Sirach — Ecclesiasticus (The Wisdom of Ben Sira)
c. 180 BCE (Hebrew); c. 132 BCE (Greek translation by grandson) · Hellenistic Judea (early 2nd century BCE) · Jerusalem
Chapter I — On the Fear of the Lord
Chapter III — On Filial Piety
Chapter VI — On Friendship
Chapter IX — On Women and Wine
Chapter XI — Not to Judge by Appearance
Chapter XVIII — On the Nature of Man
Chapter XXVIII — On Anger
Chapter XXXVIII — On the Physician
Chapter XLIV — Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
notes
Sirach — also called Ecclesiasticus ("the Church Book," so named for its heavy use in early Christian catechesis) or the Wisdom of Ben Sira — is a Jewish wisdom text written in Hebrew by Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira in Jerusalem around 180 BCE. His grandson translated it into Greek in Alexandria around 132 BCE and added a preface explaining the challenges of translation, which is one of the earliest reflections on that subject in Western literature. Sirach is included in the Old Testament canon of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches, but is regarded as Apocrypha by Protestant and Jewish traditions. Fragments of the original Hebrew text (long lost) were rediscovered in the Cairo Geniza in the late 19th century and among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and Masada in the 20th, allowing scholars to compare Ben Sira's Hebrew to his grandson's Greek. The book is the most substantial and systematic work of Jewish wisdom literature from the Second Temple period. It covers the full range of practical ethics — filial piety, friendship, marriage, wealth, honour, work, medicine, table manners — with the concluding hymn ("Let us now praise famous men," Chapter 44) surveying the great heroes of Israel from Enoch through Simon the High Priest. The famous opening of Chapter 44 — "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us" — provided James Agee and Walker Evans with the title of their 1941 study of Alabama sharecroppers ("Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"), among many other literary appropriations. Translation: King James Version Apocrypha, 1611. Public domain.
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