Well again, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to this new seven part series on the book of Sirac I've entitled it fear the Lord because that is a predominant theme in this book. You're gonna find that Invitation that admonition everywhere. It's absolutely everyone this book and it's very fundamental to the books message So as I said, this is a seven part series this first lesson We're gonna introduce the book of Sirac in terms of its you know It's a context in its position in the wisdom literature collection of the Old Testament It's titled its authorship its main themes its structure all that kind of good stuff and also because this is a dudor chronicle book Which I'll explain later in part two of this lesson will spend a good you know Ten fifteen minutes going over the highlights of what the dudor chronicles are who has the authority to determine whether or not the book is inspired And then just understanding the book of Sirac a little bit here in the broad strokes in terms of its reception by Jews and Christians and of course Protestants don't receive this we'll talk about that as well now at the end of the lesson I'll go through the syllabus just to kind of point out some of the suggested readings and the Titles of the lessons that's pretty straightforward But I want to clarify a little bit of how I structure the footnotes from the various quotes I'd like to provide you the students as I go through and curate the best quotes that I like or the quotes that strike me to Understand what's going on in this book as I do in all my Bible studies So having said that then we're ready for takeoff Let's look at part one here introducing the book of Sirac and the first thing we want to look at here is Sirac within the wisdom literature collection So this is the seventh and the final book within the wisdom literature corpus of the Old Testament Now I say seven books and that may be a little bit debated Because everything is a lot of people don't include the Psalms in the wisdom literature corpus So I do because the Psalms have all the main themes of the wisdom literature in the book of Psalms like the two ways Like the pursuit for wisdom like the fear of the Lord like these are like the biggies right and the Psalms have that so I include the Psalms in the Literature collection not everyone does but when you do the total collection the total number of books comes out to seven So you've got Psalms Job the three books of Solomon Which are Proverbs Ecclesiastes and the song of Solomon then you've got wisdom and then now Sirac and that seven is very important seven It's a number of the Covenant so I think it's very appropriate very fitting and very beautiful that you have seven wisdom books in the Old Testament because Wisdom is living out the Covenant right if you want to live in a covenant with God you must follow his wisdom You must have fear of the Lord you must live a life of righteousness and virtue in all the various aspects of your life Right dealing with other people relationships with literally everything So I think it's really really appropriate and really beautiful and this is the seventh book It's one of the final books to be written in the Old Testament I should say really quickly The only book that probably beats it out is the book of wisdom which was roughly written broad strokes about 100 BC But 100 years before Christ and this book is we're gonna see is a roughly about 200 BC Maybe even lower than that and we'll talk about that here soon enough So it's a very old in terms of or actually recent however you want to look at that It's certainly an old book over 2000 years old but in terms of the all the books of the Old Testament It's pretty new I guess you'd say in that respect so that's pretty interesting and many have called it Especially your Catholic and actually Old Testament have called it the suma sofia Which is really lovely the suma sofia the summary of all wisdom precisely because it wonderfully summarizes all the teachings of the Old Testament in general And these previous wisdom books that I just listed for you in particular especially the book of Proverbs really closely resembles a book of Proverbs But in a more organized form I mean it's almost twice the size of Proverbs Proverbs is 31 chapters This is 51 chapters Proverbs is very This organized you could say a lot of scholars really struggle to try to find any kind of rhyme or reason to the structure of Proverbs But by and large this book of C.R.A.C. is like Proverbs 2.0 Proverbs upgraded has a little bit more structure a little bit more organization here And so actually on that point when I taught the Bible study on Proverbs That was a three part series and we really just look at a lot of the topics that you're gonna find in Proverbs Well this this chapter or this book this Bible study on C.R.A.C.
is seven serious seven parts in the series and we're gonna be able to look at it Really chapter by chapter because it's a little bit more organized and structured and that's very very very hopeful very beautiful So the suma sofia I just really love that it has all the main themes of all the previous wisdom literature collection like the big Ease We'll talk about the main themes in a little while here fear the Lord the two ways wisdom worship It contributes a lot of interesting things that other books don't have like worship wisdom in the law wisdom in the temple and that kind of stuff So hang tight we'll look at that here at the end of this lesson So that's the book of wisdom in the wisdom literature collection now as far as the title is concerned this book has probably the the gold Gold medal or the gold star the blue ribbon for having the most amount of titles than probably any other book in the Old Testament It's got a ton of different titles and a very unique complicated Manuscript tradition or textual history. It's really really interesting and very confusing frustrating at the same time So this book was originally written in Hebrew But then it was translated later about four decades later into Greek and we know that very clearly by studying the prologue Which is what we're going to do next week We're gonna dive in the first six chapters next week or next lesson depending on your listening this I will have the prologue in the first chapters and that'll be very very clear very very soon But it was written originally in Hebrew translated afterwards into Greek some few decades afterwards And then you've got all these various titles in Hebrew in the Greek as well as in the Latin Yeah, they're all variations of the same themes You're going to see in Hebrew it's called the instruction of bin serak or the book of bin serak or just a book of instruction Now I should clarify really quickly if you didn't know this But whenever you're reading a commentary or I mentioned the quotation from somewhere, it's bin sera Ben means son so as I was explained here a little bit down the line of authorship. It's really Jesus the son of Sirak So it's yeshua bin sera so Jesus the son of Sirak, but just keep in mind It's been a sira means son of Sirak, okay So Hebrew's got pretty much the same thing instruction or book of instruction in Greek It's the wisdom of Jesus son of Sirak or simply just the wisdom of Sirak in Latin It's called often the book of Jesus son of Sirak. There's a pretty long titles, right?
These are a lot of long titles and we want to kind of simplify it I mean fact it has one more title I can't forget to say this it's in your notes as well as one more title in the Latin tradition in the Ecclesiastes of tradition Because it is the suma sofia It's the the summary of the the climax the crescendo of all the wisdom literature tradition in the Old Testament It has been used in the early church early church centuries a number of centuries as the go-to book for all catecategal instruction and moral Formation there's quotations the church fathers from the book of Sirak all over the place So because it was so so well known so beloved and used for all formation for catecumens if you're just coming into the church You're converting or you are a new Catholic and you're continuing to study the faith and the moral life and all that kind of stuff It was used so much It was called ecclesiasticus which literally means just the book of the church So we have the word ecclesiastical ecclesiia means church or gathering or assembly in Greek All right, so ecclesiasticus is another title that this book has well You can see probably right off the bat if you're not thinking already Because of all of these different titles and also the similarity that these titles have with other books People don't really know what to call it as just too many different references and names right so today the word simply Sirak predominates You're gonna find that pretty much all the time because it's gonna distinguish it from other books of similar titles For example if you call it like the wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirak or the wisdom of Sirak It confuses a lot of people because they might be thinking of the book of wisdom the wisdom of Solomon right It's because it's attributed to Solomon you can check out my Bible study on wisdom for those details So you're like okay When you hear the book the book of wisdom and the Old Testament Well wait a second is that the book of Solomon of the book of Sirak which is it so that's confusing for sure And then if it's called ecclesiasticus which it has been called that for two thousand years basically in the life of the church You're like well Hold on is this ecclesiasticus confused ecclesiastes which is the second book of Solomon's trilogy and so you just kind of scratching your head and you don't Really know what to think so that's obviously a very understandable confusion ecclesiasticus is confused with the Ecclesiastes But wisdom of Sirak is confused with with Solomon so just simply Sirak is a great title It's short and sweet one word and you can really zero in on which book we're talking about So I'm pretty much always gonna be referencing this as Sirak is that certainly case in the new revised standard version Catholic edition here All right, so it can be very confusing But we're gonna reference it as Sirak now even more confusing than that But super fascinating is that the textual history or the manuscript tradition of this book very well be may well be the most confusing of all The books of the Old Testament, I don't know maybe the jury's still out on that one But you have a lot of variations of the Hebrew manuscripts the Greek manuscripts and the Latin manuscripts So what I mean by that is if you start opening up a bunch of commentaries and you can check out my syllabus for suggested readings And I'll touch upon that at the end of the lesson. You're gonna have a short Hebrew version You're gonna have a long Hebrew version You're also gonna have therefore a short Greek version and a long Greek version and then you got various versions in the Latin as well from the Vulgate and In that tradition so you're like well wait This is there's a lot going on here And what's really confusing is that various translations over the course of the church's history might be relying on the long Hebrew or the short Hebrew or the Long Greek or the short Greek in it's really tough to keep all that in mind You really have to be a specialist in this book to just keep all of those variations of the texts Just order organized in your brain. So as a result this your Catholic and Rush you'll test them It says as a result of all this the textual tradition of Ciarak is confusing. Yeah, no kidding there Right, it's confusing it displays a wide range of variation though without changing the teaching the books substantially And that's very true I mean the teaching the message of the book doesn't really change that much It's just certain verses are missing or not right goes on and says the reconstructed shorter Greek version of the author's grandson is treated And that'll make sense when I explain the prologue to you next week or next lesson The author's grandson is treated as the standard text of Ciarak in most modern English translations All right now your Ignatius Catholic study Bible explains this a little bit better I mean, it's very short and concise to say like it's confusing and the short Greek version is preferred in most modern English translations But I put in your footnote number one here a longer quote from the Ignatius Catholic study Bible Let me just read that right now for you So it says because of these state of affairs meaning the variations of the Hebrew and the Greek There are variations of the text and verse numbers of modern translations So follow on this it says whereas earlier modern English translations such as the King James version the Duis Reims version are based on the longer Greek and Latin text More recent translations such as the RSV the revised version reminds me relies primarily Excuse me on shorter Greek texts resulting in some verses that are either missing or regulated to the footnotes But other modern translations such as the new American Bible the new revised standard version also follow the shorter Greek text while making extensive use of the Hebrew and longer Greek texts Oh, man the revised and version Catholic edition is eclectic It often favors the Greek text in many places But sometimes prefers the longer Latin text of the new Vulgate in many places So you can see even if you just follow me on that you can totally see that there's just a lot of complications in In the history of this text right so the new revised standard version Catholic edition Excuse me that I am reading from is like it says in the last sentence of this quote is eclectic So it's gonna favor the Greek text prefer a rely and prefer sometimes in the longer Latin text in some edition So we're just gonna go with the flow.
I do not want to dive into the weeds I get a headache honestly a full confession when I'm trying to lay out all the various versions in front of me When you got the new American Bible you got the Duis Reims you got their standard revised standard version It's just it's kind of can be really kind of confusing like I joked and it's not really a joke You almost need to be a specialist in and spend all of your time and effort energy and trying to just understand the manuscript tradition in my personal opinion on that So it's very interesting. So the title and the textual history is very interesting and fascinating to be sure now authorship So we're talking about this in the titles this Jesus son of Sirac that is our author We know that because he told us very nicely in the end of the book of Sirac in chapter 50 verse 27 It says I have written in this book Jesus the son of Sirac the son of Eleazar of Jerusalem who out of his heart poured forth wisdom and that's a very lovely Signature really is what that is his name is Jesus the son of Sirac the grandson of Eleazar who out of his heart poured forth wisdom So that really gets us to understand a little bit about who this character is more to say on that as we go on But he really poured out his heart and this work for a variety of reasons I'll explain soon he really this was his passion this is his desire to pour forth the wisdom of God upon his spiritual sons his Students in his school and anybody who's reading this work to understand what wisdom is how to obtain it how to pursue her how to be faithful to her And thereby be very blessed so that's really lovely So thanks to that verse this basically the signature We know that the author is Jesus son of Sirac the grandson of Eleazar in Jerusalem now I should say really quickly I'm as we're looking at these little topics of authorship This book is probably one of the least disputed books when it comes to authorship because we have so many details in the prologue and the Epilogue and it or at least at the end of the book here the epilogue is technically chapter 51 but scholars really don't debate authorship on this which is really special because the scholars and academics debate absolutely everything as they're trying to Understand things or sadly the case maybe scholars might be trying to undercut the veracity of the scriptures Which is a whole other topic on its own but everyone pretty much agrees This is Jesus the son of Sirac the son of Eleazar living in Jerusalem now by the way before I forget I just have to point this out I think and I haven't seen any commentary really run with this Which surprises me that the author of this book of Sirac which is the suma sofia It's the summary of all the wisdom literature and really a lot of teachings of the law of Moses and how to approach God and to love God with the whole heart soul and strength all this beautiful teaching the author's name is Jesus So the very authorship itself is very typological that this author Jesus teaching wisdom is 100% a foreshadowing and an anticipation of Jesus the Christ the anointed one the son of David the son of God who is wisdom incarnate and who out of his mouth in all the various teachings through the Gospels to his apostles and the apostolic tradition that flows from that he pours forth wisdom out of his heart too So I think that's really really essential here to understand and I haven't seen that really emphasized very much unless I'm blind and I was Tired and I missed it when I was reading my commentaries, which is totally possible I will share with you when we get to the themes the main themes of the book and the typology and especially the use of Sirac in The Gospels for sure you can see that connection Jesus Christ the son of God is the fulfillment of this Jesus son of Sirac character Who out of his heart pours forth wisdom? So keep in mind while I thought about that I was wanted to tell you right now because it's really really special now When did this Jesus son of Sirac character live and when did he write this? Well, he he lives for the transition from the 200s into the 100s for sure He wrote this book scholars are pretty much an all unanimous agreement Which is pretty rare that this book was written between 200 and 175 BC and we can figure that out really confidently So he wrote this between 200 175 BC.
Let's look at the evidence first again scholars will point out pretty consistently that he's writing in Jerusalem I said says because he is of Jerusalem and he wrote this before the great persecutions of the Greek king Antiochus the fourth epiphanies and Antiochus reign from 175 to 164 and Antiochus was or Antiochus depending on who you're listening to He was the madmen the great villain the the wretched kind of anti-Christ pre-figurement of the story of the Maccabees He persecuted and tortured and murdered and martyred so many Jews during those years 175 164 It was a brutal brutal decade I'll talk about this a little bit more in just a second But none of those persecutions and difficulties during that period are talked about right Which would be very important to mention and he doesn't mention it at all So that leads us to conclude that Jesus and of Sirac wrote his book before 175 when Antiochus showed up on the scene Now it also he also talks about in chapter 50 versus 1 through 21 a big book of chapter 50 That this Jesus and of Sirac knew the very holy venerable high priest Simon or Simeon the second Simeon the second Simon the second was a great character He was a worthy high priest very holy very devout loved the people serve the people he wasn't corrupt Which again is very rare in his real But it seems like this character depending on your commentary he may or may not be deceased It does seem like he's talking about this holy high priest singing the second in the past tense But that's debated a little bit in any case the high priest reigned or served as high priest from 219 to 196 So broad strokes here. Let's just you know, could it even and say it's 200 BC So that's why we can say that this Jesus son of Sirac was writing this book in Jerusalem Before the troubles of Antiochus showed up and after or at the end of the ministry of Simon the second That's what gives us our dates 200 to 175 BC Which is pretty cool and as to the best of my knowledge Which I said it's a lot of wisdom the book of wisdom is the only other book that was written after this Roughly at 100 BC. Maybe maybe close to 80 BC before the time of Christ So these two books wisdom and Sirac are the last books to be penned in the Old Testament And we'll talk about how they came to be included into this up to which I'm later on All right, so Jesus son of Sirac he lived during this time wrote between 200 and 175 He was very devout very wise very committed to his faith very well traveled according to chapter 51 verse 23 He ran his own school like he was a headmaster of a school right? He was the president of the Jerusalem school of wisdom or something like that Let me just read it for you here.
It's chapter 51 verse 23 He says draw near to me you who are untaught and lodge in my school Now this in all fairness This could be an actual literal school a bricks and mortar type of institution or it could be a metaphorical like come to my school of thought Come and listen to what I'm saying, but a lot of commentaries interpret This as an actual school of instruction in Jerusalem So that's pretty cool if that's true That's really awesome And he also wrote this book because again remember out of his heart pore forth wisdom He really desired to hand down the revelation of Jesus Christ Right. Well, I guess that's technically it's the revelation of Yahweh, but it's still the Trinity Right revelation of Father son Holy Spirit. So I'm not wrong But the revelation of God in the law to be more precise there To anybody who would listen to anybody who sought after wisdom And there's a great verse I'm flipping there right now in chapter 33 verse 17 He says consider that I have not labored for myself alone, but for all who seek instruction So he's laboring and this is true. I think for a lot of instructors It's certainly for myself You know as I you know spend some time here preparing and studying the scriptures myself and trying to learn it and love it and live it And I want to be able to hand that down to other people I think pretty much all all instructors and teachers would agree and that's certainly his case He himself really committed to a life of righteousness and holiness and wisdom And he dedicated his whole life to that and he wanted anyone else who desires the same thing He wanted to hand down which is what tradition is.
He wanted to echo down catechesis This everything that he learned that's really really beautiful So this character jesus and of cirac is in so many respects a wonderful type of jesus christ who was wisdom incarnate All right, excellent now his grandson We don't know his name his grandson was the one who translated this book into greek So jesus wrote it in hebrew a roughly 275 and the grandson was living in egypt and he tells us in the prologue and i'm just gonna save the prologue for the next lesson But he tells us in the prologue that he was living in egypt in the 38th year of king eugeritis Which is told me the seventh and everyone agrees that's a 132 bc So whether he arrived there in 132 bc and shortly afterwards translated to work or whether he started translating the working 132 Approximately 132 bc some giver take 40 50 years after his grandfather wrote in hebrew He committed to translating it into greek while he's living in egypt Because you have all of these greek-speaking jews in the dispersion and the diaspora living in egypt not living in the holy land They lost the use of their hebrew language or at least they weren't fluent with it Maybe they you know spoke a little bit you might say how to respond you know i don't really i My best language is Italian and that's super rusty now, you know, so that's kind of the same idea Where they're living over in egypt and they lost the use of in the knowledge of hebrew So the grandson translates it into greek so that way they can all listen to his grandfather's wisdom Now 132 bc is certainly after the maccabean revolt So a lot of time has passed on and there's a lot of stability in the territory of judea now because of the maccabean family And that brings us to discuss very briefly here the historical context Hey, this is dr. Nick. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson Please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course But also all the other courses that we have available in the snt audio library where you can listen to them on demand However, and whenever you want so thank you so much. God bless you and keep studying your bible