The Wisdom of Ben Sira or Sirach
Edited by
Philippe Guillaume [+–]
University of Berne
Philippe Guillaume is Lecturer at the University of Berne. His latest publications are A History of Biblical Israel co-authored with Ernst Axel Knauf (Equinox, 2016) and Deuteronomy in the Making, Studies in the Production of Debarim, edited with Diana Edelman, Benedetta Rossi and Kåre Berge (De Gruyter, 2021).
William Krisel [+–]
Institut Catholique de Paris
William Krisel is a lecturer at Institut Catholique de Paris (Catholic University of Paris). His recent publications include Judges 19–21 and the “Othering” of Benjamin: A Golah Polemic against the Autochthonous In- habitants of the Land? Leiden: Brill, 2022; “Methodological Problems in Intertextual Analyses of Old Testament Texts: Genesis 19 and Judges 19 as a Case Study,” SJOT 36:2 (2022); “Was the Levite’s Concubine Unfaithful or Angry? A Proposed Solution to the Text Critical Problem in Judges 19:2,” OTE 33, 2 (2020).
The Book of Sirach, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus son of Eleazar or Ecclesiasticus is was written in Hebrew but is not included in the Hebrew Bible. It is found in the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Christian Old Testament, except the Protestant, where modern biblical editions place it among the apocrypha.
Sirach was know in antiquity from its Greek translation produced by the author’s grandson in Alexandria sometimes around 117 BCE. The Prologue added by the translator enables to date the production of the Hebrew text between 196 and 175 BCE. The Prologue is considered to be the earliest witness to the tripartite organization of the Hebrew biblical canon.
Sirach scholarship is experiencing a floruit of scholarly studies with the publication of new tools such as the Synoptic edition of the Hebrew, Greek, Syriac and Latin texts by Renate Egger-Wenzel (Leuven: Peeters 2022), A Critical Edition of the Hebrew Manuscripts of Ben Sira by Frédérique Michèle Rey and Eric D. Reymond (Leiden 2024), a new commentary by Walter T. Wilson (Grand Rapids 2023) and ongoing work on another commentary by Matthew Goff and Greg Goering (Eerdmans, forthcoming). This volume joins the chorus with over a dozen chapters covering the main themes—the complexity of the different textual witnesses, the Hellenistic character of Sirach, its use of biblical historical figures and Psalms, the way to obtain wisdom, its take on dreams and the origins of evil, scribal education, its theological and anthropological conceptions, as well as the reception of Ecclesiaticus in the early church and in the Medieval west. Issues cover challenges to commonly accepted truths such as Ben Sira’s social and economic status, his location and his optimism.
