Sirach

Jesus Sirach (or Ben Sira, the Siracide, the Sirach book, abbreviated Sir) belongs to the so-called late writings of the Old Testament. The book is named after its author, who wrote down the original Hebrew version in Jerusalem around 190/180 BC.

The author lived in a world dominated by Hellenism and ran a Jewish "house of learning" modeled on a Greek school of philosophy. His writing probably grew out of this teaching and is therefore a kind of textbook. Ben Sira presented an overall outline of Israel's religious traditions that was modern for the time; he attempted to combine temple worship, Torah, and wisdom. Practical advice takes up a great deal of space, and no other biblical author deals with the topics of marriage, family and friendship in such detail as Ben Sira. He also imparted to his students a certain cosmopolitanism that was desirable for their later activities; this is probably why he discussed appropriate behavior at a symposium, education through travel, or the benefits of medicine.

Around 130/120 BC, the grandson of Ben Sirah, who himself remains anonymous, wrote a translation into Greek in Alexandria. This begins a history of updates of the Book of Sirach in both Hebrew and Greek versions. These are, as it were, extended new editions, made with a sideways glance at the other language version in each case. The Greek Sirachbuch was incorporated into the broad stream of tradition of the Septuagint. The Hebrew Sirach, on the other hand, did not enter the canon of Jewish sacred writings and was not handed down in late antiquity. It then circulated once again in medieval Jewish communities, probably due to ancient textual discoveries. Then it disappeared again and reappeared since 1896 in fragments in the Cairo Geniza, later in Qumran and Masada, but incomplete.

The Book of Sirach is a border crosser between religions and denominations: Although it was never considered sacred scripture in Judaism, the Talmud argued with Ben Sira as if he were a rabbi. Ben Sira endowed the woman Wisdom with features of the Egyptian deity Isis. Identified with Mary, she is invoked in Catholic devotion as "Mother of Beautiful Love." In the same context, some plants were taken from the Sirach text as symbols of Mary. Martin Luther removed the Book of Sirach from the Old Testament and placed it among the Apocrypha; but in Lutheranism it was widely read in the 16th and 17th centuries and inspired church music. In late antiquity and then again in the early modern period, the Sirach book was a kind of advice literature in Christendom.

Outline of the book

Ben Sira apparently did not compose his textbook in one go, but took ready-made sapiential and hymnal texts, combined them with shorter texts he had composed himself, and edited them in several spurts. It is often assumed that the work is divided into three parts, with the small-scale series of proverbs and aphorisms in the first and second main sections standing in marked contrast to the large-scale compositions of chapter 24 on the one hand and the through-composed third main section on the other. Autobiographical notes and prayer texts are structuring signals.

The following outline follows a suggestion by Johannes Marböck: