the [Re-]Building of Jerusalem) concludes by exclaiming: “blessed are you, Lord, who (re-)builds Jerusalem.” Ben Sira 51:12g analogously asserts: “Give thanks to the one who builds his city and his sanctuary” (cf. 36:13–14; 2 Macc 1:27). The fifteenth benediction (Malkut bet David) calls for the “shoot of David” to rise up and offer salvation to Israel. At its conclusion it reads: “Blessed are you, Lord, who brings forth the horn of salvation.” Ben Sira 51:12h has a very similar phrase: “Give thanks to the one who makes the horn of salvation come forth for the house of David.” One should also note the final epithet for God in the Ben Sira hymn, which employs a type of double superlative to praise him as “the king of the kings of kings” (‫מל מלכי‬ ‫)מלכים‬. This expression is not attested in the Hebrew Bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is, however, found in the Mishnah and later liturgical prayers, such as a mussaf hymn for Rosh Hashanah.42 It is reasonable to conclude that the Hymn of Divine Names, at least in the form we have it in the B text, is late—at a minimum post-Mishnaic. Many scholars who have examined this issue have concluded that the Hymn of Divine Names should be understood as a source for the Amidah.43 Underlying this perspective is the view that the hymn is a product of the historical Ben Sira or at least a text from antiquity. But as I have already suggested, it is by no means clear that this hymn should be identified as part of any Hebrew form of the book that circulated in antiquity. Moreover, the Amidah is itself a very old poem, although it is not clear that a specific historical moment of provenance can or should be established for it. For traditional source criticism one must posit not only a source but also a precise historical context when a given source was used by the later text. B. Berakhot 28b states that Simon Ha-Pakuli arranged the Amidah for Rabbi Gamaliel.44 Ezra Fleischer argued that this Simon helped institute an 42 43

44

Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Première partie),” 366. For this phrase in the Mishnah, see, e.g., Sanh. 4.5; Avot 3.1; 4.22. See, e.g., Instone-Brewer, “The Eighteen Benedictions,” 26; Segal, The Complete Book of Ben Sira, 42, 356; Schechter and Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 66 (of the Introduction). Note also the scholarly opinion, which constitutes an effort to defend the antiquity of the poem, that it is not in the Greek translation because the translator, while he had access to some form of it, decided not to include it. Consult, e.g., Mulder, “Three Psalms,” 187; Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras, 117–18; Marmorstein, “Jesus Sira 5112ff.,” 292. “Our Rabbis taught: Simeon Ha-Paquli arranged the eighteen benedictions in order (‫ )שמ ון ה קולי הסדיר שמונה שרה‬before Rabban Gamaliel in Yavneh” (Soncino).

The Act of Reading Ben Sira as a Generative Context

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authoritative form of the hymn in the first century CE at Yavneh.45 Part of his argument is that Simon utilized, among other texts, the Hymn of Divine Names, understood as part of the book of Ben Sira which Simon would have had access to.46 Fleischer sought to counter the assessment of the Amidah put forward by scholars such as Joseph Heinemann that one should not posit a specific date of composition for the Amidah or other Jewish prayers that became part of the synagogue service.47 For Heinemann the first stage of such hymns is one of diversity, with the prayer understood as a spontaneous, free-form product of the people whose liturgical utterances were guided by traditions but not fixed, authoritative forms. Over time they crystallized and took on a more, but not fully, uniform textual character.48 He argues that various forms of the Amidah were in circulation by the first century BCE and what became the standard form was only one of them.49 In this view, the formation of the Amidah does not need a literary source, from Ben Sira or otherwise, because there was no pivotal moment of authorship when a particular person would have composed the hymn and utilized such a source. Thus he dismisses the value of the Hymn of Divine Names as a source for the Amidah even though, like the scholars who do imagine this hymn as a source for the Amidah, he understands the poem as pre-Hasmonean. If the Hymn of Divine Names is not helpful for our understanding of the origins of the Amidah, perhaps the Amidah can help us understand the development of this hymn and how it became attached to the end of the B manuscript. We cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that the hymn, while not necessarily from the pen of Ben Sira, circulated in some form in antiquity. We know that this is the case regarding the poem that follows it, 51:13–30, thanks to the Qumran Psalm Scroll (11Q5). But the fact that the Hymn of Divine Names is in none of the non-Hebrew witnesses to the book of Ben Sira, unlike 51:13–30, problematizes this possibility and should encourage us to ask how and why the hymn became attached to the book in its later Hebrew transmission. The Hymn of Divine Names is plausibly interpreted, in the late antique (or at least post-Mishnaic) context in which it was produced, as providing an 45

46 47 48 49

Fleischer, “On the Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer”; Langer, “Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy,” 183–84. A traditional view is that at least some of the Amidah is very old and, improbably, may date to as early as the fourth century BCE. See, for example, Bokser, The Prayer Book, 51. Note also Bickerman, “The Civic Prayer for Jerusalem,” 1.584. Fleischer, “On the Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer,” 433–34; Tabory, “The Precursors of the ʿAmidah,” 124. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 43–51, 70–76, 288–91. Langer, “Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy,” 180. See also eadem, Jewish Liturgy. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 221–24.

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impression of what the high priest would have sung in the account of public worship in Ben Sira 50. At issue here is how worship during the days of the temple was conceptualized in later Judaism. Ben Sira 50:18–19 describes hymns resounding throughout the temple precinct in a public context: “The sound of song would break out. They would extend praise over the throng. All the people of the land would shout for joy in prayer before the Merciful One.”50 Then Simon offers a blessing. After offering the sacrifice, “the blessing of the Lord would be upon his lips, the name of the Lord would be his glory” (v. 20; cf. m. Yom. 6.2). Following this is an exhortation, in the plural, to bless God (v. 22). The placement of the Hymn of Divine Names following this can be considered a sort of interpretation of the end of Ben Sira 50. This hymn can be understood as from the mouth of Simon, filling out what sort of “blessing of the Lord” is upon his lips.51 The hymn’s repetition of various names of God fits well with the stress in Sir 50:20 of Simon uttering the divine name. Its plural imperatives that call for praise, as in v. 22, also cohere well with this context. The account of Simon praying in chapter 50, with the priest uttering blessings without describing what he said, can be understood as a generative context that helped produce hymnic material that became attached to the book. Also, important terms in the hymn such as ‫“( קרן‬horn”) or ‫“( מקדש‬sanctuary”) are prominent in the Praise of the Fathers, as Mies points out.52 Reading the book of Ben Sira was likely a creative act that was important in the composition of this hymn.53 The issue cannot be discussed comprehensively here, but it is also possible that the hymn of thanksgiving in 51:1–12, with its inclusio of the name of God (vv. 1, 11) uttered by a first-person speaker was also understood in the Jewish reception of the book as a type of blessing Simon would have uttered at the temple.54 That the blessing in chapter 50 goes on to praise Simon himself (in the Hebrew, not the Greek; 50:24) suggests Ben Sira can be implicitly understood 50

51 52 53 54

This follows the Hebrew. It is explicit in the Greek that the hymns are uttered by singers (οἱ ψαλτῳδοὶ) and thus are not sung only by the high priest. This is likely implicit in the Hebrew. Note the plural verb ‫ ה ריכו‬in v. 18b. The above translation emends ‫ נרו‬to ‫רנה‬ (“praise”), as is standard (note the use of the verb ‫ רנן‬in v. 19a). See Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 549. Mulder, Simon the High Priest, 202–3, understands Ben Sira speaking here. So too Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 534. Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Deuxième partie),” 482–92. ‫קרן‬, e.g., is in Sir 51:12h and o, and 47:5, 7, 11; and 49:5; ‫ מקדש‬appears in 51:12g and 45:24; 47:10; 47:13; and 50:11. It should be pointed out, however, that many of the terms that are in the Hymn of Divine Names and elsewhere in Ben Sira are quite common, such as ‫ מל‬or ‫( בית‬see Mies, ibid., 484–85). For a recent study of this text, see Urbanz, “Sir 51,1–12.”

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as the authorial voice of this blessing as well. This is suggested by the colophonlike statement in v. 27 that mentions the name of Ben Sira, which comes between the account of Simon in ch. 50 and the hymn in ch. 51. The Tendenz for hymnic material to become attached to the end of the book, understood as uttered by Simon in the temple, may help explain why v. 27, only in the Hebrew (in this verse and 51:30), appends the name Simon to the name of Ben Sira. It suggests some conflation of the voices of Ben Sira and the High Priest Simon, a basic point Smend discerned over a century ago.55 The Hebrew text makes no effort to explain who composed the hymn. But it can be understood as uttered by Simon at the temple, a move that is legitimated by its association with the name of Ben Sira, since he was understood to be a sage from biblical times and thus an authentic transmitter of hymns sung in the distant past, when the temple still stood. The Amidah plays a role in rabbinic conceptualizations of worship of Yom Kippur at the temple. According to the mishnaic tractate Yoma the high priest, after he sacrifices the goat, would read from Leviticus 16 and 23, and Numbers 29. He then would utter eight blessings: “Thereupon he pronounced eight benedictions (‫)ברכות‬: for the Law, for the Temple-Service (‫) בודה‬, for the Thanksgiving (‫)ההודיה‬, for the Forgiveness of Sin, and for the Temple separately, and for the Israelites separately, and for the priests separately; and for the rest a general prayer” (7.1). Three of these correspond to three of the eighteen benedictions of the Amidah, in its standardized form.56 It is reasonable to think that the rabbinic imaginary includes depictions of the celebration of Yom Kippur during the days of the temple which involve the high priest reciting some form of the Amidah.57 This realization offers a context to think about the Hymn of Divine Names vis-à-vis the Amidah. I think it is fully possible, as Israel Lévi suggested in 1901, that the Hymn of Divine Names was influenced at least in its present form by the Amidah.58 In post-mishnaic Judaism this prayer was widespread, even if 55 56

57 58

Smend, Die Weisheit, xiv–xv. The second benediction is called ‫[( בודה‬Temple] Service); this is also the name of the seventeenth benediction of the Amidah. The third is Thanksgiving (‫ ;)ההודיה‬this is what the eighteenth benediction of the Amidah is called (‫)הודאה‬. The sixth benediction of m. Yom. 7.1 is the Forgiveness of Sin; this is the topic of the sixth benediction of the Amidah. See Danby, The Mishnah, 170. Translations of the Mishnah are from this source. See also Krupp, Kübler, and Ueberschaer, Joma. In many instances rabbinic accounts of priests reflect an effort to emphasize the importance of rabbis over against the priests. For this general issue, see Schäfer, “Rabbis and Priests.” Lévi, L’Ecclésiastique, 2.xlvii–lv. On the basis of Sir 51:12i (the Zadok verse, discussed above) he argued that at least part of the hymn must be ancient. So in its present form,

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its form was not fully fixed. Producers of liturgical poetry would have been very familiar with it. The material in Sir 51:12e–h which, as reviewed above, corresponds to the seventh, tenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth benedictions of the Amidah, respectively, contains a clear theological development that moves from redemption, the in-gathering of the exiles, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and then the establishment of the kingdom of David. At the end of the hymn the praise of God associated with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is framed by vv. 12i and 12m, highlighting the assertion that God has chosen Zion. The Ben Sira hymn can be understood as an effort to reproduce themes of the Amidah in a new poetic form, in a structure drawn from Psalm 136. The employment of epithets for God that incorporates scriptural language, such as Shield of Abraham, can be reasonably interpreted as a poetically creative expansion of the beginning of the Amidah. Its opening extols God with similar but less lavish language than the Hymn of Divine Names—as the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. If we think of the hymn as echoing the Amidah, and acknowledge that in rabbinic conceptualizations of the worship of Yom Kippur during the days of the temple the high priest utters blessings that resemble the Amidah, we can discern that this creates a context in which Sir 51:12a–o could have been attached to the end of the book of Ben Sira. This is a much later context for expansion of the text of Ben Sira then we would normally consider in our field. Such a late date, however, fits with our manuscript evidence for the hymn (the twelfth century B text). It would also explain why the hymn is not in any nonHebrew witnesses to Ben Sira. If the Hymn of Divine Names was added so late, who could have written it? While definitive answers cannot be reached, it is reasonable to understand this hymn as a type of piyyut—or that in this context an older form of the poem was heavily reworked by producers of piyyut. This type of poetry is characterized by a highly creative biblical intertextuality, and this is also what one finds in the hymn. As discussed above, payyetanim were very interested in poetic depictions of worship at the temple, and a strong interest in the book of Ben Sira is attested among our manuscript evidence for piyyut. The assertion in Sir 51:12i that God has chosen the sons of Zadok fully fits the priestly ethos of the payyetanim; it is not a priori evidence for a pre-Hasmonean dating for this he asserted, it is a later revision of an older hymn. Bickerman, “The Civic Prayer for Jerusalem,” 1.581, also suggested that this hymn in Ben Sira was influenced by the Amidah. Zeitlin, “The Tefillah,” 243, with characteristic verve, lamented that those who assert that the Shemoneh Esreh alludes to the Hymn of Divine Names “are laboring under a delusion” and that this hymn should instead be considered a medieval text that alludes to the Amidah. See also Mies, “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o (Première partie),” 363.

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hymn. Also, one Genizah fragment (HUC 1301) preserves a piyyut that appears to adapt material from both Ben Sira 51 and Psalm 136, a key text, as discussed above, for Sir 51:12a–o, reflecting poetic interest in reformulating material from the hymnic ending of the composition.59 It should also be noted that the Cairo Genizah has not only uncovered manuscripts of Ben Sira, and fragments in which the text is poetically reworked, but also a much more extensive trove of Jewish liturgical poetry. The Genizah has revealed that the synagogal tradition of piyyut was important in medieval Judaism to a degree that is not fully reflected in the normative documents of rabbinic Judaism, namely, the Talmud, Mishnah, and midrashim.60 Some rabbis, such as Pirqoi ben Baboi, an eighth- to ninth-century Babylonian rabbi, whose writing is included among the discoveries from the Cairo Genizah, argued stridently against having piyyut as part of the synagogue service.61 This implies many synagogues did include such poems in their worship. The understanding of the development of the Hymn of Divine Names I am delineating in this article thus corresponds well with the literary context of the B manuscript

59

60 61

See the discussion earlier in this article about HUC 1301 (the text of which is available in Fleischer, “Additional Fragments,” 213–17) and other rhymed paraphrases of Ben Sira texts. Line 10 of HUC 1301 corresponds to Sir 51:11b (the former reads [‫;וא כרהו בת] לה‬ the latter reads ‫“[ וא כר בת לה‬I shall recall him/you in prayer”]); line 12 of HUC 1301 (‫ …“[ דאני ומכל צרותי חלצני‬he has redeemed me; from all my enemies he has rescued me”]) echoes Sir 51:12a ( ‫“[ וי דני מכל ר‬He has redeemed me from all evil”]). In the HUC text, lines 22–32 (except for l. 31) begin with ‫“( אודה‬I give thanks”), a repetition that resonates with Psalm 136, which has a refrain of the same root (‫)הודו‬. Some of these ‫אודה‬ lines in HUC 1301 have other links with this psalm. For example, in lines 24 and 25 God is praised, respectively, with the epithets ‫ אלהי האלהים‬and ‫“( אדוני האדונים‬God of Gods”; “Lord of Lords”). These epithets are found, in the same order, in Ps 136:2, 3. Line 23a of HUC 1301 asserts, “I give thanks to him with all praises (‫)התושבחות‬.” This term is not in the Hebrew Bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it is part of a divine epithet in the Psalm 136-inflected Hymn of the Divine Names: “Give thanks to the God of (our) praises” (‫ ;הודו לאל התשבחות‬Sir 51:12b). It would seem that the payyetan wrote the text in HUC 1301 with Psalm 136 and parts of Ben Sira 51 in mind, not only Sir 51:12a–o. This would suggest further that the composition of this poem was shaped by a form of Ben Sira 51 that includes the Hymn of Divine Names. The piyyut in HUC 1301 indicates interest among liturgical poets in Ben Sira but it is reasonable to think of this poem’s production as taking place after the key issue being sketched out in this article—the addition of the Hymn of Divine Names to the book of Ben Sira. Fleischer, “Additional Fragments,” 212, dates HUC 1301 to the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century. See also Di Lella and Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 570. Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 2. Hoffman, The Canonization of the Synagogue Service, 66–71; Schmelzer, “The Contribution of the Genizah.”

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in which it is found, the Cairo Genizah, since the piyyut tradition is prominent in this corpus. The Hymn of Divine Names is reasonably understood as a poetic creation that emerged out of the piyyut tradition that was inspired by the Amidah. It likely became attached to the end of the book of Ben Sira because this hymn was thought to give expression to the account of the High Priest Simon uttering blessings in Ben Sira 50. While it is not clear that one should try to find a specific moment of provenance for this poem or its connection to Ben Sira, both the sage and the book, we can plausibly locate the production of this hymn and its attachment to the book to the period when piyyut flourished, namely late antique Byzantine Palestine. 13.5

Conclusion

If one is to understand the Hymn of Divine Names in the manner I have suggested, what does this tell us about the status of Ben Sira, the figure and the book, in rabbinic Judaism? We know from the Genizah manuscripts, in particular the C text, which anthologizes Ben Sira, that the book had a relatively fluid textual status.62 The idea that a hymn could have been added to the end of the book is fully consistent with this conception of the textuality of the book of Ben Sira. The Hymn of Divine Names likely became attached to the book because it was considered to have been uttered by the High Priest Simon, not simply because it was a composition thought to have been produced by Ben Sira. But the name Ben Sira, as we know, occurs at the end of chapter 50, between the depiction of the worship of Simon and the hymns in chapter 51. The book of Ben Sira never praises the sage as a writer of songs, as the Qumran Psalms Scroll does with David or Solomon in 1 Kings. While some rabbinic texts present Ben Sira as a sort of rabbi, as an authoritative voice interpreting Torah (e.g., Gen. Rab. 73.12), I am not aware of any Jewish text that praises Ben Sira as a hymnographer. The key issue, I think, for explaining the hymnic expansions to the book is not the legendary status of Ben Sira as a writer of hymns, but rather the widely held view that he was a sage from the days of the temple. The association of his name with the book helped legitimate the view that his composition provides an authentic impression of worship conducted at the temple before its destruction. Important for this trope is that the book ends with a lengthy account of Simon conducting worship 62

Mroczek, The Literary Imagination, 106–10. See also the essay by Ueberschaer in the present volume.

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at the temple. These factors helped create a context in which hymnic writing became attached to the end of the book in its Jewish reception—a phenomenon that flourished in rabbinic Judaism, as is evident from the Hymn of Divine Names and the excerpts from lines from the Psalms in the colophon of the B text (51:30). The book of Ben Sira may have been a source for Jewish liturgical texts, such as Emet Mah Nehedar. But we should not understand the book as simply an ancient text that influenced later writings. One should envision a more dynamic, reciprocal relationship between ancient texts and their later readers. It is later readers of ancient texts who are transmitting them. The reception of the book was affected by the view that the sage Ben Sira provided authentic accounts of worship from the days of the temple.63 This changed the nature of the book of Ben Sira itself, making its ending more hymnic, in its Jewish transmission, and increasing the value of the book for payyetanim. Bibliography Bekkum, Wout J. van. “The Hebrew Liturgical Poetry of Byzantine Palestine: Recent Research and New Perspectives.” Prooftexts 28 (2008): 232–46. Bekkum, Wout J. van. “Qumran Hymnology and ‘Piyyūṭ.’” RevQ 23 (2008): 341–56. Bickerman, Elias J. “The Civic Prayer for Jerusalem.” Pages 563–84 in vol. 1 of idem, Studies in Jewish and Christian History. 2 vols. Ed. Amram Tropper. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Bokser, Ben Zion, translator and arranger. The Prayer Book: Weekday, Sabbath and Festival. Springfield Township: Behrman House Publishers, Inc., 1983. Böhmisch, Franz. “Die Vorlage der syrischen Sirachübersetzung und die gereimte hebräische Paraphrase zu Ben Sira aus der Ben-Ezra-Geniza.” Pages 199–237 in Karner, Ueberschaer, and Zapff, Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach. Börner-Klein, Dagmar. Das Alphabet des Ben Sira: Hebräisch-deutsche Textausgabe mit einer Interpretation. Wiesbaden: Marix Verlag, 2007. Branham, Joan R. “Mapping Sacrifice on Bodies and Spaces in Late-Antique Judaism and Early Christianity.” Pages 201–30 in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium. Ed. Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Cowley, A. E., and A. Neubauer. The Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus (XXXIX. 15 to XLIX. 11). Oxford: Clarendon, 1897. Danby, Herbert. The Mishnah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933.

63

Newman, Liturgical Imagination.

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Davis, Arthur, and Herbert Adler, eds. Day of Atonement. Part II, Containing the Morning, Additional, Afternoon and Concluding Services. Vol. 3 of Service of the Synagogue: A New Edition of the Festival Prayers with an English Translation in Prose and Verse. London/New York: George Routledge and Sons/H. D. Buegeleisen, 1905. Di Lella, Alexander A. The Hebrew Text of Sirach: A Text-Critical and Historical Study. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966. Di Lella, Alexander A., and Patrick Skehan. The Wisdom of Ben Sira. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Elbogen, Ismar. Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History. Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993 (orig. pub., 1913). Elizur, Shulamit. “A New Hebrew Fragment of Ben Sira.” Tarbiz 76 (2008): 17–28 (Hebrew). Fleischer, Ezra. “Additional Fragments of the ‘Rhymed Ben Sira.’” Pages 205*–17* in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997 (Hebrew). Fleischer, Ezra. “A New Study of Early Hebrew Proverbial Literature.” Biqqoret uParshanut 11 (1978): 19–54 (Hebrew). Fleischer, Ezra. “On the Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer.” Tarbiz 59 (1990): 397– 441 (Hebrew). Fleischer, Ezra. The Proverbs of Saʿid Ben Bābshād. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1990 (Hebrew). Goff, Matthew. “Ben Sira—Biblical Sage, Rabbi, and Payyetan: The Figure and Text of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Judaism.” Pages 183–99 in Discovering, Deciphering and Dissenting: Ben Sira Manuscripts after 120 Years. Ed. James K. Aitken, Renate EggerWenzel, and Stefan C. Reif. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Goff, Matthew. “Temple Songs of Simon and Ben Sira: The Accumulation of Hymnic Material to the End of the Book of Ben Sira.” BN 180 (2019): 31–54. Heinemann, Joseph. Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977. Hoffman, Lawrence A. The Canonization of the Synagogue Service. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. Instone-Brewer, David. “The Eighteen Benedictions and the Minim before 70 CE.” JTS (n.s.) 54 (2003): 25–44. Kallberg, Jeffrey. Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998. Karner, Gerhard, Frank Ueberschaer, and Burkard M. Zapff, eds. Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach/Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuches. SCS 66. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017.

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Kister, Menahem. “5Q13 and the ‘Avodah’: A Historical Survey and Its Significance.” DSD 8 (2001): 136–48. Kister, Menahem. “On the Margins of Ben Sira.” Leshonenu 47 (1983): 125–46 (Hebrew). Krupp, Michael, Ralf Kübler, and Frank Ueberschaer. Die Mischna: Textkritische Ausgabe mit deutscher Übersetzung und Kommentar. Joma. Jerusalem: Lee Achim Sefarim, 2003. Labendz, Jenny R. “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature.” AJSR 30 (2006): 347–92. Langer, Ruth. Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Langer, Ruth. “Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy: The Recent Contributions of Ezra Fleischer.” Prooftexts 19 (1999): 179–94. Lehmann, Manfred R. “‘Yom Kippur’ in Qumran. RevQ 3 (1961): 117–24. Lévi, Israel. L’Ecclésiastique ou la Sagesse de Jésus, fils de Sira. 2 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1898–1901. Lieber, Laura S. Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2010. Lowe, Alan D. “Ben Sira: Some Notes on Examining the Geniza MSS.” Pages 34–39 in Études Hébraiques: Acts du XXIXe Congrès international des Orientalistes. Ed. Georges Vajda. Paris: L’Asiathèque, 1975. Marcus, Joseph. “A Fifth Manuscript of Ben Sira.” JQR (n.s.) 21 (1931): 223–40. Marmorstein, A. “Jesus Sira 5112ff.” ZAW 29 (1909): 287–93. Marx, Dalia. “Ben Sira 42–50: An Antecedent of the Seder ʿAvodah Poems? Pages 363– 84 in Cosmos and Creation: Second Temple Perspectives. DCLY 2019. Ed. Michael Duggan, Renate Egger-Wenzel, and Stefan C. Reif. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. Middendorp, Theophilus. Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Mies, Françoise. “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o. L’Hymne aux Noms divins (Première partie).” RB 116 (2009): 336–67. Mies, Françoise. “Le Psaume de Ben Sira 51,12a–o. L’Hymne aux Noms divins (Deuxième partie).” RB 116 (2009): 481–504. Mirsky, Aharon. Ha-Piyut: The Development of Post-Biblical Poetry in Eretz Israel and the Diaspora. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1990 (Hebrew). Mirsky, Aharon. The Poetry of Yose ben Yose. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1991 (Hebrew). Mopsik, Charles. La Sagesse de ben Sira. Lagrasse: Verdier, 2003. Mroczek, Eva. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Mulder, Otto. Simon the High Priest in Sirach 50: An Exegetical Study of the Significance of Simon the High Priest as Climax to the Praise of the Fathers in Ben Sira’s Concept of the History of Israel. JSJSup 78. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

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Mulder, Otto. “Three Psalms or Two Prayers in Sirach 51? The End of Ben Sira’s Book of Wisdom.” Pages 171–201 in Prayer from Tobit to Qumran: Inaugural Conference of the ISDCL at Salzburg, Austria, 5–9 July 2003. Ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. Newman, Judith. “Liturgical Imagination in the Composition of Ben Sira.” Pages 311– 26 in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of her 65th Birthday. Ed. Jeremy Penner, Ken M. Penner, and Cecilia Wassen. STDJ 98. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Ó Fearghail, Fearghus. “Sir 50,5–21: Yom Kippur or the Daily Whole-Offering?” Bib 59 (1978): 301–16. Roth, Cecil. “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service.” JBL 71 (1952): 171–78. Rüger, Hans Peter. Die Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza: Text, Überzetzung und philologischer Kommentar. WUNT 53. Tübingen: Mohr, 1991. Schäfer, Peter. “Rabbis and Priests, or: How to do Away with the Glorious Past of the Sons of Aaron.” Pages 155–72 in Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World. Ed. Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Ostherloh. TSAJ 123. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Schechter, Solomon, and Charles Taylor. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book Ecclesiasticus from Hebrew Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection Presented to the University of Cambridge by the Editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1899. Schirmann, Jefim. New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1965 (Hebrew). Schmelzer, Menahem. “The Contribution of the Genizah to the Study of Liturgy and Poetry.” PAAJR 63 (1997–2001): 163–79. Schürer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135). Revised edition by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew Black. 3 vols. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–87. Segal, Moshe T. The Complete Book of Ben Sira. Jerusalem: Bialik, 1953 (Hebrew). Smend, Rudolf. Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach erklärt. Berlin: Verlag von Georg Reimer, 1906. Strack, H. L., and G. Stemberger. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. Translated by Markus Bockmuehl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Swartz, Michael D. The Signifying Creator: Nontextual Sources of Meaning in Ancient Judaism. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Swartz, Michael D., and Joseph Yahalom, eds. Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Tabory, Joseph. “The Precursors of the ʿAmidah.” Pages 113–25 in Identität durch Gebet: Zur gemeinschaftsbildenen Funktion institutionalisierten Betens in Judentum und Christentum. Ed. Albert Gerhards, Andrea Doeker, and Peter Ebenbauer. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003.

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Urbanz, Werner. “Sir 51,1–12: Anhang oder Knotenpunkt?” Pages 301–22 in Karner, Ueberschaer, and Zapff, Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach. VanderKam, James C. From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile. Minneapolis/ Assen: Fortress Press/Van Gorcum, 2004. Veltri, Giuseppe. Libraries, Translations, and ‘Canonic’ Texts: The Septuagint, Aquila, and Ben Sira in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. JSJSup 109. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Veltri, Giuseppe. “Mittelalterliche Nachahmung weisheitlicher Texte: Datierung und Herkunft der sog. »Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza« .” TRu 57 (1992): 405–30. Weinberger, Leon J. Jewish Hymnography: A Literary History. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998. Wieder, Arnold A. “Ben Sira and the Praises of Wine.” JQR 61 (1970): 155–66. Wright, Benjamin G. “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Ben Sira.” Pages 363–88 in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism. Ed. Matthias Henze. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Yahalom, Joseph. Az be-ʾEn Kol: Seder ha-ʿAvodah ha-Ereṣ-Yisreʾeli ha-Qadum le-Yom haKippurim. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996 (Hebrew). Yassif, Eli. Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages: A Critical Text and Literary Studies. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, 1984 (Hebrew). Zeidman, Y. A. “The Order of the Seder Avodah of the Day of Atonement.” Sinai 13 (1944): 173–82, 255–62 (Hebrew). Zeitlin, Solomon. “The Tefillah, the Shemoneh Esreh: An Historical Study of the First Canonization of the Hebrew Liturgy.” JQR 54 (1964): 208–49. Zunz, Leopold. Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt. 2nd ed. Frankfurt: Verlag von J. Kauffmann, 1892 (orig. pub., 1832).

chapter 14

Ben Sira in Ethiopia: The Andǝmta Commentary on Sirach 1 and 24 Yonatan Binyam 14.1

Introduction

According to traditional lore, the biblical commentary tradition in Ethiopia can be traced all the way back to the time of King Solomon. The Kǝbrä Nägäśt relates the story of how Menelik I, the love child of Solomon and Queen Sheba, brings the Old Testament and the art of interpreting it to Ethiopia, along with (more famously) the Ark of the Covenant.1 Solomon gives Menelik copies of the sacred books along with 318 Levites, who are sent to Ethiopia together with Menelik in order to teach the proper interpretation of the sacred texts.2 In addition to featuring such legendary stories, the biblical commentary tradition in Ethiopia also represents a fascinating history of textual and literary traditions that span several cultures and centuries. From translations made in Late Antiquity to literary traditions still flourishing in Ethiopia today, the Ethiopian biblical commentary tradition remains vibrant and vast. In this essay, I give a brief introduction to this commentary tradition known as the andǝmta in Ethiopia and a brief overview of the history of the scholarship dedicated to studying it. Then I provide a short overview of the Ethiopian commentary on the book of Sirach, along with a translation of the text and commentary on Sirach 1 and 24, as they are present in the andǝmta. I conclude with some closing remarks about the unique interpretive features present in the andǝmta of Sirach 1 and 24. The corpus of Ethiopian commentaries on biblical texts is commonly known as andǝmta, an Amharic word that literally translates as “and one.”3 This technical term is an abbreviation for “and there is one who says,” a phrase which “introduces an alternative meaning to a word or concept.”4 Given the 1 Stoffregen-Pedersen and Abraha, “Andǝmta,” 258. 2 For a fuller account of this story, see Budge, The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek: Kebra Nagast, 44–72. 3 Lee, “The Ethiopic ‘Andəmta’ Commentary on Ethiopic Enoch 2 (1 Enoch 6–9),” 179. 4 According to Stoffregen-Pedersen and Abraha, Rev 6:2 features the highest number of interpretations. For example, there are nineteen separate interpretations of the “white horse” provided in the andǝmta (Stoffregen-Pedersen and Abraha, “Andǝmta,” 258).

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vastness of the andǝmta corpus, and the length of time within which commentaries were translated, copied and written in Ethiopia, it comes as little surprise that the Ethiopian commentary tradition has gone through numerous stages of development. Most scholars of Ethiopic literature agree that the long history of Gǝʿǝz literature can be broken down into four major periods: 1) 5th–7th centuries CE; 2) 8th century to ca. 1250 CE; 3) ca. 1270–1420 CE; 4) ca. 1650–1850 CE.5 Additionally, scholars have also categorized the Gǝʿǝz commentary tradition into three types: 1) translated commentaries; 2) paraphrased commentaries; 3) indigenous commentaries.6 In its earliest stages, the biblical commentary tradition in Ethiopia primarily consisted of commentaries that had been translated into Gǝʿǝz directly from Greek.7 Beginning in the middle of the fourth century, translations of biblical books, non-canonical texts, and various patristic writings flooded into Ethiopia from places like Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine, Armenia, and Syria.8 The translations of biblical commentaries came to be called tǝrgwame, a Gǝʿǝz term variously meaning “interpretation, translation, commentary, or exegesis.” The source-critical evidence for the dependence of early Ethiopic commentaries on Greek texts is quite straightforward. There is ample evidence, for example, that some of the tǝrgwame directly rely on Alexandrian commentaries because some interpretations of biblical passages are at times given almost verbatim from the works of early Christian writers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen.9 In addition, there is also evidence that the Antiochene school of biblical interpretation also comes to have an influence on Ethiopian biblical interpretation.10 These commentaries continually present the retrieval of the “mystery” hidden deep inside the religious texts as their primary objective.11 In the second stage of development in the Ethiopian biblical commentary tradition, Gǝʿǝz translations of Greek commentaries are paraphrased and reworked.12 In attempting to elucidate the meaning of the commentaries, later 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12

Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 2. Ibid., 3–5. The list of translated commentaries includes Tergwame orit za-Yohannes Afa-warq (The Commentary of John Chrysostom on the Octateuch), Tergwame Danel wa daqiqa nabiyat (Commentary on Daniel and the Minor Prophets), Tergwame arbaetu wangel (Commentary on the Four Gospels), Tergwame wangel ze-Matewos (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew), Tergwame qeddus Gorgoryos za-nusis (The Commentary of St. Gregory of Nyssa), among others (Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 3–5). Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 3. Ibid. Garcia, “Bible Commentary Tradition,” 573. Stoffregen-Pedersen and Abraha, “Andǝmta,” 258. Garcia, “Bible Commentary Tradition,” 573.

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Ethiopian commentators add their own interpretations and notes to the original translations.13 At an even later stage, indigenous commentaries on certain biblical texts are produced, separate from the translated and paraphrased commentaries of earlier stages.14 Despite the fact that foreign works still influence these later works, they represent commentary traditions that are of Ethiopian origin in significant ways. A list of some of these works includes Mamhera orit (“The Instructor of the Pentateuch”), Tǝrgwame orit (“Commentary on the Pentateuch”), Tǝrgwame Hezqaʾel (“Commentary on Ezekiel”), Behila matargwem (“The Saying of the Interpreter”), among others.15 Together with earlier Gǝʿǝz translations and recensions of commentaries, these indigenous commentaries comprise the vast corpus known as the tǝrgwame that would later be translated into Amharic and come to be known as the andǝmta. In the eighteenth century, the practice of exegetical preaching (or preaching through a verse-by-verse explanation of a text) led to the production of the andǝmta. By this point, the laity within Ethiopian Christianity were speaking Amharic and could not understand the commentaries of biblical and patristic texts that were being read to them in Gǝʿǝz. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this problem came to the attention of Emperor Iyasu II, who set out to rectify the situation.16 He convened a council of scholars and ordered that the Gǝʿǝz commentaries in the tǝrgwame be translated into Amharic. He also oversaw the organization of the large corpus of commentaries into four categories: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Mesḥefta Liqawent (“The Book of Scholars”), and the Masḥefta Manakosat (“The Book of Monks”).17 Emperor Iyasu II’s efforts became a watershed event for the history of the Ethiopian commentary tradition as the andǝmta corpus bears the mark of his intentions to this day.

13 14 15 16 17

Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 5. Ibid. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8. Ibid. Later the organization of these categories and the reliability of the andǝmta texts as well as of the Gǝʿǝz texts on which they relied came under dispute. The integrity of these texts was most famously challenged by mamher Esdros of Gondar. Esdros set about reorganizing the andǝmta corpus and subsequently invited other scholars to accept his reorganization. While some accepted his invitation, others did not. Those who sided with him came to be known as tacc bet (the Lower House) and those who did not came to be known as lay bet (the Upper House), leading to the formation of two schools who differed in their organization and style of interpretation (ibid., 7–11).

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History of Scholarship on the Andǝmta Corpus

The scholarship dedicated to studying the andǝmta is very much in the nascent stages of its development. To date, only a handful of works relating to the commentary tradition in Ethiopia have been published. Although Friedrich Heyer wrote a brief introduction to the Ethiopian commentary tradition entitled “The Teaching of Tergum in the Ethiopian Church” in 1960, the scholarly study of andǝmta did not really take off until the works of Roger W. Cowley. Over the course of his fifteen years in Ethiopia as an Anglican missionary, Cowley amassed a large library of andǝmta manuscripts that he later bequeathed to the British Library, but not before publishing several works on the topic.18 Cowley first published the following articles (full citation listed in the bibliography): “Preliminary Notes on the Baläandem Commentaries” (1971), “Beginnings of the Andǝm Commentary Tradition” (1972), “Old Testament Introduction in the Andǝmta Commentary Tradition” (1974), “New Testament Introduction in the andǝmta Commentary Tradition” (1977), and “Mämher Esdros and His Interpretation” (1980). In these early articles, Cowley lays the foundation for his later, more extensive works. He presents the general features of the andǝmta commentaries, highlighting certain philological features like archaic Amharic terms of loan words from other languages.19 He also treats the issues of authorship, content, and canonicity, which are discussed in the introductions of the andǝmta commentaries on biblical and other religious texts. In addition to his articles, Cowley also published two important contributions to the study of the andǝmta commentary tradition: The Traditional Interpretation of the Apocalypse of St. John in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (1983) and Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Exegetical Tradition and Hermeneutics (1988). In these later works, Cowley explores in more detail the character of the andǝmta commentaries, comparing them with other Christian commentary traditions. He concludes that “the Ethiopian andǝmta commentary tradition is an exegetical tradition that has an essential continuity with Antioch exegesis, and which Ethiopian scholars have molded into its present form.”20

18 19 20

Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian Exegesis of the Book of Psalms, 2. Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 13. Cowley, Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Exegetical Tradition and Hermeneutics, 382.

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Since Cowley’s publications, several emerging scholars in Ethiopian studies have built on his work and published more recent studies on the andǝmta commentary tradition. First, Kirsten Stoffregen-Pedersen published Traditional Ethiopian Exegesis of the Book of Psalms in 1995. In this work, Soffregen-Pedersen provides an introduction to the andǝmta and then provides an annotated translation of selected chapters. She also analyzes the different ways in which the Book of Psalms is divided and categorized in different commentary traditions in contrast to its organization in the andǝmta commentaries.21 Second, Miguel Angel Garcia published a work entitled Ethiopian Biblical Commentaries on the Prophet Micah (1999), in which he provides a translation of the Gǝʿǝz text of Micah and its corresponding commentaries in the known manuscripts available. He also discusses the literary and technical terminologies employed within the andǝmta commentaries. Additionally, Mersha Alehegne’s The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis (2011) provides the most recent study of an andǝmta commentary. Alehegne provides an extensive introduction to the field of andǝmta studies, followed by the critical text and translation of the andǝmta commentary on the book of Genesis. Lastly, Ralph Lee has also published an article, “The Ethiopic ‘Andəmta’ Commentary on Ethiopic Enoch 2 (1 Enoch 6–9),” in which he provides a translation of and some concluding remarks about the fallen angels in 1 Enoch 6–9 and their interpretation within the Ethiopian commentary tradition. 14.3

Introduction to the Andǝmta of Sirach

There has been no modern Western scholarship on the andǝmta of Sirach. In the following, I rely on a digitized version of a book printed in 1926.22 The title page of the book reads, “The Books of Solomon and Sirach.” The andǝmta commentary on Sirach begins with an imperial preface and an introduction to the text and commentary, both given mostly in Amharic. The preface, which is attributed to Tafari Mekonnen, discusses various issues, such as the difficulty of producing books in the ancient period and the need to mass produce texts in the modern period. These issues, along with a brief précis of the history of the scriptures in the Second Temple period (including the translation of the Septuagint), are a common feature in the introductions of many andǝmta 21 22

Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian Exegesis of the Book of Psalms, 10–11. Da Bassano, Bəluy Kidan, 291–319.

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commentaries on texts like Genesis, Jubilees, Kings, Maccabees, Job, Psalms, Enoch, and more.23 Cowley summarizes the general content of such introductions in this way: In overall form, they consist of introduction and text with comment. Most of the printed ones have an imperial preface in Amharic relating the difficulty of obtaining books in Old Testament times, the activity of Ezra, the translation of the Septuagint, the translation of the Scriptures into Gǝʿǝz and their interpretation into Amharic, the destruction created by Grann, the preservation of the Christian faith in Ethiopia and the Emperor’s desire to have Christian books printed.24 After the imperial preface, a brief introduction to the Gǝʿǝz text of Sirach and its Amharic commentary is provided. This introduction includes a short apocryphal tale about Joshua Ben Sira. First, the text discusses the name Joshua, with the aim of explaining why Joshua Ben Sira shares the same name with Jesus. This explanation reads as follows: Sirach is his service name. Joshua means savior, just like Hosea, Isaiah and Jesus mean savior (or salvation). Like Joshua the son of Nineveh (= son of Nun) [he is] armed with solitude snatching away the shield, annihilating the enemy of Israel and saving Israel. But he is not called savior in the same way as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who tearing his flesh and spilling his blood, gained victory over demonic powers and saved the believers. However, when his mother and father came to the realization that he would save people through his education, prayer, and prophecy, they entered the house of circumcision on the eighth day and called him Joshua. 23 24

Alehegne, The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 13. Cowley, “Preliminary Notes on the Baläandem Commentaries,” 10. “Grann,” meaning “left-handed,” was the nickname of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, who briefly conquered territories for Muslims from Christian Abyssinia in the 16th century. He was able to successfully combine the religious zeal of Muslims with a competent military strategy. It also helped Ahmad ibn Ibrahim and his followers that their entrance into the political field coincided with the decline of Christian powers in Ethiopia. Before the rise of the Grann, the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia had seen a gradual weakening of its political hold in the southern part of the country. The Grann and his military campaigns were able to conquer territories very quickly. Shoa was conquered in 1529, Amhara in 1531, and the northern territory of Tigre in 1535. For more, see Erlich, Ethiopia and the Middle East, 29–40.

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Having discussed the meaning of the name Joshua, the preface to the commentary then goes on to relate a short story about how Joshua came to be a possessor of wisdom: In his time there was a Greek king who was called Demetrius Demetrius. They used to say, “He is the leader.” The wine bearer having had a fight [with the king] went to Joshua Ben Sira and was hidden. And he brought him saying the hiding of my friend will not be put to shame (ch. 22 v. 25). After a long time he reconciled [with the king] and he returned. He said to him, “Where were you?” And he said, “I was with Joshua Ben Sira.” [And the king] brought [Joshua Ben Sira], tied him up, and threw him in a dungeon saying, “When I called him friend, he did this to me.” While he was in that dungeon bearing hardship, he prayed saying, “Reveal to me the wisdom of the flesh and the wisdom of the spirit.” He spoke the following which was revealed to him … Here the text seems to place the writing down of the wisdom of Joshua Ben Sira during the reign of a certain Demetrius Demetrius. This doubling of the name might be a reference to Demetrius II, the Seleucid ruler who controlled Syria in the middle of the second century BCE. Then the andǝmta commentary on the Gǝʿǝz text of Sirach follows this introductory narrative. In what follows, I provide a translation of chapters 1 and 24 of the text. I focus on these chapters, because they are important in contemporary scholarship on Sirach. First the translation of the Gǝʿǝz text of Sirach is given in bold characters, according to the verse numbers given in the Gǝʿǝz text.25 Then each verse is followed by the commentary, which is written primarily in Amharic with some Gǝʿǝz phrases included. 14.3.1 Chapter One 1. First, all wisdom is from God. The essence of knowledge is found with God. It says “all” because she [wisdom] is given to everyone. And it says “with him [God].” She resides with him. Because she is continually giving to everyone, it says tǝhellu.26 Second [interpretation]: The place where the Law is found is with God. It says “all” because 25 26

For the Ethiopic of Sirach, see Dillmann, Libri Apocryphi, 54–117. See also Assefa, “The Ethiopic Version of Ben Sira.” The term tǝhellu appears to be an imperfect form of the verb hälläwä (“to be”), which is normally used in the perfect tense. The word is not present in the form of this verse in the modern critical edition of the Ethiopic of Sirach. See Dillmann, Libri Apocryphi, 54; Tropper, Altäthiopisch, 120.

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she [the Law] was formed in ten [parts, i.e., the Decalogue] and she was with him. Her work is known by the heart of the Trinity. Third [interpretation]: the place where the Son is found is with God the Father. It says “all” because he united with the flesh of the people and the nations. And he was with him [God]. Fourth [interpretation]: the place where the Holy Spirit is found is with God the Father. It says “all” because it [the Holy Spirit] is given to everyone. It was with him [God]. Fifth [interpretation]: the place where the whole Law, the whole Son, and the whole Holy Spirit are found is with God the Father. As it says, all of his divinity dwelled in the flesh of men (Col 2:4). He goes forth carrying the three. 2. The sands of the sea and the drops of the rain and the days of eternity— who has counted? Who has counted the sands of the sea, the drops of the rain and the ages of the Trinity? 3. The height of heaven and the width of the earth and the depth of the abyss and wisdom—who has measured them? Who has measured and known the height of heaven, the width of the earth and the depth of the ocean? Like these things, who has measured and known wisdom? Who has known the work of the Law, the incarnation of the Son, and the giving of the Holy Spirit [before] the creation of the world? 4. Wisdom was created before everything. Prior to everything the Law was formed, as her being was made known by the heart of the Trinity. Second [interpretation]: prior to everything, the Son became a man, as his incarnation was already known by the heart of the Trinity. Third [interpretation] the Holy Spirit was given to man [and] its being given was already known by the heart of the Trinity. 5. And understanding of wisdom from [before] the [creation] of the world. Before the creation of the world it was ordained that the Law might work. Second [interpretation]: before the creation of the world, it was ordained that the Son might became human. Third [interpretation]: before the creation of the world, it was ordained that the Holy Spirit might be given. 6. The root of wisdom—to whom has it been revealed? To whom has the beginning of the Nine Commandments, “Do not worship [other gods]” been revealed? Second [interpretation]: To whom has the precedence of the Son been revealed? Third [interpretation]: to whom has the precedence of the Holy Spirit been revealed.

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7. And who has known her counsel? Who has known the Nine Commandments? Second [interpretation]: who has known the incarnation of the Son of God? Third [interpretation]: who has known the giving of the Holy Spirit? 8. There is one [who is] wise and he is exceedingly awesome and he sits on his throne. The Law is one. So what if they say, “Is it not ten?” Because if they break one the nine will not save them. For a person, it will be like a single house which has ten entrances. If he closes nine of them but leaves one [open], the nine will not save him. Entering through the one entrance, a thief will take the livestock and the men that he has collected from youth until old age. They speak like David: when David broke the two commandments, “Do not commit adultery” and “Do not kill,” the eight did not save him. And this is very terrible [for] the law breakers, and terror will bring them suffering. As the prophet says, “Ephraim for his sickness and Judah for his affliction …” (Hos 5:13). The righteous person will live with respect and by fulfilling [the commandments]. Second [interpretation]: the Trinity are one in will, power, and essence. The Son and the Holy Spirit are terrible in Aryos, Nesteros, Maqedonyos, because having judged them they will bring them down to terrifying Gehenna.27 The Son and the Holy Spirit take precedence (lit. they will live in precedence). 9. And God himself created her and he saw her and measured her out. God himself created the Law. He made it so that it might be fixed at ten. Second [interpretation]: he made it so that the Son might become human. He commanded him [with] the commandments of the will. As it is written, “I heard the Lord say to my Lord, ‘Pass through the seven gates of Heaven. Descend upon the angel of death.’” The Ascension of Isaiah.28 He [God] made it so that he [the Son] might become a man after 5,500 years. Second [interpretation]: he made it so that the height would be limited to three cubits. Third [interpretation]: he made it so that the Holy Spirit might be given after 5,500 years.

27 28

These three names refer to Christian heretics of the fourth or fifth century: Arius, Nestorius, and Macedonius. This is a form of Mart. Ascen. Isa. 10:7–8: “And I heard the voice of the Most High, the Father of my Lord, as he said to my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus: ‘Go out and descend through all the heavens. You shall descend through the firmament and through that world as far as the angel who (is) in Sheol, but you shall not go as far as Perdition.’” See Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2.173.

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10. And he poured her out upon all of his works along with all that which is flesh according to his gift, and he gave to all of those who loved her. He brought forth the essence of knowledge saying, “First wisdom for all is from God.”29 He commissioned her over all of his creation according to his generosity so that she might reside with all that is flesh and blood. What is more, he gave her to all the people who loved her. Second [interpretation]: he made the Law for all according to his generosity so that she might be kept by every person who is flesh and blood. Having made her, he gave her to all the people who loved her. Third [interpretation]: according to his generosity, he made it so that the Son might reside with all those of flesh and blood so that he might be united with the flesh of the people and the nations. Fourth [interpretation]: according to his generosity, he commissioned the Holy Spirit over all of his creation so that it might abide within all that is flesh and blood. It [the Holy Spirit] is only within humankind and not within other kinds [of flesh and blood]. As it is written, “This word will not be poured out upon all who are clothed with flesh.”30 Second31 [interpretation]: It says “according to his gift,” because the gift of the Holy Spirit is given in measure according to the perseverance of his faith and the breadth of his knowledge. As it is written, “… according to what is profitable and what is useful” (1 Cor 12:7). He revealed wisdom to all those who loved him. 11. The fear of the Lord is glory and praise and gladness, and it is the crown of joy. The fear and worship of the Lord is the glory of flesh and spirit. It brings pride. Pride is like Elijah, as it is written, “The living God the God of strength, the God of Israel in the presence of whom I stand, so that the rain may not come down, unless [it is] by the word of my mouth” (1 Kgs 17:1). It is also joy. It is a crown that causes rejoicing. It says just as [the fear of the Lord] glorifies, so [God] glorifies.

29 30

31

This is a variant of the form of v. 1 presented above. The Amharic commentary appears to be alluding here to passages in Joel and in Acts: “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). In Acts 2:17, Peter recites this passage from Joel. The Amharic commentator is here clarifying that “all flesh” does not include non-humans. There seems to be a scribal error here, since this is the fifth (not the second) interpretation being given for this verse.

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12. The fear of the Lord is the gladness of the heart; it gives joy and makes glad, and it lengthens the days of life. The fear of the Lord is the joy of the heart. It gives complete joy of the flesh and the spirit. It also causes one to live in life. 13. For the one who fears God—his end will be good and the day of his death will be blessed. Like Job, the one who fears the Lord will come to a pleasant end. He will die having been healed from his disease and having seen his children’s children. As the Vision (or Apocalypse) of Job says, “… his children and his children’s children until the third and fourth generation” (Job 32:16).32 He will worship/ glorify [God] at the time of his death. Just as David thanked and glorified him [God] at the time of his death, saying, “Before I died, you allowed me to see with my own eyes, as you made my child king.” As it is written, “May the Lord the God of Israel33 who has today given to his servant so that [my] seed might sit on my throne while my eyes bear witness” (1 Kgs 1:48). 14. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; she was created with the faithful from the womb [together] with them.34 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Second [interpretation]: the head (or master) of the Nine Commandments is “Do not worship [other gods]” and “Do not worship [other gods]” is the head of the Nine Commandments. The essence of knowledge dwelt with all [of them], so that she might reside with the believers beginning with their birth from their mothers’ wombs. As it is written in Jeremiah and John (Jer 1:5; Luke 1:34). Second [interpretation]: the Law was made so that it might be kept by the believers beginning with their birth from their mothers’ wombs. Third [interpretation]: the Son became a human being, so that he might reside with the believers beginning with their birth from their mothers’ wombs. Our Lady, who has ʾemomu and in whom resides love, is our mother (John 19:26). Second, he says, “… your mother.” Fourth [interpretation]: the Holy Spirit was given so that he might reside with the faithful beginning with their birth from their mothers’ wombs. 32 33 34

The “Vision of Job” here is a reference to the scriptural book of Job. While the text reads Job 32:16, the verse cited here appears in the MT as Job 42:16. Here the text has the number 20 followed by ʾel, which might be an abbreviated form of “Israel,” as that is how 1 Kgs 1:48 reads. ሞሙ ((ʾemomu; a form of “with them”). In the Amharic commentary, ሞሙ seems to be taken as a characteristic possessed by Mary, or our Lady. I have transliterated the word in the translation, in order to preserve its position in the grammar of the sentence.

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15. And in the company of human beings she was created [as] an eternal foundation; she was trusted among their offspring. The Law was created before the creation of the world, so that she might dwell among humankind, as her work was known by the heart of the Trinity. The Law, the foundation of humankind, was made/formed because humankind is founded upon the Law like a building is built upon a foundation. Second [interpretation]: before the creation of the world, the Son became a man so that he might dwell among humankind. His incarnation was already known, because he is the foundation of the world. The foundation of the world, the Son, became a man. Third [interpretation]: before the creation of the world, the Holy Spirit was given, so that it might dwell among humankind. Because its being given to humankind was already known, because it [the Holy Spirit] is the foundation of the world. The foundation of the world, the Holy Spirit, was given. She [the Law] became faithful in living with their children and their children’s children, they keeping her and she guarding them. 16. The fear of the Lord is the fullness of wisdom; she satisfies them from her fruit. The fear of the Lord is to be satisfied by wisdom. To be satisfied by wisdom is the fear of the Lord. She will satisfy them from her fruit/produce. His possession [of this fruit] has been made known. It says it will be like it is now; it will be drunk like the fermented fruit, and the vine and wisdom will reveal it to them abundantly. 17.There is abundant joy inside her houses and inside her courtyards there is copious fruit. Her dwelling is filled with the joy of righteousness. The thoughts and the teachings of the teachers fill [her dwelling place]. 18. The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom; she brings peace, heals, and revives to life. The crown of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom. The wisdom of the one who does not fear the Lord will be uprooted. It produces love and unity. It brings forth healing from the disease of the flesh and the disease of the spirit and sustains one in life. Second [interpretation]: it brings forth love and unity. Healing the disease of the flesh and the spirit, it sustains one in life.

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19. And she saw the creator and she measured [out her wisdom]. And she poured down the fountain of knowledge and understanding and wisdom and she increased those who held fast to her and she glorified them. He pointed out knowledge, counsel, and wisdom. Second [interpretation]: he showed the place where knowledge, counsel, and wisdom are found. Third [interpretation]: counsel and knowing wisdom. Fourth [interpretation]: he showed [how] the one who has wisdom can come to know counsel. He wholly glorifies whoever keeps [wisdom] devoutly. 20. The fear of the Lord is the root of wisdom, and her branches lengthen the days of life. It begins like this: The work of wisdom, her foundation, is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the work of wisdom, her foundation. Second [interpretation]: the beginning of the Nine Commandments is “Do not worship [other gods].” “Do not worship [other gods]” is the beginning of the Nine Commandments. The Nine Commandments, being one with “Do not worship [other gods]” will lengthen the lifetime of those who are living. 21. Anger will not prevail, and the wrongdoer [will not be able] to act justly, because in time he will be conquered, and his ruin will come to pass. Until the day he dies, the angry and unjust person will not be righteous by doing what is virtuous and faithful. In the time of his punishment, he will be quickly annihilated. 22. Until the season passes, they persevere with patience, and later she causes them to rejoice. If you ask me, “What good will this do?”; until her time passes, be patient with anger. As they say, guilt and merke (juice) are delicious for the time being, but later she will cause you to be joyful. 23. Until his time comes to pass his word is hidden, and [then] many will speak in his wisdom. Until you find the time, do not talk about your matter, because you will not be heard. Many people talk about wisdom. When one finds a judge and tells his matter, they say, “it went well for him.” As they say, “When you find a judge tell [him] and when the water is clear, cross it.” Second [interpretation]: many people, being devoted to wisdom, live in leisure.

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24. Inside the storehouses of wisdom are the teachings of proverbs; it appeases the sinner to the fear of the Lord. In the dwelling places of wisdom among the teachers, you will find a teaching that they teach, which resembles honey and sugar canes. The sinful person will disrespect the righteous person who fears God. Second [interpretation]: After he sees that he teaches like honey and sugar cane, he will hate the teacher who fears God, and he will say to him, “What did I say?” 25. If you love wisdom keep the commandments of the Lord, and he will give her to you. If you love the Law, keep her works. Second [interpretation]: if you love the Son and the Holy Spirit, keep the Law. God will give her to you. He will become a man. It says that he will make you, so that you will guard her and trust him. 26. The fear of the Lord is wisdom and knowledge, and his desire is faith and meekness. They will tell you that the knowledge of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the knowledge of wisdom. Faith and selflessness is his will. 27. Do not forsake the fear of the Lord. When I said faith [I meant] the fear and worship of God. Do not forget this. 28. Do not devote yourself to him with a divided heart. Do not say I will be subservient to him one time in the monastery and another time in the world. 29. Do not come to ruin while being hypocritical in front of men, and guard your lips. Do not be subservient, saying this battle may or may not be useful. It says by doing this once in the monastery and another time in the world. Do not be spoken of by a person’s mouth, [saying] he is not consistent. Keep your lips from speaking one thing at one time and another thing at another time. 30. Do not exalt yourself so that you may not fall astray and so that your soul may not come to ruin. God will expose your secrets and will cause you to fall in the midst of many, because you did not come in the fear of the Lord and your heart was full of deceit. Do not exalt yourself so that you may not be put to shame and so you may not lose your soul. If you say to me, “why are you proud?” As it is God will reveal

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what you did in hiding. He will humiliate you amidst many people, because you did not come to many people and through pride and arrogance did not say that he [God] will judge me. It is with regard to many people because your heart is filled with carelessness. 14.3.2 Chapter Twenty-Four 1. Wisdom praises herself and glorifies herself in the midst of the nations. It says wisdom praises herself.35 The Son glorifies himself in the Unity: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). He makes a pronouncement saying, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). 2. In the assembly of the Most High, she opens her mouth, and she glorifies herself before his might. In the dwelling of the Most High God and in the midst of the apostles, he begins his word saying, “He who sees me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is in the midst of the apostles to whom he reveals his power. 3. I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and like fog I covered the earth. It teaches, saying, “I went out from the Father, and I came into the world” (John 17:28). It says, “I covered the earth in fullness like fog.” 4. I dwelled in the heavens, and my abode also was in a pillar of cloud. I dwell in the Seven Heavens in fullness, and my throne resides in a pillar of cloud. Second interpretation: Having united [to] flesh [through] Mary, my throne resides in a pillar of cloud. Third [interpretation]: my throne is with the Cherubim. 5. I alone encompassed the uppermost parts of the heavens, and I moved about in the depth of the abyss. I alone traveled the four corners of the world; it is in fullness; I went back and forth inside the deep ocean. 6. And over the waves of the sea [also] and over the whole earth, and over all the nations and over all the people I take possession. I went back and forth on the storm of the sea (Matt 14:25; Mark 6:48; John 6:19). On all of the land, I dwelled for 33 years and 3 months among all the nations and all the people. 5,500 years prior I did not make profit [from] the unity of 35

For the figure of personified Wisdom, see also the essay by Gregory in the present volume.

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nature and the unity of grace. Second [interpretation]: After the 5,500 years were completed, I made profit. 7. And after all of this I sought rest. In whose inheritance will I therefore settle? Seeking the unity of nature and the unity of grace, I said, “With whose flesh should I unite?” After the Lord became a man who possessed the unity of grace, he becomes (or “is”) the unity who unites believers. 8. Then the Creator of everything commanded me, and the Creator caused my abode to rest and said to me, “Dwell among Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.” After this, the God who created everything commanded me, because there is one who is obedient to the will. I heard the Lord speaking to my Lord, and he said to him, “Pass through the seven gates of Heaven. Go down against the angel of death,” as it says in the Ascension of Isaiah.36 And he prepared for me the flesh, [by which] I might be united. He said to me, “Be united to the flesh of Jacob (lit. ‘to a Jacob-ish flesh’).” And he said to me, “Attain all the flesh which rises from Israel.” 9. From before he created the world he created me, and I will never disappear from eternity to eternity. He made me so that I would become a man before the creation of the world, because [my] becoming human was known beforehand. I will never be separate for all eternity, as it is written, “she [wisdom] will not disappear.”37 The faith of the fathers. 10. In his presence I ministered in his holy tent, and I rested in Zion. By his will, I was drawn inside the womb of holy Mary and formed in the flesh. I dwelled inside the virgin womb for nine months and five days. Now Zion means “shelter.” When he calls our lady the “shelter” of the flesh and the spirit, he calls her Zion. Second [interpretation]: he says he is sent. I ministered in the tabernacle of the Law and the Temple. As it is written, “He arose to read, and they gave him the book of the prophet Isaiah” (Luke 4:16–17). Third [interpretation]: I was crucified on the cross. He refers to the cross as “Zion” because he calls all a cross of strength and a cross of protection.

36 37

See the note for Sir. 1:9 above. The scriptural text being cited here is not evident.

278

Binyam

11. Thus I rested in the holy city, and in Jerusalem is my dominion near the one who established me. In this way, I dwelled in the womb of holy Mary for nine months and five days. Jerusalem means “City of Peace,” because he tells our Lady, “In you is the salvation of the world, and peace has come through your son.”38 Second [interpretation]: as the Father commanded me, I ministered in the Tabernacle of the Law and the Temple. Third [interpretation]: as the Father commanded me, I was crucified on the cross. Fourth [interpretation]: he says, “How they convicted me.” I was crucified on the cross, as the Jews made fun of me and forced me to do it. 12. I caused my root to grow within an honored people and within the portion of God and within his inheritance. I related my preexistence among many groups, in the midst of the people of God, the apostles, and by his inheritance among the followers of men. 13. I rose like a cedar tree in Lebanon and like a cypress tree on the mountains of Hermon. I related my height, which is as high as the cedar tree in Dega and the tree called senobar in Hermon. 14. And I became tall like the palm tree near the shore of the water and like a rose that is in Jericho and like a beautiful olive tree in the wilderness. And like a plain tree I grew large. I related my height, which is like the height of the palm tree near the shore of the water. Like the fragrance of the rose flower in Jericho is pleasing, so the fragrance of my teaching and the fragrance of my work is pleasing. I related how my greatness is pleasing like the oil and perfume in the wilderness. 15. And my fragrance is sweet like cinnamon and like perfume, and my fragrance became sweet-smelling like the smell of fragrant oil and like galbanum and like myrrh and like myrrh oil and like the smoke of incense in the tabernacle. As the fragrance of cinnamon and perfume is pleasing, so the fragrance of my teaching and my work is pleasing. The smell of its beautiful and beloved fragrance became like the beautiful and beloved fragrance of galbanum and myrrh and smoke and the white incense that is in the tabernacle. 38

This is probably a citation from a non-canonical Marian text, such as Malkʾa Maryam (“The Image of Mary”) or Taʾamǝra Maryam (“The Miracles of Mary”).

Ben Sira in Ethiopia

279

16. And my branches grew tall like a terebinth tree, and my branches are branches of glory and splendor. My children, the apostles, became tall like the wood (or branch) of the terebinth tree is tall. My children, the followers of men, are those who have the glory of glories. 17. Like the tree of the vine I blossomed with grace. I was found to be loved like the place of a plant [i.e., a garden]. 18. And my fruit is a fruit of glory and splendor and grace. The produce of my fruit, the Gospel, will find the glory of glories and the riches of the spirit and of the world. 19. Come to me all of you who desire, and you will be satisfied from my fruit. Come to me all of you who love me, and you will be satisfied from the produce of my fruit. 20. For the memory of me tastes sweeter than honey, and my inheritance [sweeter than] sugar. Remembrance of me is more pleasing than honey, and my inheritance more pleasing than sugar. 21. And those who eat of me will not be satisfied of me [i.e. will want more of me], and those who drink of me will not be quenched of me. Those who come to know me and accept my flesh and blood will not tire of me. 22. And whoever listens to me will not be put to shame, and whoever serves me will not sin. The person who hears my words will not be put to shame, and those who submit to me will not err. 23. All of this saying is the book of the law of the Most High, the law which Moses commanded us. All of these matters of the flesh have been written in the written Law, the law of the Most High God (Deut 18:15). And this is the Law that Moses commanded. 24. And the heritage of the congregations of Jacob. It is the book on which the heritage and the Law of the children of Jacob is written.

280

Binyam

25. It overflows with wisdom like the Pishon River and like the River Tigris in the month of the first fruits. He is the one who causes the Gospel to be told ubiquitously like the Tigris River and the Pishon River, which overflows in the month of Miyazya.39 26. And it overflows like the Euphrates River with counsel and like the Jordan River in the days of harvest. He is the one who causes the Gospel to be told ubiquitously like the Euphrates River, which overflows in the month of the wheat harvest, and again like the Jordan River, which overflows in the season of rain (or winter). 27. It shines like light with wisdom and like the Gihon River in the days of the harvest of fruits. He is the one who reveals the Gospel like light. He is the one who causes the Gospel to be told ubiquitously like the Gihon River, which overflows in the month of the harvest [lit. picking] of the vine. 28. The first [man] did not [have] a complete knowledge of her and the last also did not find her binding. From Adam to Peter, from Peter to the Second Coming, there is no one who has (fully) examined and known his character. 29. Her thoughts are more abundant than the waters of the sea, and her counsel is deeper than the depth of the sea. Her [the Gospel’s] thoughts bless more than a large amount of water, and the words of the Gospel are more abundant than the waters of the ocean. Moreover, her counsel is abundant. 30. And I was like a stream of water which goes out from a river and like a channel I went into garden. Ben Sira said, “The gift I received became for me like the water of a canal, which comes out of a river and flows.” Christ said, “I dwelled among the believers like irrigated waters, which flow into the canals.”

39

The month of Miyazya overlaps with April.

Ben Sira in Ethiopia

281

31. And I said that I will water the garden, and I drench the atrium of my vegetation, and my stream became like a river, and my river too became as great as the sea. Christ said, “I am here in order to teach the believers, in whom my Law resides.” Sirach said, “The gift I received overflows like a river.” 32. And again I will illuminate wisdom like dawn, and I will make it visible even from far off. Christ said, “Having now revealed the Gospel like light, I will cause it to be told in the four corners.” 33. And I will pour out teaching like prophecy, and I will leave it for the generations of generations [i.e. future generations] forever and ever. I cause the Holy Spirit to pass (lit. to dwell) from Moses to Joshua and from Elijah to Elisha, so that it might pass (or dwell) from one to another (Deut 34:9; 2 Kgs 2:9–11). 34. Behold, see that it was by no means for myself alone that I toiled but for all who caused me to be felt. Behold, see that I made myself weary not for me alone but [also] for all those who seek me. 14.4

Conclusion

The andǝmta commentary on the book of Sirach provides an interesting glimpse into the exegetical methods and features of traditional Ethiopian interpretation. While it appears to be relatively bereft of some of the features that Cowley points out as being commonplace in other andǝmta commentaries (e.g., allusions to Ethiopian rulers or geographic locations), the andǝmta commentary on Sirach does contain other features identified by Cowley as particularly characteristic of the andǝmta. The most obvious exegetical feature that fits into Cowley’s descriptions of the andǝmta is the prominence of the christological interpretation of wisdom in Sirach 24. In addition to this, moreover, there is an abundance of references made to the Trinity. A particular understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is taken for granted in the commentary, as no explicit references are made to any trinitarian or christological controversies. It will be quite interesting for future work on the text to analyze the way in which this commentary is situated within the

282

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broader context of the development of christological and trinitarian doctrines in the early Christian period generally, and in Ethiopia particularly. It is also interesting that the commentary alludes to the Ascension of Isaiah in both chapters 1 and 24 of Sirach. This raises the question of the role that pseudepigraphic literature plays in the life of the andǝmta commentaries. The allusions made to other biblical characters and motifs (e.g. the Law, the Temple, the Gospel, Peter, Clement, the Second Coming, etc.) also present the challenge of identifying the various strands of tradition which comprise the vast network of allusions present in the andǝmta corpus. In conclusion, having provided a very short introduction to the biblical commentary tradition in Ethiopia, I have here only opened the door to the study of Ethiopian commentaries on Sirach. Much more work needs to be done in furthering our understanding of the reception of the text in Ethiopia. Bibliography Ahmed, Ali Jimale, and Taddesse Adera, eds. Silence Is Not Golden: A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature. Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1995. Alehegne, Mersha. The Ethiopian Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Critical Edition and Translation. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011. Assefa, Daniel. “The Ethiopic Version of Ben Sira.” Pages 256–61 in Textual History of the Bible. Volume 2B: The Deuterocanonical Scriptures. Ed. Armin Lange, Frank Feder, and Matthias Henze. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Budge, Wallis, trans. The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek: Kebra Nagast. Cambridge, Ontario: In Parentheses Publications, 2000. Charlesworth, James H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985. Cowley, Roger W. “Preliminary Notes on the Baläandem Commentaries.” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 9 (1971): 9–20. Cowley, Roger W. “The Beginnings of the Andem Commentary Tradition.” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 10 (1972): 1–16. Cowley, Roger W. “Old Testament Introduction in the Andemta Commentary.” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 12 (1974): 133–175. Cowley, Roger W. “New Testament Introduction in the Andemta Commentary Tradition.” Ostkirchliche Studien 26, no. 2.3 (1977): 144–92. Cowley, Roger W. “Patristic Introduction in the Ethiopian Andemta Commentary Tradition.” Ostkirchliche Studien 29 (1980): 39–49. Cowley, Roger W. The Traditional Interpretation of the Apocalypse of St John in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

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Cowley, Roger W. “Mämher Esdros and His Interpretation.” Pages 41–69 in: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 14–17 April 1980, ed. Gideon Goldenberg. Rotterdam: Balkema, 1986. Cowley, Roger W. Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Exegetical Tradition and Hermeneutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. da Bassano, F., ed. Bəluy Kidan. Zätäsänaʾawä məslä Mäṣaḥəftä qäddämt zäbranna wäməslä Mäṣaḥəftä Sorəya wäṢərʾə wäʿAräb. Mäṣəḥaf śaləs. ZäṬobit, zäYodit, zäAster, zäIyyob, Mäzmurat zäDawit, Mäṣaḥəftä Sälomon wäṬəbäbä Sirak (“Old Testament. Harmonized with old parchment books and with books in Syriac, Greek and Arabic. Third volume. Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms of David, Books of Solomon and Wisdom of Ben Sira”) (Asmara: Catholic Mission in Ethiopia, 1917 [A. M. = ʿAmätä Məhrät, the Gəʿəz calendar], 1926 [C.E.]). Dillmann, August. Libri Apocryphi, Baruch, Epistola Jeremiae, Tobith, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Sapientia, Esdrae Apocalypsis, Esdrae Graecus. Vol. 5 of Veteris Testamenti Aethiopici. Berlin: Prostat apud A. Asher et socios, 1894. Erlich, Haggai. Ethiopia and the Middle East. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994. Garcia, Miguel Angel. “Bible Commentary Tradition.” Pages 573–74 in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. García, Miguel Angel. Ethiopian Biblical Commentaries on the Prophet Micah. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999. Lee, Ralph. “The Ethiopic ‘Andəmta’ Commentary on Ethiopic Enoch 2 (1 Enoch 6–9).” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 23 (2014): 179–200. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Kirsten. Traditional Ethiopian Exegesis of the Book of Psalms. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Kirsten, and Tedros Abraha. “Andǝmta.” Pages 258–59 in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Tropper, Josef. Altäthiopisch. Grammatik des Geʿez mit Übungstexten und Glossar. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002.

Index of Ancient Sources Greek and Latin Authors Aelius Theon Prog. 66

18.548 18.549 75n4, 77

Aphthonios Prog. 36

75n6

Aratus Phaen.

177

Aristotle De an. 429a Mem. rem. 450a Poet. 1455a Clement of Alexandria Paed. 2.4.43–44 Cicero Nat. d. 2.38 Tusc. 1.2.4 5.113

76 76, 77n18 76

169n5

170n6 178 177

Cleanthes Hymn to Zeus

177

Diogenes Laertius 1.61

177

Galen Lib. prop. prol. 9–10

215

Homer Il. 11.172–76 18.377 18.478–608

80 80 80

Isocrates Phil. 134 Panath. 12.19 12.21 12.260 Lucretius Plato Hipp. Ma. 285d Hipp. Mi. 368d Ion 533b–35a Lach. 180d Leg. 653c–54d 656c 659d 797b 801d–e Phaed. 60d–61b Resp. 316e 318e 349e 377d–78e 379c–80c 380e–83c 398c–401a 399a–402a 424c–25a 599c–600e 605c–608b Plutarch Sept. sap. conv. Them. 2.3

80 80

234 234 234 235 177

176n28 176n28 175n25 176 175 176n25 179 179 176n25 176 176 176 175 176n25 176n25 176n25 176 175 176 176n25 176n25 177 178

286

Index of Ancient Sources

Ps.-Hermogenes 22 23

75n5 76n13

Ps.-Longinus 15.1

77n18

Quintilian Inst. 1.10.18

178

Theognis of Megara 19–23

235–36

Vergil Aen. 1.453–93

81

Hebrew Bible Gen 2–3 3:19 4:14 11:30 15:1 25:23 41:33 42:7 45:11

118n60 24 100, 102 120 249 113 68 64 118n61

Exod 11:7 6:16–25 28–29

144n55 157n17 157

Lev 6 16 18:24–30 23

157 253 158 253

Num 18:20 23–24 25:7–11 25:11–13 29

25n59 36 159 25n59 253

Deut 4:34 7 8:2 17 18:5 23 23:22–24 28:56 32:24 33:4 34:9

102 158 65 197 279 158 24 102 131n32 25n59 281

Josh 23:13

144n47

Judg 6:39

102

1 Sam 2 8 9:10–17 16:16 16:23 17:39 17:42 18:10 19:19 26:23

197 197 197 172 172 102 120n66 172 172 132n34

2 Sam 12:28

118n61

1 Kgs 1:48 3:9 5:12 5:14 5:20 10:23–24 14:5–6 17:1 18:27

272 200 39, 174 200 144n55 200 64 271 113

2 Kgs 2:9–11 3:15 17:11

281 172 218n15

287

Index of Ancient Sources 1 Chron 9:20 15:16–29 16 23:4 25 25:20

159 171 95 171 171 132n34

2 Chron 2:7 17:7–8 19:8–9 26:11 34:12–13 34:13

144n55 171 171 171n10 171 171n11

Ezra 1:5 2:2 2:40 2:70 3:8 3:10 3:12 6:18 7:1–6 7:2 7:6 7:7 7:10 7:11 7:13 7:14 7:16 7:24 7:25 7:27–28 8:20 8:29 9:1–4 9:1 10:5 10:15 10:23

156 163 156 156 156 156 156 156 156 157 160 156 156 152, 156 156 153 152 156 153 160 156 156 158 156 156 156 156

Neh 7:7 7:72–8:12

163 159

Est Job

Pss

8:9 13:25

171 158

4:11

144n55

3:5 3:15 3:31–32 4:1–4 7:4 9:5 20:14 23:9 28 28:12 28:20 28:23–27 32:16 42:16

131n32 58 58 58 135n41 144n55 142 131n32 58–59, 61, 63 58, 61 58, 62 58 272 272n32

2:2 22:9 33:6 33:9 37:5 45:2 57 60 65:14 73:6 74:21 78 96 96:6 105 106 107 113 136 148:14

200 118n55 171 171 118n55 160 95 95 131n32 131n32 142n48 26 95 197n70 26, 95 26, 95, 249 249 197 249, 255 249

Proverbs 1–9 1:1 1:6

23, 68 36, 48 218

288 Proverbs (cont.) 2:6 2:16 3:10–12 3:13–16 3:14 3:17–18 3:27 4 4:11 4:12–15 4:12 4:13 4:16 4:17–19 5:9–13 5:10 6:20 6:23 6:24 7:5 7:22–23 8–9 8 8:8–9 8:9 8:11–16 8:12–21 8:15–16 8:17 8:35 9:1–6 9:1 9:4 9:5 9:6 9:8 9:12 9:14 9:16 9:17 9:18 10–29 10–31 10:1 12:1 13:22 14:12

Index of Ancient Sources 57n5 64n36 95n21 58 95 58 95 64 63 63 63 63 63 63–64 95 64n36 23 58 64n36 64n36 57 63 20–21, 67 67 143n51 63 63 197 63 63 61 57, 63 57 57 57 57 63 57, 63 57 57 57 37, 44n46 23, 37 36, 48 58 50n57 57

15:10 16:10 16:13 16:25 19:12 20:2 23:6–8 24:21–22 24:23 24:26 25–29 25:1 25:9 28:15–16 29:2 29:4 29:17 31 31:1 31:3–5 31:4 Qoh (Eccl) 1:1 1:2 1:9 1:12–18 1:12 1:17 2:1 2:12 2:16 2:18 3:20 5:3–4 6:10 7:1 7:23 7:27 8:10–17 9:5 12:1–7 12:9 Isa

2:13 13:11 16:11

58 233 233 57 233 233 233 233 48 143n51 44n46 36, 48 219n17 197 197 197 114 23 48 197 26 25 48 229 58n11 48–49 144n47 102 25 49 50n59 24 24 144n55 49 102 48 58n11 49 49 173 132n33 199 142

289

Index of Ancient Sources 24:23 40:4 49:24 Jer

1:5 2:20

Lam 1:20 2:11

197n70 66 249 230, 272 67 142 142

Ezek 1:28 14:14 20:25 20:26

245 113n32 179n36 144n55

Dan 1:6 1:12 1:14

113n32 102 102

Hos 5:13 11:4

270 67

Joel 2:28

271n30

Zech 9:8

134n39

Deuterocanonical Books Tob 10:7

144n47

1 Macc 1:2–3 2:51–61 2:65 10

200 151n2, 152 137n43 248

2 Macc 1:18–36 1:27 3

162 250 195

3 Macc 2:29

218n15

Bar 3:9–4:4

58

Wis 1:1 2:22 6:1

200 22 200

Sir

Prologue (Gk.) 1 1:1–10 1:2–4 1:9–10 1:9 2:1–6 3:1–13 3:9 3:14 3:14–22 3:14–21 3:16 3:17 3:18 3:20 3:21–24 3:21–22 3:21 3:22 3:27 3:28 4:2 4:3–4 4:4 4:6 4:7 4:9 4:11–19 4:17–19 4:19 4:20 4:21 4:22 4:23–25

48–49, 152n4, 163, 216, 227–228 262, 268–76 61, 63, 69 62 62 277n36 64 94, 99 97 92, 94, 95, 96–97, 98, 99 97–99 93, 97 92, 98 98, 99, 107 94, 98, 109n20 109n19 65, 68, 98 228 92, 105n6 92 95, 105n6, 105n9 105n6 105n6, 109n20, 115, 121 141–42, 146 138n43 120n67 105n6, 120n67 108, 121 63, 69 64n36, 66–68 67, 112, 121 109 99 66–67, 107n13, 107n14 67

290 Sir (cont.) 4:23 4:24–25 4:24 4:25 4:28 4:31 5:1 5:3 5:4 5:5 5:6 5:8 5:9 5:9–13 5:10a 5:11 5:12 5:11 5:13 6:5–6 6:5 6:6–13 6:7 6:11 6:18–31 6:18–19 6:20–21 6:20 6:22 6:28 6:32–36 6:36 7:2 7:6 7:15 7:17 7:20 7:22 7:29–31 7:31 8:5 8:9 9:6 9:8 9:17–10:18 9:17–10:5 9:17–18

Index of Ancient Sources 106 66n50 92 67, 115n46 185n7 106–107 106–107 106, 110, 112, 121 106 99 99 106 116 95 95n21 95n21 95n21 111 115 107 109n20, 110, 112, 121 64n38 105n7, 107 109 66, 68–69 66 67 66 109n20 68 68 112, 121 99 114n42 115n44 115n44, 118n55 155n48 99 152 156 115 111, 121 114, 121 106 196–205 199 202

10:1–5 10:1 10:3 10:4 10:6–9 10:8–20 10:8 10:12–18 10:17 10:10 10:11 10:16 10:17 10:25 10:27 10:28 10:30 10:31 11:3 11:4 11:5 11:6 11:7 11:8 11:10 12:3 12:10–12 12:13 13:8 13:16 13:18 13:21 13:22 13:24 13:26 14–15 14:1 14:9 14:10 14:11 14:14 14:26 14:23 15:3 15:10 15:12 15:15 15:16

196–99, 202–204 115, 121 105, 145 200 198 185n7 198 196 112 106n11 109, 115, 121 113, 121, 122 121 112–113, 121 141n47 106, 115, 141n47 120n69 115, 122 117, 121, 128 128, 130–31 128 128, 132–33 128 128 109n19, 128 121 232 109n19, 114 109n20 108 115n43 108 113, 121 107, 116 108, 113, 121 96 112 109 107, 121 107–108, 114, 121 127 109n20 109n19 109n19 118, 168 118, 121 141n47 141n47

291

Index of Ancient Sources 16:3 16:4 16:9 16:15 16:18 16:22 16:26–30 20:13 20:22–23 21:19 22:22–23:9 23 24 24:1–22 24:3 24:11–12 24:23 24:25–34 24:30–33 24:30 24:33 25:7 25:24 27:5 27:17 27:21–24 30:12 30:17 30:20 30:21 30:23 31 31:2 31:5 31:11 31:13 31:15 31:16 31:17 31:21 32:1–6 32:5 32:7 32:11 32:14 32:16 32:18

120n65 133–34, 145 120n65 109n19 109 109n19 74n2 93 92 67 247 112 21, 62, 96, 156, 179, 262, 276–81 61 62 62 25n59, 62 216–217 68 224 171 232 99 106 101 232 120, 121 120, 121 120n65, 126 112 112n29 185 117, 121 116, 121 227 117, 121, 128 128, 143–44 128, 142–45, 146 143–44 119, 121 169 169 119n64 128 128 128, 134–36 127, 128, 136–40

32:19 32:21 32:22 33:11 33:16–19 33:16–17 34–37 34 34:1–6 34:2 34:21–35:13 35:18 35:21 35:26 36:9 36:13–14 36:19 36:27 36:29–31 36:29 36:31 37 37:2 37:3 37:19 37:22 37:24 37:26 37:27 37:30 37:31 38–39 38:1 38:4–7 38:18 38:25 38:34–39:11 38:34 39–49 39–40 39 39:1–12 39:1–11 39:4 39:6 39:7 39:9–11 39:12–35

137n43 128 128, 185n7 127 68 216, 224 246 128 65 27 152 136–40 127 140–41 186 250 93 120, 121 99–102 158 100 93 112 119 93 93 93 93 102 119n64 141n47 160 141n47 228 112 115n45, 119, 121 152 160, 168 109 247 167, 185, 220 164 68, 167–68 160 28, 160, 168, 225 168 225–27 167, 172, 178

292 Sir (cont.) 39:12 39:15–40:8 39:15 39:16–31 39:17 39:18–21 39:21 39:22–30 39:24 39:27 39:32 39:35 40:6 40:11 40:13 40:14 40:21 40:20 40:29 41:4 41:12 41:16 42–50 42 42:8 42:9 42:12 42:14 42:15–43:33 42:15 42:16–25 42:16–17 42:17 42:25 43:1–26 43:1 43:2 43:4 43:5 43:8 43:11 43:14 43:17 43:23–25 43:30–33 43:30 43:31 43:32–33

Index of Ancient Sources 168 240 167, 169n5, 170, 173, 177 21, 168–71 171 66 66 74n2 66 66 168 173 117, 121 119 119, 121 117 173 169 119n64 26 117, 121 92, 98, 117 244 247 141n47 141n47 120n69 141n47 21, 74, 83, 242 74, 76n8, 141n47 79 62 76n8, 119, 121 120 78, 80–81 82 82, 114 82, 120n65 111–112, 121 82 79, 82 114 117, 121 79, 81 82 79 76n8 62

44–50 44 44:1–16 44:1–15 44:1 44:5 44:7–9 44:8–9 44:12–15 44:13–14 45 45:6–22 45:17 45:22–50:5 45:22 45:23–24 45:23 45:24 46:13 47:1–12 47:5 47:7 47:8–11 47:8–10 47:9 47:10 47:11 47:13 49 49:1 49:5 49:11–12 49:13 49:14–16 49:14 50 50:1–28 50:1–24 50:1–21 50:1–4 50:4 50:5–10 50:5–8 50:5 50:7 50:8 50:11 50:13 50:14

21, 49–50, 151, 162, 242 220 50 164 51n61, 164 174n19 226 50 226–27 51 128, 204 145, 157 156 244n17 25n59 25n59 159 252n52 120n65 159 252n52 252n52 173 170 169–70 252n52 252n52 252n52 154 169 252n52 152, 157 152, 155–57 158 119, 121, 152 25, 204, 241–42, 253 151 157 184 157, 186 203 243, 245 240 244–45 245 114 252n52 157 196

293

Index of Ancient Sources 50:16 50:18–19 50:20 50:22 50:24 50:25 50:27

157 252 252 252 252 51 49, 51, 213–14, 218–20, 227n35, 242 219n18, 241 49, 51, 242, 252 232–33 255n59 141n47 241, 248–250, 252–57 242, 251 68 141n47, 248–49 83n45 170n7 257

4Q98 (4QPsq)

171n11

4Q184 (Wiles of the Wicked Woman) 1.9–10 60 1.12–14 60 1.17 60 4Q185

26

4Q200 (4QTobe) 4:3

144n55

4Q258 (4QSd) 9:8

173–74

4Q260 (4QSf ) 3:1 5:5

173–74 173

4Q271 (4QDf ) 3:6 3:7

144n47 144n47

4Q298

173n14

115n48

1QS 9:26–11:22 10.4 10:8–9 10:9 10:23

4Q379 (4QapocrJoshb) 6:2

144n47

172 111n25 172 173–74 173

4Q433a

173n14

4Q510–511

173n14

1QSa 1:3

11Q5 (11QPsa) 27

170–72

137n43

1QSb 4:24

137n43

1 En. 6–9 42:1–2

266 60

Josephus Ant. 8.298–303 11.338 12.142 12.145–46

173n17 194 194 194

Mart. Ascen. Isa. 10:7–8

270

51 51:1–12 51:1–7 51:11 51:12 51:12a–o 51:13–30 51:13–25 51:13 51:23 51:29 51:30

Other Second Temple Period Jewish Texts CD

11.12

1QHa

9:30_31 13.36 14:7 19:26

1QpHab 5:10 9:10

174 131n32 144n55 172 137n43 137n43

294 Philo Contempl. 80

Index of Ancient Sources

172–73

New Testament Matt 11:29 14:25

67 276

Mark 6:48

276

Luke 1:34 4:16–17

272 277

John 6:19 10:30 14:9 14:10 17:28 19:26

276 276 276 276 276 272

Acts 2:17

271n30

1 Cor 12:7

271

Col 2:4

269

Heb 11

151n2, 152

Rabbinic and Later Jewish Literature m. Avod. Zar. 5.7 t. Avod. Zar. 11a

113n36 113n32

m. Avot 3:1 4:22

250n42 250n42

Alphabet of Ben Sira

229–30, 233, 246

b. Ber. 28b

250–51

m. Beṣah 2:8

112n31

Emet Mah Nehedar

245, 248

b. Erubin 54a

67

Gen. Rab. 10:6 73:12

228, 246n24 256

y. Hag. 2:1

228

b. Meg. 18b 32a

165 179n36

y. Meg. 4.4

118n56

m. Menaḥ. 5.1

115n43

Pirqe Avot 3:6

67

Pesiq. Rab. 26

229n44

m. Sanh. 4:5

250n42

b. Sukkah 20a

154

295

Index of Ancient Sources Sepher Ha-Galuy

231–32

Manuscripts and Inscriptions

Tg. Job 11:19

117

Tg. Onq. Lev 26:6

P.Cair.Zen 1.59075 1.59076

202 202

117

P. Chester Beatty VI (P. B 10684)

52n62

Tg. Ps.J. Num 11:8

112n31

Tg. Prov. 16:26

SEG 14.71 29.1613

203 195

120n67

m. Yoma 3:4 3:7 7:1 7:3–5

SIG 3 578.8–20

176

243n14 243n14 253 243n14

OGIS 90 230

201 195

UPZ 1.14

202

Index of Modern Authors Abegg, Martin 99 n. 24, 100, 101, 108 n. 15, 117 n. 52 Abraha, Tedros 262 n. 1, 262 n. 4, 263 n. 11 Adams, Samuel 1, 2, 8, 43 n. 43, 47 n. 52, 49 n. 55 Adler, Herbert 245 n. 20 Aitken, James K. 9, 65 n. 43, 66 n. 45, 79 n. 25, 83 n. 42, 98 n. 23, 184 n. 3, 187 n. 19, 191 n. 42, 199 n. 85, 200 n. 88, 204 n. 102 Alehegne, Mersha 263 n. 5, 263 n. 7, 263 n. 8, 264 n. 13, 265 n. 19, 266, 267 n. 23 Alexander, Philip S. 185 n. 5 Althusser, Louis 179 n. 37 Argall, Randall A. 27 n. 67, 79 n. 22 Assefa, Daniel 268 n. 25 Bacher, Wilhelm 114 n. 38, 115 n. 44 Bagnall, Roger S. 191 n. 46 Baines, John 175 n. 23 Balla, Ibolya 62 n. 24, 64 n. 36, 67 n. 51 Barbour, Jennie 24 n. 56 Barton, John 34 n. 7 Bauman, Richard 34 n. 8, 35, 42 Bayer, Bathja 173 n. 17 Becker, Andrew 80 n. 30, 81 n. 33, 81 n. 35 Becking, Bob 153 n. 5 Beckwith, Roger T. 49 n. 54 Beentjes, Pancratius C. 61, 62 n. 24, 92 n. 3, 93, 95, 100 n. 25, 102, 108 n. 15, 113 n. 35, 117 n. 52, 121 n. 71, 130 n. 30, 157 n. 18, 219 n. 17 Behme, Timothy Donald 234 n. 53, 235 n. 55 Beit-Arié, Malachi 94 n. 14, 95 n. 17 Bekkum, Wout J. van 240 n. 4, 243 n. 11 Bell, Stanley 176 n. 28 Ben-Ḥayyim, Zeev 108 n. 15, 109 n. 21, 111 n. 25, 113 n. 35, 130 n. 30 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer 131 n. 32 Ben Zvi, Ehud 190 n. 39, 191 n. 44 Berenbaum, M. 84 n. 45 Bertrand, J. M. 195 n. 61 Bickerman, Elias J. 83 n. 45, 216 n. 10, 251 n. 45, 254 n. 58

Binyam, Yonatan 1 n. 1, 10 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 153 n. 6, 156 n. 12 Boccaccini, Gabriele 82 n. 40 Bokser, Ben Zion 251 n. 45 Böhmisch, Franz 247 n. 28, 247 n. 30, 247 n. 33 Bolin, Thomas M. 47 n. 53, 222 n. 25, 224 n. 31 Börner-Klein, Dagmar 246 n. 26 Bowersock, Glenn W. 188 n. 27 Box, G. H. 64 n. 32, 64 n. 34, 111 n. 25 Boyarin, Shamma 229 n. 41 Branham, Joan R. 246 n. 22 Braun, Joachim 173 n. 15, 173 n. 17 Briant, Pierre 192 n. 50 Briggs, Charles 34 n. 8, 35, 42 Bronznick, Norman 229 n. 42, 230 n. 45 Brown, Christopher Boyd 180 n. 38 Bruch, J. F. 23 n. 47 Budge, Wallis 262 n. 2 Bundrick, Sheramy 175 n. 24, 175 n. 25 Calduch-Benages, Nuría 65 n. 41, 65 n. 43, 65 n. 44, 66 n. 50, 67 n. 55, 79 n. 22, 79 n. 23, 79 n. 24, 82 n. 40, 82 n. 41, 119 n. 62, 130 n. 31, 155 n. 10, 184 n. 2, 194 n. 56, 198 n. 79, 203 n. 99 Camp, Claudia V. 62 n. 28, 68 n. 60, 93 n. 7, 93 n. 9, 94 Carr, David 23 n. 48 Carter, Warren 191 n. 39 Cavigneaux, Antoine 175 n. 21 Cerquiglini, Bernard 125 n. 1 Chambers, Ephraim 15 n. 3 Chaniotis, Angelos 203 n. 101 Charles, R. H. 42 n. 38 Charlesworth, James H. 270 n. 28 Charpin, Dominique 175 n. 21 Clarysse, Willy 193 n. 53 Collins, John J. 1 n. 1, 6, 17 n. 14, 18 n. 22, 21 n. 38, 22 n. 42, 22 n. 43, 22 n. 45, 24 n. 52, 25 n. 58, 56 n. 3, 83 n. 45, 151 n. 1, 154 n. 9, 158 n. 23, 162 n. 33, 163 n. 39 Cook, Johann 57 n. 7

297

Index of Modern Authors Corley, Jeremy 34 n. 6, 43 n. 43, 61, 62 n. 24, 62 n. 25, 64 n. 37, 64 n. 38, 66 n. 47, 69 n. 62, 93 n. 8, 94, 95 n. 19, 96, 101 n. 26, 126 n. 12, 226 n. 33, 227 n. 35 Cosgrove, Charles H. 169 n. 5 Cotton, Hannah M. 195 n. 64 Cowley, Arthur E. 109 n. 21, 240 n. 2 Cowley, Roger W. 265 n. 20, 267 n. 24, 266, 281 Crawford, Sidnie White 60 n. 19 Crenshaw, James 22 n. 40, 23, 25, 40 n. 32, 44 n. 45, 45 n. 48, 45 n. 49, 46 n. 51, 51, 58 n. 11, 63 n. 29, 64 n. 36, 65 n. 40, 66 n. 48, 68 n. 57, 68 n. 59, 84 n. 45 Curley, Edwin 165 n. 41 da Bassano, F. 266 n. 22 Danby, Herbert 253 n. 56 Davidson, Samuel E. 185 n. 7, 186 n. 10 Davis, Arthur 245 n. 20 Dell, Katharine 16 n. 11, 19 n. 29, 24 n. 56 deSilva, David A. 186 n. 14 Di Lella, Alexander A. 3 n. 4, 33 n. 1, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42 n. 37, 63 n. 29, 63 n. 30, 63 n. 32, 66 n. 49, 67 n. 52, 67 n. 56, 68 n. 57, 74 n. 1, 81 n. 37, 82 n. 40, 83 n. 45, 84 n. 45, 117 n. 52, 118 n. 59, 121 n. 74, 122, 130 n. 28, 130 n. 30, 131 n. 32, 188 n. 24, 188 n. 25, 188 n. 26, 189, 190 n. 37, 191, 194 n. 56, 197 n. 71, 197 n. 72, 198 n. 80, 198 n. 81, 198 n. 83, 199 n. 84, 199 n. 86, 219 n. 17, 240 n. 1, 242 n. 9, 245 n. 21, 248 n. 36, 248 n. 37, 252 n. 50, 252 n. 51, 255 n. 59 Dillmann, August 268 n. 25, 268 n. 26 Dimaggio, Anthony R. 189 n. 30 Dimant, Devorah 200 n. 89 Dhont, Marieke 133 n. 37 Doran, Robert 163 n. 35, 163 n. 36 Droysen, Johann Gustav 187 n. 18, 192 Dubel, Sandra 75 n. 7, 76 n. 8, 76 n. 9, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21, 79 n. 27, 81 n. 34, 81 n. 36, 82 n. 39 Duggan, Michael W. 156 n. 13, 159 n. 25, 164 Edwards, Douglas 195 n. 63 Edwards, Mark 80 n. 31, 81 n. 35, 81 n. 36 Egger-Wenzel, Renate 95 n. 18

Efrati, N. 84 n. 45 Eidevall, Göran 190 n. 39 Eissfeldt, Otto 38 n. 22, 39 n. 23, 41 n. 34 Elbogen, Ismar 243 n. 11, 249 n. 41 Elizur, Shulamit 94 n. 12, 95, 247 n. 28 Elsner, Jaś 77 n. 16, 83 n. 44 Elwolde, John 114 n. 40 Engel, Edna 108 n. 17 Erlich, Haggai 267 n. 24 Esdros, Mämher 265 Ferrar, William 185 n. 8 Ferrer, Joan 130 n. 31 Fischer, Thomas 195 n. 61 Fishbane, Michael 158 n. 21 Fleischer, Ezra 246, 247 n. 27, 247 n. 29, 247 n. 30, 247 n. 31, 247 n. 32, 247 n. 33, 250, 251 n. 45, 251 n. 46, 255 n. 59 Fontaine, Carol R. 20 n. 31 Fowler, Alistair 18 n. 24 Fox, Michael 19 n. 30, 20, 21 n. 35, 22 n. 39, 24 n. 55, 43 n. 42, 44 n. 46, 57 n. 5, 57 n. 7, 57 n. 8, 58 n. 9 Frédéric, Madeleine 129 n. 25 Frey, Jörg 187 n. 17 Fried, Lisbeth 153 n. 5, 153 n. 6, 160 n. 29 Friedländer, Paul 75 n. 3, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21 Frow, John 19 n. 26 García Martínez, Florentino 172 n. 13 Garcia, Miguel Angel 263 n. 10, 263 n. 12, 266 Gemser, Berend 44 n. 46 Genette, Gerard 213, 214 n. 4 Gera, Dov 195 n. 64 Gesche, Petra D. 175 n. 22 Ghormley, Justus 125 n. 3, 128 n. 23, 129 n. 27 Gibson, Margaret 240 Goering, Greg Schmidt 2 n. 3, 26 n. 61, 62 n. 26, 62 n. 27, 82 n. 41, 201 n. 91, 201 n. 92, 202 n. 95, 204 n. 103 Goff, Matthew 1, 10, 20 n. 34, 21 n. 36, 21 n. 37, 22 n. 42, 57 n. 6, 57 n. 7, 59 n. 13, 59 n. 16, 60 n. 17, 60 n. 19, 60 n. 20, 60 n. 21, 68 n. 60, 146 n. 58, 246 n. 25 Goldhill, Simon 77 n. 14 Golka, Friedemann W. 35 n. 9

298 Gordis, Robert 40 n. 28 Gordley, Matthew 177 n. 33 Grabbe, Lester 155 n. 11 Greenstein, Edward L. 45 n. 47, 46 n. 50, 59 n. 12 Gregory, Bradley C. 1, 6, 7, 197 n. 72, 199 n. 86, 276 n. 35 Gunkel, Hermann 23 Hadot, Pierre 177 n. 35, 180 n. 39 Hagel, Stefan 176 n. 26 Halligan, John M. 204 n. 104 Hanson, Ann Ellis 215 n. 8 Harkavy, Abraham E. 231 n. 46 Harrington, Daniel 83 n. 45 Harris, Scott L. 24 n. 51 Heffernan, James 75 n. 3, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21 Heinemann, Joseph 251 n. 47, 251 n. 49 Hempel, Charlotte 173 n. 14 Hengel, Martin 158 n. 22, 185 n. 6, 186 n. 14, 187 n. 16, 187 n. 17, 187 n. 19, 194 n. 59, 214, 215 n. 7, 217 Hermisson, Hans-Jürgen 36 n. 11 Heyer, Friedrich 265 Himmelfarb, Martha 160 n. 30 Hitzig, Ferdinand 185 n. 7 Höffken, Peter 156 n. 15 Hoffman, Lawrence A. 255 n. 61 Hogan, Karina Martin 59 n. 13 Hölbl, Günther 201 n. 90 Horsley, Richard A. 16 n. 8, 26 n. 63, 27 n. 64, 27 n. 65, 27 n. 66, 190 n. 32, 201 n. 91, 202 n. 96, 204

Index of Modern Authors Kasher, Rimon 117 n. 54, 120 n. 66 Kevorkian, Tanya 180 n. 38 Kilmer, A. D. 175 n. 21 Kirk, Geoffrey 80 n. 31 Kister, Menahem 142 n. 49, 144 n. 53, 243 n. 11 Koch, Klaus 44 n. 44, 44 n. 46, 47 König, Eduard 126 n. 6 Krispijn, Theo J. H. 175 n. 21 Krüger, Thomas 49 n. 56 Krupp, Michael 253 n. 56 Kübler, Ralf 253 n. 56 Kugel, James L. 40, 42, 129 n. 26 Kuhrt, Amélie 187 n. 21 Kynes, Will 6, 15 n. 1, 15 n. 7, 16 n. 10, 16 n. 12, 23 n. 47, 24 n. 56, 28, 29 n. 72

Jassen, Alex P. 190 n. 39 Jastrow, Marcus 111 n. 26, 117 n. 53 Jellinek, Adolf 134 Johnson, Paul 188 n. 24 Joosten, Jan 3 n. 5

Labendz, Jenny R. 228 n. 37, 228 n. 38, 228 n. 39, 243 n. 11, 246 n. 24 Landau, Yehuda H. 195 n. 61 Langer, Ruth 251 n. 45, 251 n. 48 Larsen, Matthew 215 n. 8 Lee, Ralph 262 n. 3, 266 Lehmann, Manfred R. 243 n. 11 Lemaire, André 84 n. 45 Lenzi, Alan 190 n. 39 Lévi, Israel 93 n. 6, 108 n. 15, 110 n. 24, 111 n. 25, 113 n. 33, 113 n. 34, 113 n. 35, 114 n. 37, 126 n. 7, 126 n. 9, 126 n. 11, 126 n. 13, 127 n. 15, 128, 129, 130 n. 28, 140 n. 45, 142, 168 n. 4, 249 n. 41, 253 n. 58 Levinson, Bernard M. 24 n. 53 Lewis, Agnes 240 Lieber, Laura S. 240 n. 4 Liesen, Jan 65 n. 42, 66 n. 47, 130 n. 31, 168 n. 2, 170 n. 9 Lim, Timothy 171 n. 12 Lohfink, Norbert 38 n. 18 Lombardo, Michael 176 n. 28 Lonsdale, Steven 80 n. 28, 80 n. 32, 81 n. 35 Lowe, Alan D. 241 n. 5 Lucas, Christopher J. 175 n. 21 Lynch, Tosca 176 n. 26

Kaiser, Otto 79 n. 22 Kallberg, Jeffery 244 n. 18 Kalmar, Ivan Davidson 189 n. 29

Ma, John 195 n. 62 Mack, Burton L. 151 n. 1, 213 n. 3, 214 n. 6, 215, 217

Instone-Brewer, David 250 n. 43 Irwin, William H. 64 n. 38 Isaac, Benjamin H. 194 n. 60 Iwry, Samuel 111 n. 25

Index of Modern Authors Manning, Joseph G. 192 n. 47, 192 n. 49, 193 n. 52, 193 n. 54, 194 n. 57, 202 n. 94 Manoff, Itamar 213 n. 3 Marböck, Johannes 63 n. 29, 65 n. 43, 66 n. 46, 66 n. 48, 67 n. 53, 67 n. 55, 67 n. 56, 74 n. 2, 83 n. 45, 184 n. 1, 203 n. 98 Marcus, Joseph 247 n. 28 Margoliouth, D. S. 126 n. 5 Marmorstein, Arthur 249 n. 41, 250 n. 43 Marshall, David 80 n. 31 Martin, James D. 36 n. 11 Martin, Richard P. 176 n. 30, 177 n. 32 Marttila, Marko 154 n. 7, 154 n. 8, 156 n. 14, 158 n. 24, 197 n. 71, 197 n. 73, 197 n. 75 Marx, Dalia 243 n. 11 McKane, William 36 n. 13, 37 n. 14, 38, 39 McKechnie, Paul 232, 233 n. 52 Michalowski, Piotr 175 n. 21 Middendorp, Theophilus 197, 198 n. 77, 236 n. 59, 248 n. 36, 249 n. 41, 250 n. 43 Mies, Françoise 242 n. 8, 248 n. 35, 249 n. 38, 249 n. 39, 249 n. 41, 250 n. 42, 252 n. 52, 252 n. 53, 254 n. 58 Minissale, Antonino 79 n. 22, 110 n. 22, 114 n. 42 Mirsky, Aharon 240 n. 4, 243 n. 11 Mirsky, Mark Jay 230 n. 45 Mitchell, Christine 184 n. 4, 190 n. 31 Montesquieu, Charles 193 Morla, Victor 74 n. 1, 108 n. 15, 111 n. 25, 113 n. 35, 117 n. 52 Mopsik, Charles 143 n. 52, 249 n. 41 Moyer, Ian S. 188 n. 23, 191 n. 45, 192 n. 48 Mroczek, Eva 2 n. 2, 9, 10, 160 n. 28, 161 n. 31, 164 n. 40, 213 n. 3, 216 n. 11, 222 n. 24, 233 n. 52, 241 n. 6, 248 n. 35, 256 n. 62 Mulder, Otto 242 n. 9, 245 n. 21, 248 n. 36, 249 n. 38, 250 n. 43, 252 n. 51 Müller, Hans-Peter 59 n. 14 Murphy, Roland E. 17 n. 13, 17 n. 16, 37 n. 17, 40 n. 27 Najman, Hindy 20 n. 34, 163 n. 37, 213 n. 3, 222 n. 23, 223 n. 28, 225 n. 32, 232 n. 51 Neubauer, Adolf 109 n. 21, 240 n. 2 Newman, Judith H. 190 n. 34, 190 n. 36, 190 n. 38, 191 n. 43, 257 n. 63

299 Newsom, Carol 18 n. 22, 19 n. 27, 174 n. 20 Nickelsburg, George W. E. 27 n. 68, 59 n. 14 Norlin, George 234 n. 54 Ó Fearghail, Fearghus 242 n. 9 Oesterley, W. O. E. 64 n. 32, 64 n. 34, 111 n. 25 O’Leary, Brendan 192 n. 51 Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith 108 n. 17, 141 n. 47 Olyan, Saul 157 n. 17 Orlinsky, Harry M. 49 n. 54 Parker, Benjamin 99 n. 24, 100, 101 Parkinson, Robert 175 n. 23 Patillon, Michel 75 n. 4, 77 n. 19 Pedrick, Victoria 79 n. 27 Peirano, Irene 214 n. 5, 235 n. 57, 235 n. 58 Penner, Jeremy 170 n. 7 Penslar, Derek Jonathan 189 n. 29 Perdue, Leo G. 57 n. 4, 83 n. 45, 191 n. 39 Peters, Norbert 81 n. 37, 82 n. 38, 83 n. 45, 104 n. 3, 111 n. 25, 130 n. 28, 137 n. 43 van Peursen, W. Th. 111 n. 25, 111 n. 27, 134 n. 39 Pietersma, Albert 97 n. 22, 130 n. 31, 219 n. 16 Pinette, Shannon Burkes 59 n. 15, 68 n. 58, 70 n. 63 Piwowar, Andrzej 154 n. 7 Pöhlmann, Egert 176 n. 26 Pohlmann, Karl-Friedrich 155 n. 11 Portier-Young, Anathea E. 59 n. 14, 194 n. 58 Prato, Gian Luigi 196 n. 65, 198, 199 n. 84, 199 n. 86 Putnam, Michael 81 n. 33 Rabe, Hugo 75 n. 5, 75 n. 6, 76 n. 13, 77 n. 19 Rabinowitz, Nancy 79 n. 27 Rad, Gerhard von 36 n. 11, 58 n. 10, 61 n. 23, 70 n. 63 Rajak, Tessa 187 n. 15, 199 n. 87 Rapoport, S. J. 240 n. 2 Ray, John 202 n. 94 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 213 n. 3, 221 n. 20, 222 n. 22, 223 n. 26 Reiterer, Friedrich V. 79 n. 22, 110 n. 24 Rey, Jean-Sébastien 3 n. 5, 8, 94 n. 16, 95, 104 n. 4, 104 n. 5, 108 n. 17, 108 n. 18,

300 Rey, Jean-Sébastien (cont.) 109 n. 19, 109 n. 20, 112 n. 30, 113 n. 35, 113 n. 36, 114 n. 38, 114 n. 40, 115 n. 44, 117 n. 52, 118 n. 60, 120 n. 65, 130 n. 29, 133 n. 37, 142 n. 49, 180 n. 39, 232 n. 50 Reymond, Eric D. 7, 8, 50 n. 60, 74 n. 1, 81 n. 37, 98 n. 23, 102 n. 28, 111 n. 28, 113 n. 32, 134 n. 39 Rickenbacher, Otto 63 n. 31, 64 n. 32, 64 n. 33, 65 n. 39, 84 n. 45 Rogers, Jessie 68 n. 61 Roth, Cecil 10, 243 n. 11, 243 n. 13, 243 n. 15, 244 n. 17, 245 n. 20 Rüger, Hans Peter 91 n. 1, 92 n. 2, 125 n. 4, 128 n. 20, 128 n. 21, 130 n. 28, 130 n. 30, 131 n. 32, 132 n. 35, 134 n. 39, 247 n. 33 Ryssel, Viktor 127 n. 16 Said, Edward 187 n. 22, 188 n. 28 Sanders, Jack T. 236 n. 59 Sanders, Seth L. 34 n. 8 Sauer, Georg 42, 43 n. 41, 74 n. 2, 79 n. 23, 79 n. 24, 82 n. 39, 198 n. 78, 199 n. 86 Saunders, Trevor J. 179 n. 37 Schäfer, Peter 253 n. 57 Schams, Christine 171 n. 10 Schechter, Solomon 104 n. 2, 108 n. 15, 113 n. 33, 113 n. 34, 113 n. 35, 114 n. 37, 134 n. 38, 145 n. 56, 231 n. 47, 240, 250 n. 43 Schellenberg, Annette 25 n. 57 Schipper, Bernd 24 n. 51 Schirmann, Jefim 130 n. 28, 130 n. 30, 247 n. 27, 247 n. 29, 247 n. 30 Schmelzer, Menahem 255 n. 61 Schmidt, A. Jordan 7 Schmidt, Johannes 36 n. 13 Schnabel, Eckhard J. 157 n. 19 Schofield, Malcolm 77 n. 14 Schökel, Alonso 79 n. 23, 82 n. 41 Schorch, Stefan 102 n. 27 Schouler, Bernard 77 n. 18, 79 n. 26, 83 n. 44 Schreiner, Josef 196 n. 66, 197 n. 72, 198 n. 77, 198 n. 78 Schürer, Emil 186 n. 12, 249 n. 41 Segal, Moshe 82 n. 38, 111 n. 25, 114 n. 41, 120 n. 68, 127 n. 17, 128, 130 n. 28, 135 n. 40, 135 n. 41, 135 n. 42, 138 n. 43, 139 n. 43, 143 n. 50, 243 n. 11, 250 n. 43

Index of Modern Authors Sherwin-White, Susan 187 n. 21 Shupak, Nili 20 n. 32 Silverman, Jason 203 n. 100 Sjöberg, Ä. W. 175 n. 21, 175 n. 22 Skehan, Patrick W. 3 n. 4, 33 n. 1, 42 n. 37, 63 n. 29, 63 n. 30, 63 n. 32, 66 n. 49, 67 n. 52, 67 n. 56, 68 n. 57, 74 n. 1, 81 n. 37, 82 n. 40, 83 n. 45, 84 n. 45, 131 n. 32, 188 n. 24, 188 n. 25, 189, 190 n. 37, 194 n. 56, 197 n. 71, 197 n. 72, 198 n. 80, 198 n. 81, 198 n. 83, 199 n. 84, 199 n. 86, 219 n. 17, 240 n. 1, 242 n. 9, 245 n. 21, 246 n. 23, 248 n. 36, 248 n. 37, 252 n. 50, 252 n. 51, 255 n. 59 Skelton, David 8, 9 Smend, Rudolf 63 n. 29, 81 n. 37, 105 n. 7, 111 n. 25, 113 n. 32, 113 n. 33, 113 n. 34, 113 n. 35, 114 n. 37, 114 n. 39, 120 n. 65, 130 n. 28, 137 n. 43, 138 n. 43, 158 n. 20, 168 n. 4, 173 n. 18, 186 n. 14, 187, 188, 196 n. 67, 196 n. 69, 197 n. 70, 248 n. 36, 248 n. 37, 253 n. 55 Smith, Morton 213 n. 3 Snaith, John G. 66 n. 50, 186 n. 14 Sneed, Mark 6, 15 n. 5, 17 n. 17, 17 n. 20, 20, 22 n. 44, 23 n. 46, 27, 28 n. 69, 56 n. 3 Sokoloff, Michael 111 n. 26 Sparks, Kenton 17 n. 18, 17 n. 19, 17 n. 21 Spivak, Gayatri 190 n. 35 Stemberger, Günther 246 n. 24 Stern, David 229 n. 41, 229 n. 43, 229 n. 44, 230 n. 45 Stoffregen-Pedersen, Kirsten 262 n. 1, 262 n. 4, 263 n. 11, 265 n. 18, 266 n. 21 Stökl, Jonathan 190 n. 39 Stone, Michael 83 n. 45 Stowe, David 180 n. 38 Strack, H. L. 246 n. 24 Strine, Casey A. 190 n. 39 Stuckenbruck, Loren T. 213 n. 3, 222 n. 21 Swales, John 18 n. 25 Swartz, Michael D. 240 n. 3, 243 n. 10, 243 n. 11, 243 n. 12, 244 n. 19, 255 n. 60 Tabory, Joseph 249 n. 41, 251 n. 46 Tacke, Nikolaus 175 n. 23 Talmon, Shemaryahu 129 n. 24, 132 n. 36, 145 n. 57

Index of Modern Authors Taylor, Charles 104 n. 2, 108 n. 15, 113 n. 33, 113 n. 34, 113 n. 35, 114 n. 37, 134 n. 38, 250 n. 43 Tell, Håkan 177 n. 32 Thompson, Dorothy J. 193 n. 53, 202 n. 94 Tigchelaar, Eibert J. C. 172 n. 13 Tiller, Patrick A. 16 n. 8, 27 n. 64, 27 n. 66, 201 n. 91, 202 n. 96, 204 Tooman, William 26 n. 63 Tov, Emanuel 128, 129 n. 24 Towes, Casey 108 n. 15, 117 n. 52 Tropper, Josef 268 n. 26 Ueberschaer, Frank 7, 63 n. 30, 67 n. 54, 111 n. 28, 253 n. 56, 256 n. 62 Urbanz, Werner 252 n. 54 Uusimäki, Elisa 1 n. 1, 180 n. 39 Van den Berg, R. M. 177 n. 34 VanderKam, James C. 59 n. 14, 245 n. 21 Vanstiphout, H. L. J. 175 n. 21 Vasunia, Phiroze 187 n. 20, 188 n. 23 Vayntrub, Jacqueline 6, 35 n. 9, 36 n. 11, 36 n. 12, 45 n. 47, 223 n. 29, 224 Veltri, Giuseppe 247 n. 33 Volk, Konrad 175 n. 21 Volz, Paul 44 n. 46 Waetzoldt, Hartmut 175 n. 21 Wallace, Robert W. 176 n. 27 Watson, Gerard 77 n. 14 Webb, Ruth 75 n. 3, 75 n. 7, 76 n. 11, 76 n. 12, 77 n. 14, 77 n. 15, 77 n. 18, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21, 79 n. 26, 79 n. 27, 82 n. 39, 83 n. 44 Weber, Gregor 191 n. 42 Weeks, Stuart 6, 15 n. 1, 15 n. 6, 20 n. 33, 23 n. 49, 24 n. 54, 28 n. 70, 28 n. 71, 38 n. 21, 41 n. 36, 43 n. 43, 51 n. 61, 57 n. 5 Weinberger, Leon J. 243 n. 11 Weinfeld, Moshe 26 n. 60

301 Weinrein, Uriel 128 n. 21 Wente, Edward F. 175 n. 23 West, M. L. 176 n. 26 Westermann, Claus 35 n. 9, 36 n. 10, 39 Whybray, R. N. 38, 39 Wicke-Reuter, Ursel 170 n. 6 Wieder, Arnold A. 243 n. 11 Williams, Ronald J. 175 n. 23 Williamson, H. G. M. 156 n. 12 Wills, Lawrence M. 27 n. 64 Wischmeyer, Oda 82 n. 40, 83 n. 45 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 18 n. 23 Wörrle, K. 195 n. 64 Wright, Benjamin G. 9, 10, 16 n. 9, 17 n. 15, 19 n. 28, 21, 27 n. 64, 61 n. 22, 66 n. 45, 68 n. 60, 79 n. 25, 83 n. 42, 83 n. 43, 97 n. 22, 121 n. 72, 127 n. 14, 130 n. 31, 141 n. 46, 152 n. 3, 160 n. 28, 164 n. 40, 190 n. 33, 190 n. 35, 190 n. 36, 191 n. 40, 191 n. 41, 196 n. 66, 197 n. 70, 197 n. 71, 197 n. 74, 198 n. 78, 198 n. 80, 198 n. 82, 199 n. 84, 203 n. 97, 213 n. 2, 215, 216 n. 9, 219 n. 16, 219 n. 17, 228 n. 36, 228 n. 37, 228 n. 40, 229 n. 43, 231 n. 47, 231 n. 48, 231 n. 49, 232 n. 50, 236 n. 59, 241 n. 6, 249 n. 40 Yadin, Yigael 74 n. 1, 81 n. 37, 128 n. 22 Yahalom, Joseph 240 n. 3, 243 n. 10, 243 n. 11, 243 n. 12, 244 n. 19, 246 n. 23, 255 n. 60 Yassif, Eli 229 n. 41, 246 n. 26 Zanker, Graham 75 n. 3, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21 Zapff, Burkard 79 n. 24, 82 n. 38, 82 n. 39, 82 n. 40, 83 n. 45 Zeidman, Y. A. 243 n. 11 Zeitlin, Froma 75 n. 3, 78 n. 20, 78 n. 21 Zeitlin, Solomon 254 n. 58 Ziegler, Joseph 218, 219 Ziegler, Nele 175 n. 21 Zumthor, Paul 8, 146 n. 59 Zunz, Leopold 240 n. 2, 245