The Wisdom of Ben Sira.

II (Continued)
Author(s): C. Taylor
Source: The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1903, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Jul., 1903), pp. 604-626
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

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604 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA.

(Continued from p. 474.)

II.

3. Additional Notes on Chapters III-XVI.

IN what follows use is made of the readings and notes of

Dr. Peters, Dr. Strack, and Mr. Cowley.
The full and learned treatise of Dr. Norbert Peters on
the Hebrew Text of Ecclus. (9Io2) gives a list of previous
editions and other " mehr oder minder benutzte Litteratur"
(pp. vii-xi), including Mr. Cowley's Notes on the Cambridge
Texts of Ben Sira (J. Q.R., XII, 109-III); Prof. Bevan's
review; the present writer's Studies in Ben Sira (J. . R.,
X, 470 f., 1898), but not his article quoted herein as J. T. S.
See p. 44I of this volume.
Prof. Dr. Hermann L. Strack has recently brought out
an excellent and inexpensive edition of the Text from the
Facsimiles, with short critical notes. A copy of it reached
me immediately after the completion of Part I of this
article.

Mr. Cowley's article begins thus (J. Q.R., XII, og9):

"The following notes are the result of three days' study
of the Hebrew fragments in the possession of Dr. Schechter.
I went very carefully through the MSS., comparing them
with the printed text in the Wisdom of Ben Sira, edited
by Prof. Schechter and Dr. Taylor, and noting every point
in which there was reason to differ from the reading
adopted by the editors. The text is, however, so accurately
reproduced that there is very little to alter in it, and

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 605

the proposed changes are mostly unimportant,

passages in which the reading must remain a
individual opinion.... With regard to MS. A, i
mentioning that, though the writing is distinct
well preserved, some letters . . .are often ha
tinguishable."
But the recension of the text attributed to the two
Cambridge editors is, except in a single folio, the work
of one editor only. In the Preface to the Cambridge
edition I wrote (p. vi), "Of the Text in manuscript I
have as yet read only the ninth folio (ch. 49. 12-50. 22),
which was published as the first of Dr. Schechter's
Genizah Specimens in No. 38 of the Jewish Quarterly
Review (Jan. 1898)." I had read this folio, the last but
two of MS. B in the Facsimiles, before it was published as
a specimen, and contributed a conjecture or two to the first
edition of it 1; but I took no part in the first decipherment
of the other Cambridge fragments. Here and there I
speculated about readings in them, but only with reference
to the printed text as prepared by Dr. Schechter for our
edition, the originals not being at the moment accessible.
In this paragraph Mr. Cowley's notes are in italics.
Chap. v. 4. For 1pK read J1. There is a dot above the
alef; but it does not appear why. In the next line there is
one over ntzn. Line 14 of the page has triads of dots
right and left of it, but those on the left are given to the
right of line 15 in the printed text. Another dotted word
is etwi at the end of A (p. 474). vi. 7. For vD'?:z
read pDln. vii. I6. For l:wnn read 1'mrinn.
2i. After vwn there is a hole: a letter may be lost. After
it Dr. Schechter writes ~K, Dr. Peters 51. xii. 14 marg.
For ly read tr; it should be one line higher: perhaps a
variantfor 1ti. xiii. 6. For ITI. read T1. The yod
may be a repetition from Tr5 in the line above. xiv. 13
See in particular my reading of . N ...... anl ,b:, repeated in the
footnote on Sir. 1. 9 in Camb. B.S., but not adopted in the " Notes on th
Text" (p. 64).

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6o6 THEE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

For nin read nrn. Part of in is torn away. 16 . For

43M above the line read Nb ; the correction is not quite
distinct, and so is repeated in the margin. I8 c marg.
For ninno read nrnln. The scribe wrote and drew a line
through nnims T, and then wrote '1n: nlvv :. 27. For
imnzn read r'nisryn . xv. 3. For innrKml read
rnn5:~mn. Mr. Cowley's other notes on A are given
separately below. xxx. 19 marg. For In, read per-
haps . 1n, and note that Schechter gives t:n as an alter-
native (Camb. B. S., p. 54). xxxv. 20. For n read n,,,
All this illustrates the remark, "When the writing is indis-
tinct mem may be read as or for he, ..." (p. 471).
Sir. iii. 17. And thou shalt be more beloved than one
that giveth gifts. Dr. Peters goes a step in the direction
of the proposed emendation of Gr. (p. 442), and reads:-

Kal v7Trp vOpon7rov eKTiov7 a&ya7rrlO4rn-.

Here bOTrKOV, for Heb. giving gifts, makes better sense, and
some scribe would doubtless have corrupted it into the
familiar 'EKTOV.
Having written thus far I looked at Sir. iii. I7 simply
from the point of view of form and rhythm, and seemed to
see that it would be improved by the omission or detach-
ment of ,3 at the beginning and a shortening of nlmnn tn-
at the end. With Prof. Israel Levi's objection to a&vppc7rov
borTKo in mind I then thought of reading in Heb., as with
allusion to Prov. xix. 6:-

This meets the said objection to a&vOpomov borTLKOV, whi

is as follows: " Mais cette explication ne resoudrait pas l
difficulte; pourquoi, si G. avait eu sous les yeux not
lecon, aurait-il jug6 ndcessaire de mettre le mot homme
n'aurait-il pas rendu les deux termes hdbreux? Au co
traire, si l'hdbreu portait tn ws ou IDn 6We (cf. Prov. xi.
et LXX), on comprend que S. ait cru bon d'expliquer cet
expression hdbraique."

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 607

Just above this in L'Ecclesicastique I found something

which I had previously overliooked. IMI. Chajes is there
quoted as saying: "Peut-4tre G. avait-il sous les yeux
fn rNK et S. a-t-il lu pi[n] rN , comme Prov. xix. 6 r-ii-r
?lnn VNK. Cf. Prov. X. 24 rrv, traduit dans LXX par &EK7) =
in." The supposed reading of Syr. is what I take to have
been that of Gr. and Ben Sira.
On Prov. xix. 6 we read in Field's Iexapilc, " Et quivis
est amicus viro donti (liberali). 0'. iraq 8 6 KaK'og yLvETra&
OVbL~Og avAipC (alia exempi. yv E 7-aL cz,v 8(S"EL ahvpo'g). K. ia
,rag 0(Xog &vbp' 8oua'rcw." Every one loves 2nn vZ' The
phrase is an idiomatic one, which Ben Sira was likely to
have adopted, and its original context suggests the use
which I suppose him to have made of it. Sir. ii. 5 ivGOpw7ro&
83EK701, perhaps for pIri 4m , may have contributed to th
corruption of jOrt&K3v into 8EKToOV in the next chapter.
Compare again Prov. xxii. 8 f. a'vbpa ... o ... 6 c6pa
8ov's (J. T. S., p. 572). From n nei would have come Heb
nimn tm an exegetic paraphrase.
Syr. in Prov. xix. 6 'ln ;inr e, "Et flagitiosis largitur
munera," %* 44 with no word for vN; but in Sir.
iii. I7, "And more than a man that giveth gifts they shall
love thee"

This and Gr. attest ieb. vN , after which (I think) can on

have stood tnn. Thus we come again to:-

From this may have come nimn ;rn or the like in any
language, cf. Prov. i.c. R.V. and A.V., "And every m
is a friend to him, that giveth gifts," the A.V. only wi
marg., "Heb. a main of gifts." To a retranslator S
would have suggested v4N or nm, and not merely i
rnmn tnrr. In Gr. there may have been other readin
now lost. A good word for v4N would have been &6v
after which one may think of 80T?1v as the archetype of La
VOL. Xv. T t

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6o8 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

gloriam. Thus the whole clause may be given with al

tives as:

Kal vTrep &vOpcwrov (al. aivbpa) bOTILKOV (al. bo'rnv) &yarqOia

Sir. iii. 8. Following Gr., and taking account of t

rhythm, I proposed (p. 442) to omit 61y and read:-

Peters, here and in chap. xxxv. 8, .r.p for tZ.p. In Ca

B. S. I wrote (p. xvI), that Ben Sira "uses 5ly (iii.
xvi. 7) for world, cf. Eccl. iii. i also he hath set the wo
in their heart"; but I now doubt the genuineness of
here and in chap. xvi. 7 (pp. 471, 472), and its use in
sense world cannot be inferred from Sir. xliv. init. Heb.
[6w~] nlr3 nia, Gr. 7rarepov V'zvos, with nothing at all for
Dnl. The piel of vny is transitive in Ecclus., as I suppose
it to be in Eccles. xii. 3 3P.? 7. n 1niln 15m1 (J. Q. R., IV, 538).
Sir. iii. 21, 22. Raising no question about the text of
these important verses, Strack gives them thus, without
note or comment:-

:Ilpnln P K Inn nownl w.-v i m nn njNmmF 21

:nnnDqon poy 19 1I p4nnn 'n m inrm: nM 22

To these and verse 23 a correspond the following ve

in the Latin of Walton, which are numbered below
the Polyglot:-
(22) Altiora te ne quaesieris,
Et fortiora te ne scrutatus fueris:
Sed quae praecepit tibi Deus illa cogita semper,
Et in pluribus operibus eius ne fueris curiosus.
(23) Non est enim tibi necessarium
Ea quae abscondita sunt videre oculis tuis.
(24) In supervacuis rebus noli scrutari multipliciter,
Et in pluribus operibus eius non eris curiosus.
"The Latin of Walton is supported by the Specul,
attributed wrongly to Augustine, which in verse (22) g

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 6o9

only the variants, ne perscrutaveris: dominu

curiosus " (Hart).
Of variants in the Greek notice in verse 2
&raac,r0TWxO, Lr eeraC a&poavzr (J. T.S., p.
verse 22 btavrov 6oloos, A. V. "But what is com
think thereupon with reverence."
Peters, adopting the misquotation of Talm
Chag. 13 a, noticed on page 444, writes on ver
Syr., Bab. Talm. Chag. fol. 13 a, und Midrasch R
VIII (bei C.-N. p. xix [ptnr und ptna]) treff
pnri st. onri zusammen" ; reads in that verse nw
and ptn for noLD; and reads in verse 22 lTT
for peD.
The Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. Sirach, quoting Bacher
and Levi as authorities, again repeats the misquotation of
Talm. Babli and the baseless textual theory evolved from
it (IV, 4648, 1903). A footnote gives Bacher's suggestion
that yrn is "an erroneous completion of the abbreviation
'nn, which should be read vinn." But it is admitted that
Job xi. 8 ITn-nM S. t n.?.R accounts for npIy in the Talm.
Jerus. citation (2), page 443. What more then is wanted
to account for the words Ynn rn next before inplrn there, and
for Pin 3 along with twinn $ in Gen. Rab. viii. 2 ?
The two aspects of nliqn were remarked upon in Part I
of this article (p. 445). Their difficulty is indicated by the
parallelism of pin and KD) in Sir. xxxix. zo:-
:1x31 p7m i t-l 1mb tr1wDl Uvn p j)K

"Ben Sira's saying about the secret things was evidently

founded upon Deut. xxix. 28 (29):-
aily ty 1::zi ( mI n ni5zz,nr 1:8?I;K n;"1r18 nn:nD:l

which would have suggested also his dative ([" (J. T. S.,
p. 573). Probably the Greek of Sir. iii. Xi f. was influenced
by Deut. l.c., which is to the effect that "for us and for our
children" it suffices to do what is plainly laid down in the
Torah, and there is no need to be concerned about ra Kpv7rrd.
T t2

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6Io THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

But the further notion that one ought not to pry into su
things would sooner or later have grown out of the sayi
''inl'nnnrn. This notion was probably in the mind of Be
Sira; and the mediaeval prejudice against free speculatio
and research seems to have rested in part upon his sayi
in Sir. iii. 2I f. as a Scriptural basis.
St. Augustine, in lib. xi, 12 (14) of his Confessions, pr
faces his reply to the question, "What was God doin
before he made heaven and earth?", with the remark th
he will not reply as some one was said to have repli
"ioculariter," namely that "Alta scrutantibus gehen
parabat," where (I suppose) there is an allusion to Sir. iii
(22) Lat. Altiora te ne scrutatus fueris.
Chaucer, in The Miller's Prologue, writes:-

A 3163 An housbond shall nat been inquisitif

Of goddes privetee, nor of his wyf.

Here, again, we may see a reference to Ben Sira, wh

(according to the Latin) teaches that a man should not b
curiosus in the "abscondita" which are God's secrets.
Chaucer's lines show plainly that the notion was a familia
and popular one. The variants in the Greek (p. 609) indicate
that it was thought foolish and impious to try to be wise
beyond what was written.
/w rntz] Messrs. Cowley and Neubauer in their Original
Heb. of Ecclus. (p. xix) quote as probably the true form of
verse 22:-

:nlnn1n pIN 1i w NS In1nn [n]nwin n

The hg which I have bracketed may be a ditt
;' is preferable to v rS, but it may be that
wrote nws1 and not '/ nnn. " Whether, or how
Sira used the Biblical w relatif is an unimpor
(J. T. S., p. 58o), which M. Ldvi makes much of;
he is right in his general objection to it in Ecc
it may always be accounted for as a variant
form nw.

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA

pry] Syr. haol. <_ &?o, "Et ne sit tibi au

occulta," as a paraphrase for '1 poy 1q ip, thou h
butsiness with the secret things; and rC for
Gk. Xpeta is a not impossible rendering of pDy as w
1'fl (p. 462), but Gr. rpoTcrcEdy is not an exact tra
of Heb. nrwnn.

Sir. iii. 31 Whoso doeth good, it shall meet him in his

ways (?). Heb. r:rm lwlp' :31 isl.
Cf. Sir. xii. 17 l:'P pi nD, If mnischief hath befallen thee.
Schechter, in Camb. B. S., giving a different sense to Kip,
(" Is. xli. 2 in5 isNp, pq. The Gr. probably read lnte
for l:snp." Strack, "cf. Is. 41. 2." Peters, ",uElrA7vra& ist
nicht Variante, sondern Erklarung der im Sinne von rufen
gefassten 1:rp's, das auch Syr. erklirend iibersetzt (es ist
bereit auf seinem Wege). Statt rl:n: verlangt Syr. direkt
. . und Gr. indirekt. . . lns."
"If the Hebrew stood alone no change would be wan
Thus I wrote (p. 446), thinking only of the sense o
verse as I understood it; but the first half of it wou
better with a shorter word for lm'pt, thus:-

Sir. iv. 30. With 'vis from C and si'nn from A I

posed (p. 448) to read:-
:T 73Y N.n. insn mo n-n ?nn b-
This gives an assonance in the style of Ben Sira
a play upon words perhaps suggested to him by Amos
"A lion hath roared, who will not fear "
Prof. Dr. Eberhard Nestle in Hastings' Dictionary o
Bible (IV, 547 b, 90o2) gives the verse according to A
C, and continues as follows:-
" Can there be any doubt that A agrees with 3 a
with e ? Compare especially the second clause, wh
has two words, A has also two, C for one word of
one word. What is more natural than the conclusion that
A and C are not the original, but dependent upon l and (,

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6l2 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

retranslations, as Margoliouth affirmed of B? Bu

must not be too rash: we ask, How would a late Jewish
translator hit upon tnann to render so obscure a word as
(5avrTaTcrOKOTTGv ? tnI is rare in Biblical Hebrew (Gn. 494,
Jer. 2332); it suits the context very well; it might be
easily confounded with nna 'fear,' and thus explain the
rendering of X, and it is a favourite word with Sirach (see
2 82 192 4117 mg. 4210 mg., I92 234.6.16.17); it emay therefore
have preserved the original. This supposition gains prob-
ability from a comparison of Zeph. 33'4 'her princes are
lions in her midst . . . her prophets are bn.,' where the
two words stand together just as here in clause a and b.
Schechter has shown that the whole text of it' is full of
allusions to the OT."

In a footnote he adds, "The passage is discussed with

a different result by Taylor (J. Th. St. i. 576). He considers
n,ni aryeh and mlnn mithyarg to be the original; (5 may
have turned the latter into nrwnn; the synonymous nDnoD
with a clerical error accounts for tnnD C.' The first two
suppositions are natural, but when, where, and why should
rrniT have been turned into innon so as to arrive at tnrnn ? "
(1) The change to %nnin being merely hypothetical, take
an example of an actual change from one word to another
quite different in form. On Sir. xliv. [9 Heb. nl.3 in n
inz Peters writes, "O/oLos0 des Gr. ist verderbt aus pzwEIos
(LU.)... Zu rnn ... giebt Rd. das Synonymum r1n, das
in Bhb. nur noch Ps. 1. 20, oft in Nhb. steht." How are
such variants as tVi for tin to be accounted for? An
explanation is suggested in the last paragraph of J. T. S.,
the article quoted in Nestle's footnote:-
"But to conclude, I wish chiefly to suggest for considera
tion the hypothesis that oral teaching and tradition ar
partly responsible for the present imperfections of a tex
of which complete transcripts were never everywher
accessible."
In the course of oral teaching based upon sayings of Ben
Sira synonyms, parallels and paraphrases would be used to

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 613

bring out or improve upon the sense of the

traces of such teaching may very well ha
way into the text of Ecclus. as we have it
(z) " The whole text of I? is full of allusion
of which some are and some are not Ben Sira's. In the

margin to the left of Sir. xxxv (xxxii). 3 [?V ?y/:n stands

the variant nzr for L=, the other variant having dis-
appeared. The corruption ymn and the pseudo-correction
nz[ are from Micah vi. 8 nr w ywn. The missing variant
was probably the true reading wYn=, cf. Sir. xvi. 25 yrxn:1.
The above-mentioned variant nri may be said to be a
corruption of Ben Sira's nrn due to Psalm 1. 20. For a
number of variants of this class oral teaching may be
assumed to be accountable, since in such teaching Biblical
parallels would have been freely quoted.
(3) In his article, A Further Fragment of Ben Sirac
(J. Q. R., XII), Dr. Schechter wrote on a fragment of
the MS. C, "The writing is in a large hand, but its
decipherment is sometimes rendered difficult by the fact
that the sign 1 may stand for vaw, yod, and even resh"
(p. 456); with reference to chap. iv. 30 Gr. he writes, "It
is, however, possible that originally it read nnmnnl" (p. 462);
and he notes that chap. v. 13 lvunn 1 is a corruption of A
inFn6 (p. 463). So tnann, unless it can be shown to be the
word wanted, may have come in as a clerical error.
KN'rnn] Evidently m' goes well with rn"i as in Amos iii.
8. The hithpael (though with a different construction) occurs
in chap. xii. II ui smrnnir, but perhaps only as a variant.
Gesen. s.v. Nvr, " Hithpa. semel legitur in cod. Hebraeo-
Samaritano Gen. XLII, I, ubi pro hebr. irnn nor Cod.
Sam. habet ls'vnn ;n."
trnmn] Words from tna, according to Mandelkern, are
found in the Bible in the four places, Gen. xlix. 2, " Unstable
as water"; Jud. ix. 4, " wherewith Abimelech hired vain

1 Here again we have " u for n " (vol. XV, p. 467). Compare chap. xxxiv
(xxxi). 14 -' m'tnn 5,, marg. n'trn with n for t.

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614 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

and light persons"; Jer. xxiii. 32, "Behold, I am ag

them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and
my people to err by their lies and by their lightn
Zeph. iii. 3, 4, "Her princes within her are roaring lio
Her prophets are light and treacherous persons."
rni^ and t)'nh are antiparallels. The "light" prop
cringe to the " lions" instead of being lionlike and wi
standing them. Neither from the Bible nor from Ecc
itself is it obvious to me that tnanv would have had the
sense wanted in Sir. iv. 30. The hithpael seems to be found
there only.
Nestle cites for Heb. tnr passages read thus by Strack:-
Sir. viii. 2 nnrt trnin ,n l = ; xix. 2 n irt(mn) Dtw1 I'; xli.
17 marg. tna 5y, for rnt 5r; xlii. Io lrnm 5m, for (nmn) 1D.
For Syr. J he cites Sir. xix. 2, xxiii. 4, 5, 2I, 22 (ap.
Walton), where the sense of the root is clearly lascivus
fuit. See also Payne Smith's Thesaurus, where it is noted
that the ethpael is used for 155yn in Jud. xix. 25.
~~] " So Syr. Cf. Septuagint, I Sam. xxv. 3 (Keri 'z3).
Gr. Nt*,3, see Ed." (Camb. B. S., p. 42). Strack, "Syr. =z,
Gr. s':'," without a query, although C reads n,vr . If
this last was the original word it may have been altered to
1'4:1 under the influence of Gen. xlix. 9 s:a3l in-sz or the
like; and d'a5 or 4[~ may have been misread =[l as by
Syr., the kaf of comparison being turned into the initial
of =53.
Syr. A.o 9aJ0o, et severus ac terribilis, looks like
another trace of "lion" in the previous hemistich; for
Syr. a&, corresponds to Heb. yr, cf. " Syr. 1J_ iratus pro
Heb. 9q i Reg. xx. 43, xxi. 4" (Gesen.); and the qvt of a
king is like the roaring of a lion (Prov. xix. 12).
Nestle's parallel of nirn' and nrtn in Zeph. l.c. is remark-
able, but it might be thought to have led up to the reading
tnann as a corruption rather than to attest its genuineness.
There may be much more to be said about the reading of the
difficult verse Sir. iv. 30; but for the present I conclude
provisionally that C nD:: belongs to the true text, and

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA

I think K:.tn a not unlikely word for Ben Sira

set over against it in the other hemistich.
Sir. vi. 2 Fall not into the hand of thine appetite
it should consume thy strength like an ox (?). 3
eat thy leaves and uproot thy fruit; And leave t
a dry tree. Heb. for the second and third of th
hemistichs:-

,wnvn 1'p s^n 1'STy : Irm 5 myn

Peters, with reference to Ryssel's conjectural -.V_, writes
that "c rwn erklart sich befriedigend, so dass eine Anderung
... unnbtig ist." The prima facie incongruity of 'twn
raises the question of the genesis of the saying. An ox does
not root up like a boar; and if an ox could reach to strip
a tree " clean bare" (Joel i. 7), this would not make it w:.
Ben Sira takes up the phrase "a dry tree" because of its
use in Isa. Ivi. 3 w:, yY ,:; and he takes 1nW: from Num.
xxii. 4, "Now shall this company lick up all that are
round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field."
Then shor suggests shoresh, and he uses 'wv in the sense
of Job xxxi. 12 w n''n nl 3n r:=, "in omni fructu mneo
radices evelleret, i.e. radicitus exstirparet fructum." Yet
another metaphor is suggested by nrz (Isa. v. 5).
Peters reads nw:z lin nPrnl in Heb., and accounts for
Gr. iva ,r btap7rapy7 TaOpos i 'vXyrl oov by Prov. vii. 22
'1U '1t3 c cr7TEp 86 fiovus E7T ao(ayriv &yEraL. I would suggest
in Heb. rather l'n mwn -znrn, on the ground that with
this order (as in Gr., Syr.) nw:) would easily have fallen
out after the similar letters nra. Sir. xxxvi. 30 (p. 449)
having now turned the scale in favour of n3rnl as the
original reading of Heb., nrini (?) may be accounted for as
a variant by the argument of Camb. B. S., page xx n.
Sir. vii. 1 8 'n nsr. A good form of the verse would
be, with nrn as suggested on page 453:-
:t eIs atn3 1kn nM I n4 nnz .iK Syrn *K
Peters adopts Noldeke's Da'n nrl (p. 452). Syr. 19 n'rr

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6I6 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

would then (I suppose) be explained by a confusi

tongues; but it may be worth while to give an
explanation of it as from snn. Retranslating and a
viating we get li w nW; [1] wO '; WK. Gen. vi. 9
(cf. Sir. xliv. 17 "i m) a little before Dnrn would acc
for vw, as Micah vi. 8 elsewhere for nt (p. 613); and
may have read WtK as for J[ w 'K in place of ~nn.

Sir. vii. 23. " For nt.5 read nr5 " (Cowley). So the w
is to be read, but it is not said how it was written.
(I) In the segol under the n, according to the facsi
two of the dots have been run together, so as to
a short line sloping to the left with the remaining
the left of it. Compare the pointing of Sir. x. 9 iu,
the scribe seems to have written ~ instead of ; (p. 45
afterwards to have run the two dots of the shva toge
Peters reads i-, Strack defectively ilp.
(2) The 5 is pointed with a long rP, written not in
modern way but in the form of a pathach with a dot
it (J. F., chap. iii. n. I9), as in the last line of th
containing ini. For chap. xiv. 9 nLrz it is said, "read
(Cowley). But, although the pause form is not w
there is a dot on the line under the ayin, which may
been meant to be separate from it as in w in the last
the page.

Sir. vii. 31 (2) n 'r .nS See pages 453 f., 626.
Strack gives an3's &ni, with the footnote, "Ps. 78. 25";
and in his Glossary b'm .: (mnr). From the facsimile (line 3)
it seems to me not impossible that the scribe wrote Q'=:K.
Perhaps the word is clearer in the MS.

Sir. vii. 35 3m'ln 3n s&2n is. See page 455, where it

was proposed to read with yod for hd as an emendation:-

In line 6 of he sme pge, i.e. three lines below (

nds certaine
stands 6 of(Ithe
certainly shouldame
should pagey) ,although
say) 3n1Ko, lthough Peters
Peters()reads
reads

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 6I7
it 3n1' with daleth; and so Strack in his
the footnote, "Cod. 3nmn (?)." The facsim
there is a crease in the paper, and this has
close to the 3. The versions may have rea
or Nz13 (Ldvi); but in the facsimile I can on
The R.V. renders chap. vii. 32-35 thus:-
32 Also to the poor man stretch out thy
That thy blessing may be perfected.
33 A gift hath grace in the sight of every
And for a dead man keep not back grac
34 Be not wanting to them that weep;
And mourn with them that mourn.
35 Be not slow to visit a sick man;
For by such things thou shalt gain love.

"Apres l'aum6ne, la charit4 envers les morts, la consola-

tion des gens en deuil, vient, en G. et en S., le devoir
de visiter les malades" (LUvi). Thus Gr. and Syr. bring in
sickness after death and mourning. Edersheim inappositely
remarks on verse 34, that " The same sentiment is expressed
in Rom. xii. I5, but there more truly and beautifully."
How would it be more true to say XatipEv ,Eera xalpdorv7rw in
a context relating to death and mourning ? The proposed
reading 1,fno, from an enemy, in verse 35 satisfies the
requirements of sense and rhythm.

Sir. x. 9 .. For that while he lives his body is exalted?

o0 ... A king to day, to morrow he falls. I When a man
dies he inherits worms.
The contrast of nv rvn: (ver. 9) with '3 mr3n (ver. II)
shows that aV is not to be connected organically with
rnlz worm (p. 460). In verse Io k%N falls confirms the
interpretation of Qna', is exalted.
"For tnr again see verse 23 Cn ws 3 3n5 an p" (p. 458).
Here Levi had written, "La restitution de M. Adler, que
nous avons gardde faute de mieux, est, d'ailleurs, sujette a
caution. En tout cas, on ne saurait y voir oDn," i.e. in

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6I8 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

place of TPl. Strack, following Peters, reads orn

Gr. &aapTrXoz'), but partly in brackets thus:-
: D(nn) WK 5!3 n.^:5 15X1 55W1 nlt: r
The Syriac (ap. Walton) is a plausible paraphr
Non est quod pauper iustus ignominia affic
Nec quod dives iniquus honoretur.
Gr., showing no trace of " dives":-
ov tiKCaov aTlaacratl roTov rvverTv,
Kat oV KaOKeLKE& boadrra arvpa a&aprsXO'r.

Looking again at the last word of the verse in

simile, in the middle of line 9 of the page, I read it
Dnr with Mr. Elkan Adler, and "en tout cas"
"Litera ultima est aut D aut n " (Strack). The for
final mem are sometimes scarcely to be distingui
MS. Here I should read mem, but in any case
of letters before it decide against ron. The l
before the last was (I think) a resh. Supposing
backwards, what remains is the apex at the end
might belong to some other letter, but not t
a good example of which see the first letter of
where the apex is a short straight line making a
a right angle with an edge of the paper. A n in
line is less unlike the supposed n of Dnn, but the fir
of the word in question cannot have been cheth
it as yod we have the letter ending where it sho
with a curve to the left, whereas cheth begins with
stroke, sloping (as in Nun in the first line of the pa
right. After the yod there is just room for the v
to complete nn'.
I take the proposed on to be, not a simple readi
text as we have it, but a compromise between th
and the Versions. Syr. &S1y is a possible renderin
but Ben Sira would not have written '3 Don rsK with
[z (Strack) or without it (Gr., Syr., Peters), giving th
needless and inappropriate advice not to honour a man of

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 6I9

violence, or not to do so in all cases. Varian

being sometimes synonyms (p. 612), Gr. and S
might be thought to suggest a word from nry
n;l, in place of nv1, some word connoting high
required by the parallelism. On the interpol
A.V. (p. 458) see the article next after this (p. 6
:n01] On Sir. xliii. 9 Bacher suggests that
wrote perhaps ,nm r , .., or ,rnrt nt " (J. Q.R
nin] Under nnl ii, putrescere, Mandelkern gi
20 WK:,1 nr51n nD; and then for nil, verm,is
Isa. xiv. i ; Job vii. 5, xvii. 14, xxi. 26, xxiv
Under Dinn i, altum esse, he gives inter alia J
1::, tU3n nID. Probably Ex. 1. c. and Job (cf.
gested to Ben Sira the contrast of n?' I or nin
and nl.

Sir. xii. 5 d and xxxi. io d. "6 For rn read nrn " (Cowl
In the former verse (p. 462), without referring to the f
simile, I read conjecturally, with 'z for Gr. yap and
for ' :-
.scwn ngI :ew m ^s
Sir. xii. io Never trust an enemy; for li
his wickedness cankereth. i And if he humble him-
self, and go crouching; Set thy heart to fear him. Be
to him as one that divineth a secret. . .; And know thou
the end of his jealousy. 12 Suffer him not to stand beside
thee; Lest he thrust thee away, and stand in thy place.
In vol. XIII of the WZKM, or "Vienna Oriental Journal"
(I899), Prof. Dr. G. Bickell has an article entitled, "Der
hebriische Sirachtext eine Riickiibersetzung." In the first
paragraph he writes, that the impression left upon him by
the Oxford Original Heb. of Ecclus., namely "dass wir es
hier nicht mit einemn Originaltexte zu thun haben," was
made a certainty by the Cambridge B.S. " Um diese
Ueberzeugung vor den Fachgenossen zu begriinden, mogen
einstweilen zwei, wie ich glaube, entscheidende Beweise
geniigen, da mir durch besondere Gefalligkeit der Redaction

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620 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

gestattet ist, diesen Aufsatz noch in dem vorliegenden

eigentlich bereits abgeschlossenen, Hefte erseheinen z
lassen, und ich daher mbglichst wenig Raum zu bean
spruchen wiinsche." Writing rapidly, Dr. Bickell has mad
some statements which wanted further consideration.
The first proof is from the Acrostic at the end of Eccius.,
which we must pass over for the present. The second is
from the " Hexastich" xii. 10, i, "welehes zugleich zeigt,
dass neben der durchgiingigen Abhiingigkeit von der
Peschittho doch auch die griechische Uebersetzung, oder
vielmehr irgend ein Ausfiuss derselben, wahrscheinlich ein
syrischer, gelegentlich benutzt wird." Briefly, Heb. is a
retranslation from Syr. and Gr.
The Hebrew for the Hexastich is -

.1.6 N=21 lnn ~ Io

nnn D Kin

jmnv,6 Nvv Nn i t-1 ;1 i= i5 n4m'i

nr1 t nbn mn

For this the Greek of B, with variants, is:-

Io IJ.C mTo-EvaT- ) EXOPP (TOV ES TO V atwva

wg yap 6 xa1XK- toDrat, oVrcT cj 7rovJJp(a avro.
Ii Ka& Eav TaITELVCOOp Kal 7ToprEVJTaL avyKEKVOXA3,
&T7CrVq,aa ,7r a,o
E7TLGT1rY0v rrv
Kal E07) aVT9) (L E
KaL yvJPWG 6TL
(al. -(wcrat).

The Syriac is to

io Ne unquam f
Quoniam simi
taminanti.
ii Etiamsi tibi pareat, et ante te demissus incedat;
Adverte tamen animum tuum) ut eum pertimescas.

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 62I

Sis illi quasi secretum declarans, nec te pote

vare;

Imo finem odii eius (olsU.?) deprehendes.

(I) In the Hexastich, according to Bickell, Heb. follo
"im Ganzen genau dem Syrer"; but in the second clau
where Syr. by mistake reads Heb. Wi1 as i.., his compan
the retranslator into Heb. comes upon the original word
a retranslation from Gr. w orovrjpia avTov.
(2) His other argument is still more artificial. T
sixth clause was in the original "jedenfalls nb 5 s v yin
sin, ," giving a fine word play, "da wtnri sowohl ros
als heuchelin bedeutet." Syr., omitting the negative, ga
the rendering, "und du wirst das Ende erkennen, dass
ihn schwarz gemaclht hat," with blackening in the sense
"Beschirmen oder ins Ungliick Stiirzen," the last word
Syr. (as Bickell reads it) being d'qanne'atheh, a derivativ
from Gr. Kvadeos; and the article ends thus:-
"Und dieses griechische Wort hat der hebraische Uebe
setzer in seiner syrischen Vorlage gefunden, fiir semiti
gehalten, und mit dem hebraischen rnKp (Eifer, H
identificirt! Fiir den Kairiner Text hier Unspriinglichk
anzunehmen, erscheint unmoglich, da nur ein Ueberset
aus dem Syrischen das mit dem griechischen Tex
iibereinstimmende und von Sinn und Zusammenhang gef
derte ol?.o fiir das hebraische nrKp halten konnte, welc
im Syrischen gar nicht vorkommt und dort durch das ni
nur sachlich, sondern auch phonetisch entsprechende
vertreten wird."

For an example of the word thus said not to occur at

in Syriac, we have only to look it out in the little lexic
in Kirsch's Chrestomathia Syriaca, as re-edited by Bernst
in I836, and there we find (p. 449), with reference to B
Hebraeus on Job:-

Jl:4i f., v. He. et Ch. nmp, q. cfr., st. emph. Ch. nns:rp
zelotypia, invidia, p. 190, 1. 13, et odium.
Turning then (with Peters) to Payne Smith's Thesaurus

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622 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

Syriacus we find several other examples of the word

of them in Ecclus. itself, where it stands for Gr. ziw
(xxvii. 30); as well as the forms Jk> and [o in the
zelus, invidia, odium. The Thesaurus gives also J
Kvadeog, but not in Sir. xii. II.
Verse o1] Heb. and Syr. on the whole agreeing, and
former being right and the latter wrong in the word
which Syr. mispoints i5., O;_n, it is natural to giv
originality to Heb. A retranslator from Gr. j 7rovrIpia
would have written:-

. N~nn inyr nlwn=: 4

Verse II] Heb. nnrn l,n'r may very well be original, but
Gr. suggests some such word as lir or nw, or V= instead
of J5 VYwn; and I doubt also the originality of mtn,S.
Eccles. ix. 17 1nvfWl nnm may have given rise to '5 rv.
Omitting the intermediate words )'n &i (clause 5) as a gloss,
and taking a suggestion from Syr. :od4??, "odii eius,"
I would read, with in for i at the end of the verse:-
:inrp mn i r ni t n ist n ,
This gives the required sense, "Be to him as a galeh
razin (p. 464); look to the end of his jealousy; and (ver. 2)
give him no opportunity against thee." Compare:-
;:nnn bS m[Q[I~ n"nN nn r J'r1n Wf : vii. 36
See page 454 for the preceding verses. In chap. vii. 36
one is to consider the end or outcome of his own doings; in
chap. xii. Ii the end of his enemy's nip. In the one case
nn,n KI mil6 , and in the other Inrnwn ssNy [ . That this
last is a gloss is further attested by the Greek.
Verse i ends in the R.V., representing Gr. B:
And thou shalt be unto him as one that hath wiped a
mirror,
And thou shalt know that he hath not utterly rusted it
(Or, it hath not utterly rusted him).
It is not clear to me how to explain this so as to har-
monize it with verse i2. But Gr. may be read, with

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 TIHE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 623

variants as above, in the sense, " And thou sh

him as one that wipeth a mirror; and thou sh
that it hath been utterly rusted." The enemy
hope of amendment, a caution follows to the ef
him no opportunity to harm thee (ver. I2). V
in this sense would have come from Heb. misread
mnn, and know the end of his rust. Gr. B woul
be understood as a paraphrase for, "know that t
end of it," it is not els TAXos, nY:.

Sir. xiii. 26 A token of a merry heart is a brig

nance; And study and meditation is wearisom
Heb.:-

:-nr nawnn nrW INwl tsliN 0]n Zit Zl n n

The Greek of B for this is:-
LXvosz Kapbias Ev ayaOols 7rpo'onrov OdAov,
Kal ev'peO 7rapa/3o\svr LaAoytaoxol /ETa KOT7OV.
In the Syriac the verse ends :-
Et multitudo narrationum cogitationes scelestorum;
.*+? J1sn,1 jI^A.^QA? ))^X0
In his article on "Ecclesiasticus: The Retranslation
Hypothesis" (J. Q.R., XII, 560 f.), the late Mr. Thomas
Tyler called attention to the two verses Sir. xiii. 26,
xiv. I , "as giving pretty conclusive evidence" in
favour of the genuineness of the Hebrew. His contention
that nrwi 'w (from i Kings xviii. 27 v w 'n n'w ,)
accounts for Gr. and Syr., but could not have been derived
from them is well supported, although he somewhat strangely
makes Gr. 7rapaf3oX6hv the word for Heb. n:nn.
'W] Tyler, "retirement," and for the hemistich, "But
the close study of problems is toilsome." Gr. e'peo-L
(A EV5p4O-t) as from W hiph., cf. Sir. xiv. 13 1'IT nrmn,
xxxii (xxxv). I2 ' nmwn, Gr. eviperla XEtpo ; Sap. Sol. xiv.
12 EvpEC-Els9; and see EVpciKELV in the Oxford Concord-
ance. Syr. "multitudo," as from nrw, cf. Eccles. xii.
12 L, ]J\, -vo, "and much study is a weariness of the
flesh."
VOL. xv. U u

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624 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

nw] Cowley, "For nrw read ner," but it may be read

as nrw with a stunted vau. Gesen. "sermo, confabu-
latio ... meditatio," and hence Gr. here wapa3oh&5v. Syr.
narrationum, cf. the rabbinic nn,rw.
ny n3vnn] Gr., as if for ny DV nwnn, tLaXoylt-LAol JuEra
KO7rOV (A N -co), cf. Jer. iv. 14 : i 2 nn'Inn, LbaXoyLrtl.o 7rorrvwv
o-ov; or l8aXoyto-Ls (248, Syro-hex.) KTE. Syr. "scelest-
orum," from n3 taken as in Num. xxiii. 2i; Isa. x. I.
Sir. xv. 14 He (?) from the beginning created man; [And
put him into the hand of him that would spoil him;] And
gave him into the hand of his inclination.
The verse is given below as it stands in the MS. in lines
6 and 5 from the end of the page, with Mr. Cowley's reading
of the small letters above two of its words:-

Ji:W1ti 'lS'l ,1rKnp~ ,l'lt M'i , l Knw n tqrynl

wK :;18sF InXl\ INp mlanin m: nnW S7 mv3 M::

The Cambridge Wisdom of Ben Sira gave t as doubtful

instead of the teth, to be read perhaps before ,niK; and n
instead of the cheth thus 'tK. I do not see clearly from
the facsimile what was written above Dns, but there is
nothing before it above the line as in Camb. B.S.
Mr. Cowley, taking the cheth and teth as numerals, ex-
plains that " tbt is to be read eighth and 4sn%W n ninth
word in the line." The order 'm 'n anD tb,nK would not be
quite natural. Perhaps it was meant that the two words
nN N:3 were to be placed before nwi3nnt .
Peters takes the k as for Dn,Ns, and the small letters as
meaning eighth and ninth " sc. von links." Strack writes
nns,n, with the note " r supra lineam," and omits the n and
the s. This alef (or part of an alef) really belongs, I sup-
pose, to nn, which the scribe was beginning to write by
mistake before ann3.

The verse begins in Gr. av-ros e a pXTj, and so in Syr.

ap. Walton. It seems to me to be improved in Heb. by the
shortening of n,ns (Lag. Jo4x?) to Kin, which I take to be
its true first word.

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 THE WISDOM OF BEN SIRA 625

Verse 26 Wms- suggests here n'ton, the : being d

an interpola ion from Gen. i. i. Omitting the firs
of the doublet, I would accordingly read :-
:nF n: Si;ln4 cNl 3 nUrR c n ' K n

See in verse 12 ,pnn rin, and in the next Gr. elio

Kvptos, but Syr. simply 1XM.
Prof. Bevan, in his review of the Cambridge editio
a good conjecture in the omitted clause '1i (sic) lrm
6"xv. 14. n T- : lnn1 inirnm T:1 I,n1. That these two
clauses are doublets is shown by the Gr. and the Syr. The
synonyms 1inVlI1 (read .nn.1f!) and lm:n1 present no difficulty,
but how does lmnl 'his robber' correspond to 'ir 'his
nature'? If the latter be the original reading, it is in-
credible that so obscure a term as lnnin should have been
substituted for it by a scribe. Are we therefore to assume
that Ben Sira wrote lsnn ?. . . Here the sense demands
an assertion of man's free-will, and this we obtain by
reading rinln, according to the common Syriac use of
)lJol for 'moral free-will.' n , like nl'n, is a neutral
term, i.e. it denotes inclination towards good or towards
evil."

In defence of ranin here, on which see Peters, as an

actual variant it might be said that not all variants in
our Hebrew text are appropriate. But it may be safely
assumed that Ben Sira himself did not write lmnin 'ni.

Sir. xvi. 23, 24. "Read rnn[i] na: 1 nS (?) ln: :5 (2) nrn;
the i printed above m:: is really the tail of the p in pnt
in the line above. ... 5[wn] what is left of the first two
letters suggests 3'zw" (Cowley).
Verse 23] It seems evident that nDon was written for
,non; but after n1 stands v:2 with a not very well finished
beth, as in i:n in the line above.
In mn I (Schechter) it may be thought that the scribe
wrote the vau in contact with the beth, i. e. as low down as
possible in order to clear the p above it. the next word is
not r,n.t (Cowley) with space for a vau, but either nnv
u u 2

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626 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

(Schechter) or, if the first letter be a according to Cowley

and others, then ,nri. The letter is open at the top and
might be read as an ayin, with only a remnant of its
shorter stroke remaining. Whatever the scribe meant to
write, Or. XrhavcSLzvos suggests nlyn.
Verse 24] Peters, "Von dem letzten Worte des I. St. ist
nur 4s erhalten." But in the facsimile as I have it there are
certainly parts of three letters, which I read 53D, followed
by a yod. "Perhaps the scribe wrote 5zD for WO, Gr.
oIrl Ir7yvt" (P. 474).
C. TAYLOR.

PS.-With reference to Sir. vii. 3I, 35, Mr. Elkan Adler,

on his return to England, now writes (Igth June, 1903),
"I do not doubt that 3nwm, is the reading of my fragment.
There is a crease in the paper, which makes the photograph
faulty here. 3'snK is not so clear. There does not seem to
be a s run into the 1."

(To be continued.)

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