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Supplements
Editor
Hindy Najman Department and Centre for the Study of Religion at the
University of oronto
Associate Editors
Benjamin G. Wright, III Department of Religion Studies, Lehigh
University
Advisory Board
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By
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goering, Greg Schmidt.
Wisdom’s root revealed : Ben Sira and the election of Israel / by
GregSchmidt Goering. p. cm. — (Supplements to the Journal for the
study of Judaism,
ISSN 1384-2161 ; v. 139) Includes bibliographical references and
index. ISBN 978-90-04-16579-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Jews—Election, Doctrine of. 2. Bible. O.. Apocrypha.
Ecclesiasticus—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. itle. II.
Series.
BM613.G64 2009 296.3’1172—dc22
2009022348
Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Te Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei
Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and
VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
publisher.
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ν λ καρδ σου δξασον τν πατρα σου
κα μητρς δνας μ πιλθ
μνσθητι τι δι ατν γεννθης
κα τ νταποδσεις ατος καθς ατο σο
With all your heart honor your father, And the mother who bore you
do not forget. Remember that from them you came into being; How can
you repay them according to what they have done for
you? —Sir 7.27–8
To my parents, Judith and Lowell Goering, with all my heart. How
can I repay you for what you have done for me?
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Election in Sirach
....................................................... 9
Chapter Two
Two Apportionments of Wisdom ...................................
21
Ben Sira’s Theology of Creation
.................................... 25
The Sovereignty of YHWH.......................................
27
A Doctrine of Opposites? ........................................
31YHWH as Divine Warrior and Storm God ....................
35
Divine Mastery Over Primordial Chaos .......................
40
Observation of Nature: Universal Knowledge of YHWH ...
45
The Sun, the Moon, and the Election of Israel ...................
49
Conclusion: Election and Creation
.................................. 61
Chapter Three
General and Special Wisdom .....................................
69
Wisdom as Divine Revelation .......................................
69 The Twofold Nature of Wisdom’s Revelation ....................
78
General Wisdom ..................................................
79
Special Wisdom ...................................................
89
Conclusion: Election and Revelation .............................
102
Chapter Four
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The High Priest ..................................................
123
The Scribal Retainers ...........................................
125
Chapter Five
The “Fear of YHWH” .............................................
129Wisdom and Fear of
YHWH ........................................ 130
The Asyndetic Correlation of Wisdom
and Fear of YHWH .........................................
131
Fear of YHWH and Universal Piety ...........................
134
Fear of YHWH and Special Wisdom
............................... 138
Piety and the Pursuit of Wisdom .............................
140
Fear of YHWH and Jewish Piety ..............................
143
Ethical Piety: torah and “The Torah”
............................. 153
Motivations for Ethical Piety ..................................
155 Guarding Oneself and Guarding the Torah ..................
160
Cultic Piety: The Actualization of Wisdom ......................
167
Participation in the Cult of YHWH ............................
167
Wisdom and the Jerusalem Temple ..........................
173
Cultic Piety and Creation ......................................
177
Conclusion: Election and Piety ....................................
185
Chapter Six
Election and Eschatology:
Israel among the Nations .........................................
187 Ben Sira and the Nations
............................................ 188
The Wisdom of the Nations and the Fear of YHWH .......
194
The Propaedeutic Quality of General Wisdom ............. 197
The Nations and Knowledge of YHWH ...........................
198
Proper and Improper Piety and YHWH’s Response ........ 201
YHWH’s Judgment of the Nations ............................
203
A Prayer for Deliverance ......................................
204
The Origin of the Prayer for Deliverance ...................
212
The Prayer for Deliverance in the Context of Sirach ......
224
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YHWH as Universal King or Universal God? ...............
230
Conclusion: Election and Eschatology ...........................
235
Chapter Seven
Election in
Jubilees .............................................
241
Election in Philo ................................................
243
Appendixes
................................................................
251Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Bibliography
...............................................................
270
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PREFACE
This study interprets the theme of election in the book of
Sirach.
When I first undertook this project, I never imagined that the
end
product would focus entirely upon Sirach, nor that it would
treat the
theme of election.
Perhaps as long as humans have existed, so has their cultural
ten-
dency to organize themselves into groups. As cultural
anthropolo-
gists have shown, group identities are often formed by
drawing
boundaries between insiders and outsiders. I have long been
in-
trigued by the formation of communal identities, especially as
per-
sons create these identities in order to traverse the ever-present
ter-
rain of exclusiveness and openness. I am particularly drawn to
the
ways in which members of a community ask and answer questions
about their relationship to those outside their community. My
inter-
est in these questions originates, in part, because I was raised in
the
United States in a small religious and ethnic minority group
wherediscussions frequently focused on who was a Mennonite and
who
was not. Only later did I learn that this discourse on inclusivism
and
exclusivism resonated with the perennial question posed within
Ju-
daism, “Who is a Jew?” Thus, when I first began to study
Wisdom
literature from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel, I was
struck
by the largely non-theistic and non-national idiom in which
the sages
communicated a wisdom ethos. I was also fascinated by the focus
in
this literature upon the individual, rather than the nation.
Moreover,
the exchange across national boundaries of wisdom ideas and gen-
res—even literal borrowing in some cases—suggested a
cosmopolitan
outlook seemingly unconcerned with religious and ethnic
boundary
marking.
Yet, despite this apparent internationalism, a nagging
question
persisted. If much of the ANE Wisdom tradition could be
charac-
terized as cosmopolitan, what made a certain wisdom work
distinctly
Egyptian or Israelite? I began to research older Israelite
Wisdom
texts—such as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes—for indications
that,
despite their apparent disinterest in the national traditions of
ancient
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Israel, they nonetheless were products of Israelite sages who
at-
tempted to inculcate a specifically Israelite identity. I intended
to
conclude my study with Sirach, given the author’s obvious
concern
to combine the cosmopolitan wisdom tradition with Israel’s
national
heritage. Thinking that Sirach would be the easiest case of all to
ex-
amine, I began my research with Ben Sira’s book. It soon
became
apparent that the question of how Ben Sira relates Israel’s
national
heritage to universal wisdom would fill a monograph in and of
itself.
Even once I had focused my exploration on the interplay of
uni-
versalism and particularism in Sirach, the theme of election did
not
immediately present itself. A central problem in the interpretation
of
Sirach concerns the relation of Wisdom and Torah. Many scholarshave
interpreted Ben Sira’s juxtaposition of the universal Wisdom
tradition with Israel’s particular traditions of Torah as
“identifica-
tion.” Scholars have understood this identification as either a
nation-
alizing of Wisdom or a universalizing of Torah. Initially, I was
in-
clined to choose between the nationalizing and the
universalizing
interpretations of Sirach. But as I inquired into the details of
Ben
Sira’s wisdom teaching, both interpretations seemed to tell only
half
of the story. In particular, it was my discovery of the election
motif
in Sir 33.7–15 that proved to be the “aha!” moment. For there I
found a reading of that poem that not only persuaded me of the
in-
correctness of the widely held dualistic interpretation of Sirach
but
also provided an interpretative key, which could make sense of
other
puzzling features of the book. The purpose of my study, then,
be-
came to show that the concept of election enables a profitable
dis-
cussion of the relation of Wisdom and Torah in the book of
Sirach.
This book is a revised and expanded version of a doctoral
disser-
tation submitted to Harvard Divinity School. In the two
intervening
years since the completion of the thesis, I have presented papers
on parts of various chapters at scholarly conferences,
benefited enor-
mously from feedback provided by several insightful readers,
and
reflected upon numerous issues that remained less carefully
consid-
ered in the dissertation. The addition of chapter 4 in the middle
of
the study represents the single most extensive expansion. Earlier,
I
had noted Ben Sira’s use of inheritance as a metaphor to
describe
Israel’s possession of wisdom. The inheritance metaphor
suggested
that Ben Sira views wisdom as a tradition to be preserved and
transmitted within a lineage, but I was unable at that point to
de-
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velop the implications of this observation. The completely
new
chapter 4 on Election and Tradition investigates this subject. In
ad-
dition to the new chapter 4, I have taken the opportunity afforded
by
publication of the manuscript in this series to revise and
expand
upon numerous other matters, large and small.
Throughout the study, all English translations are my own,
unless
otherwise noted.
Charlottesville, Virginia
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Through the research for and writing of this book, I have become
all
the more certain of the inherently collaborative character of
scholar-
ship. Many individuals and institutions have contributed to the
de-
velopment of this study, and I would like to acknowledge my
in-
debtedness to them. Since this study began as a dissertation
project,
I would like to thank, first and foremost, my advisor Dr. Jon
D.
Levenson, as well as my committee members Drs. Peter
Machinist
and Richard J. Clifford, S.J. Their influence can be discerned
on
practically every page.
I am grateful to Dr. John J. Collins for accepting my
manuscript
for publication in this series. His probing criticism of my
work
proved valuable during the revision process. I would also
like to
thank Dr. Hindy Najman, who assumed editorship of the series
while my manuscript was under revision, and especially the
asso-
ciate editor of the series Dr. Benjamin G. Wright III, who read
theentire manuscript twice and made many suggestions that greatly
im-
proved the project. Thanks, too, is owed to the editors and
staff at
Brill, especially Ms. Mattie Kuiper, Mr. Machiel Kleemans,
and
Ms. Camila Werner, who saw this project through to
publication.
Numerous other individuals read all or parts of the manuscript
and
generously offered their feedback. Those who read the entire
manu-
script include Drs. Liz Alexander and Matthew Goff, and Ms.
Blaire
French. I particularly thank Dr. Eugene McGarry, who
contributed
countless helpful suggestions about content, organization, and
style. Among those who read parts of the manuscript are Dr. Rocco
Gan-
gle, Mr. Patrick Hatcher, Mr. Geoff Chaplin, Drs. Caren
Calendine,
Vivian Johnson, Martien Halvorson-Taylor, and Cynthia Chapman.
I
am especially grateful to Dr. Joel Kaminsky, who offered
valuable
insights on several chapters, and to Dr. Harry Gamble for his
helpful
suggestions regarding chapter 7.
Many other persons contributed in various ways, large and
small:
Drs. Alexander Di Lella, Nuria Calduch-Benages, Pancratius
Beentjes, Renate Egger-Wenzel, Jeremy Corley, and Matthias
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xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Henze, Ms. Laura and Dr. Bill Whitney, Dr. Lesleigh Cushing,
Ms.
Cathy Beckerleg, Drs. Kathryn Schifferdecker, Ellen Birnbaum,
James L. Kugel, Patrick Tiller, and Paula Richman, Mr. Ben
White,
Ms. Hope Toscher, Ms. Myra Quick, Ms. Cathy Ashworth, Ms.
Jill
Peterfeso, and Dr. Jodi Magness. All of the aforementioned
indi-
viduals shaped and improved the project in immeasurable ways,
and
without their efforts the study would have been greatly
impover-
ished. Indeed, any shortcomings that remain are due in part to
my
failure to heed their wise counsel.
This project was also made possible by several forms of
institu-
tional support. The project began in Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
where the Harvard Divinity School awarded me a Dean’s Disserta-tion
Fellowship (2002–2003). The bulk of the dissertation was
writ-
ten in Oberlin, Ohio, where the Oberlin College Department of
Re-
ligion granted me a year-long Research Associate position
(2003–
2004) and a year-long lectureship (2004–2005). I completed the
dis-
sertation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where two McLestor
Fac-
ulty Development Grants from the Department of Religious
Studies
at UNC Chapel Hill covered the cost of travel to present my work
at
several venues (2005–2006 and 2006–2007). Finally, chapter 4
and
most of the revisions for the book were completed in
Charlottesville, Virginia, where a grant from the Dean of the
College of Arts and
Sciences and the Vice President for Research and Graduate
Studies
at the University of Virginia helped prepare the manuscript for
pub-
lication (2007–2008).
The greatest debt of gratitude—because of the time I stole
from
them in order to complete the manuscript—is owed to my
family.
During the completion of this project, my wife Dr. Jalane
Schmidt
and I experienced the birth of our two children, Ana Mercedes
and
Aurora Inéz. Our lives have been immeasurably enriched by their
arrival. Jalane proved to be a constant source of support, both
tangi-
ble and intangible. She read and critiqued the entire
manuscript, and
during several periods of writing and revision she admirably
as-
sumed more than her fair share of childcare and household
duties.
These three constantly remind me of what is meaningful in my
life.
Finally, my parents Judith and Lowell Goering first instilled in
me
a love for the Hebrew Bible. In addition, they have supported me
in
countless ways through the process of completing this project. It
is
to them that I dedicate this book “with all my heart.”
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This book follows the abbreviation system for secondary sources
in
Patrick H. Alexander et al., eds., The SBL Handbook of Style:
For
Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian
Studies (Pea-
body, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999). In addition, the following
abbre-
viations, which do not appear in the handbook, are used:
BM Bet Mikra
JSJSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism
LiSa Los libros sagrados
NBE Nueva Biblia española
SAHL Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
ζα σοφας τνι πεκαλφθη To whom has wisdom’s
root been revealed?
—Sirach 1.6
The three principal Wisdom1 books of the Jewish Bible never
once
mention the cardinal events of ancient Israel’s historical
tradition.
Proverbs, Job, and Qohelet betray no interest in, for example,
the
promises to the ancestors, the exodus from Egypt, the
theophany on
Mount Sinai, or the conquest of the land of Canaan.2 Rather
than
drawing theological conclusions from traditions about Israel’s
his-
torical encounter with YHWH, the biblical sages (the producers
and
transmitters of the Wisdom writings) developed their
understanding
of the universe and its creator through the observation of human
in-
teractions and natural phenomena. These observations were
summa-
rized by learned scholars in pithy sayings, which were written
down,
collected, and made available for others to study. Since anyone,
at
least in theory, could engage in the observation of nature and
study
———— 1 In the field of biblical studies,
“wisdom” refers to (1) a corpus of certain
books, (2) the teaching contained in those books, or (3) the
human faculty of reason. Following the convention of Michael V.
Fox, I use “Wisdom” (upper case) when referring to the literary
corpus and “wisdom” (lower case) when referring to the teaching or
the faculty of reason. But as Fox notes, “The distinctions cannot
always be maintained” (Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commen- tary , AB 18A [New York:
Doubleday, 2000], 3 n 3). In addition, I capitalize the term when
it refers to the personification of wisdom.
2 Many scholars have observed the distinctively non-national
character of Israelite
Wisdom literature. See, e.g., Roland E. Murphy, The Tree of Life:
An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 1; and Jon D. Levenson, “The
Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism,” in Ethnicity and the
Bible , ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 149–50.
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the recorded wisdom of previous generations, modern scholars
gen-
erally view wisdom as having been a universal
enterprise.3
The universal character of wisdom was not solely an Israelite
phe-
nomenon. Works that share the characteristics of Israelite
Wisdom
literature are extant from other places in Syria-Palestine, as well
as
from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Similarities among Wisdom
writings from various parts of the ancient Near East (ANE)
suggest
that sages shared their wisdom across national boundaries.
This
cosmopolitan tenor of the wisdom tradition would seem to
indicate
that wisdom was an international enterprise with a universal
appeal.
The international character of the ancient Near Eastern
Wisdom
tradition was likely made possible because the ancient sages
treatedtopics of general interest. Sages counseled readers on such
matters
as choosing a suitable marriage partner, behaving properly in
the
presence of superiors, and exercising care in one’s speech.
Anyone
who applied the sages’ teaching to his or her life could reap the
ben-
efits of wisdom. This was thought to be true regardless of the
per-
son’s nationality or religion. Some topics in Wisdom
literature—such
as warnings against seductive women or guidance on how to
serve
high political officials—disclose a narrower sociohistorical
setting
and implicit audience.4 Nonetheless, the broad appeal of the
topics addressed and the non-theistic and non-nationalistic idiom
of much
ancient Near Eastern Wisdom literature suggests that the
intended
audience of the Wisdom authors was the universal human
being.5
Regarding the biblical Wisdom tradition, for example, James
H.
———— 3 Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in
Israel , trans. James D. Martin (London: SCM
Press, 1972), 4; and James L. Kugel, “Wisdom and the Anthological
Temper,” Proof 17 (1997): 9.
4
As feminist biblical scholars have pointed out in recent decades,
much of Is- rael’s wisdom tradition, for example, conveys the
perspective of predominantly male sages addressing their primarily
young male audience. See, e.g., Claudia V. Camp, Wisdom and the
Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (Sheffield: Almond,
1985); idem, “Woman Wisdom and the Strange Woman: Where is Power to
Be Found?,” in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: Identity and the
Book , ed. Timothy K. Beal and David M. Gunn (London:
Routledge, 1997), 85–112; Carol A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse
of Patriarchal Wisdom,” in Reading Bibles , 116–31; and
Christine Roy Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance: A
Socioeconomic Reading of Proverbs 1–9 and 31:10–31 , ed. Otto
Kaiser, BZAW 304 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001).
5 Although a term such as “universal” does not occur in the
ancient record, one
can infer that wisdom teachers considered their teachings to have
universal applica- bility given the style and language they
used to transmit their teaching.
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 3
Breasted notes that the sages viewed their audience not as
fellow
Israelites, bound by covenant to the personal God of Israel, but
sim-
ply as human beings.6
WISDOM AND TORAH IN SIRACH
In the early decades of the second century B.C.E.,7 however,
the
Jewish scribe Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira (hereafter Ben
Sira)8
juxtaposed the universal wisdom tradition and Israel’s
historical tra-
ditions. The most famous example appears in chapter 24 of his
———— 6 James Henry Breasted, The Dawn of
Conscience (New York: Scribner, 1933).
In like fashion, William McKane observes that the problems that the
book of Prov- erbs addresses are those that everyone faces
(Proverbs: A New Approach [Philadel- phia:
Westminster, 1970], 1–33). This interest in the person
qua person, rather than in the person as a member of the
ethnos , is related to the Wisdom tradition’s appar- ent lack
of interest in the historical traditions of Israel. Similarly,
Wilfred G. Lam- bert remarks that in Sumerian and Babylonian
Wisdom literature, the primary dis- tinction between beings in the
universe was not based on ethnic or national identi- ties, but was
instead the distinction between human and divine beings (Babylonian
Wisdom Literature [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960],
3).
7
The dating of the book of Sirach is not much in dispute. Based on
the statement of the grandson in the prologue that he translated
the book from the original Hebrew into Greek some time after he
arrived in Egypt in “the thirty-eighth year of the reign of
Euergetes” (132 B.C.E.), most scholars date the translation to just
before (so G. H. Box and W. O. E. Oesterley) or just after (so
Rudolf Smend) the death of Euer- getes in 117 B.C.E. See G. H. Box
and W. O. E. Oesterley, “Sirach,” in The Apoc- rypha and
Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament , ed. R. H. Charles
(Oxford: Claren- don, 1913), 1:293, 317; and Rudolf Smend, Die
Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1906),
3. Allowing for two generations, the grandfather’s original text,
then, was likely the product of the first quarter of the second
century B.C.E. Such a calculation fits with the internal evidence
from the book of Sirach. Sir 50.1–
21 hymns a priest, thought to be Simon II, who served as high
priest from 219 to 196 B.C.E. From his description, it seems as
though the author was personally fa- miliar with Simon II.
Additionally, the book never refers to the turbulence that ac-
companied the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164 B.C.E.). Thus, it
seems that the original book was composed somewhere in the period
196–175 B.C.E. For a good overview of the evidence for dating the
book of Sirach, see Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira , AB 39 (Garden City, N.Y.: Dou-
bleday, 1987), 8–10.
8 The author’s name is given in MS B Sir 50.27 and in a
subscription following
Sir 51.30 as Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira (
yšw bn l zr bn syr ). On the
text-critical problems in these verses, see Skehan and Di
Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira , 557, 579– 80. Throughout the
study, I refer to the author as Ben Sira and his book as Sirach. I
have not altered quotations of other scholars, however, even when
they use Sirach to refer to the author.
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book.9 After relating personified Wisdom’s first-person
account of
her origins, her pursuits in the celestial and terrestrial realms,
and
the tale of how she came to dwell in the Jerusalem temple, Ben
Sira
makes what many scholars refer to as the “identification” of
Wis-
dom and Torah:
Sir 24.23a
τατα πντα ββλος διαθκης θεο ψστου
b νμον ν νετελατο μν Μωυσς c
κληρονομαν συναγωγας Ιακωβ
Sir 24.23a All this [Wisdom] is the book of the covenant of the
Most High God,
b the Torah that Moses commanded us
c as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob. The
interpretive problem lies in understanding precisely how Ben
Sira intends to relate Wisdom, that primordial entity which
“held
sway over every people and nation” (Sir 24.6), and Torah, which
he
defines as Israel’s “book of the covenant.” The Greek text
simply
juxtaposes Wisdom and Torah without any verbal clues as to
the
nature of the relation. In other words, the entire meaning of the
re-
lation of Wisdom and Torah hinges on the copula “is” in my
English
translation or, worse, on the absence of a verb in the Greek text
that
might clarify the nature of the relation.
Beyond the syntactical problem lies the question of what Ben
Sira
means by “Wisdom” and “Torah.” If Wisdom represents the
teach-
ings of the ancient Near Eastern sages, which were considered
uni-
versally applicable to all human beings, and if Torah denotes
the
particular teachings of Israel’s God, which were intended for
Jews
alone, in what sense could Ben Sira possibly relate these two
seem-
ingly disparate entities? To state the problem abstractly, how
does
the sage correlate the universal and the particular? By
universal Imean something that is thought to apply to
all humanity. In contrast,
something is particular if it is considered
applicable only to a subset
———— 9 Ben Sira’s juxtaposition of Wisdom
and Torah is just one of many such
juxtapositions in his book that require careful
interpretation. Others include “fear of YHWH” and “wisdom” (Sir
1.27a), “to fear YHWH” and “to love YHWH” (2.16), “kindness to a
father” and “a sin-offering” (3.14), “the commandments” and “the
covenant” (28.7), “to guard oneself” and “to guard the commandment”
(32.23), “to keep the Torah” and “to make many offerings” (35.1),
and “the shining sun” and “the glory of YHWH” (42.16).
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of humanity.10 More concretely, the problem involves the
relation of
two authoritative bodies of literature, which Ben Sira inherited:
the
corpus of international wisdom literature, on the one hand, and
the
national literature of ancient Israel, on the other.
The problem of the relation between the universal and the
partic-
ular is a problem inherent not only to Ben Sira but also to
Judaism
more generally. Indeed, the matter is especially problematic for
Ju-
daism because of its notion of special revelation. The problem of
the
relation of the universal and particular, as I have defined
these
terms, has a counterpart in the relation of general and special
reve-
lation.11 A general revelation, such as one might find in a
natural
religion, applies to all human beings. Anyone may have access tothe
revelation, irrespective of her or his nationality, race, or
reli-
gious identity. A special revelation, in contrast, applies only to
the
particular group of persons to whom the revelation is given.
Only a
person belonging to the group can have access to the content
of the
special revelation.12 As with other religious traditions that
make such
a distinction between general and special revelation, Ben Sira’s
Ju-
daism must wrestle with a central theological problem: the
relation
between the general revelation given to all human beings
through
creation and the special revelation given to Israel through its
histori- cal experience.13
———— 10
Although I have defined the terms “universal” and
“particular” somewhat differently from her, my thinking on the
matter is indebted to the discussion of Ellen Birnbaum, The Place
of Judaism in Philo’s Thought: Israel, Jews, and Proselytes ,
BJS 290 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 1–14. Her study explores
two types of divine-human relationships in Philo: the quest to see
God and the covenant between
God and Israel. Birnbaum (p 5) defines universalism as “the
position that anyone can participate in these relationships”
and particularism as “the position that only Jews can participate
in these relationships.”
11 See David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the
Chosen People
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 8. 12 The
transposition of the problem from the relation of the universal and
particu-
lar to the relation of general and special revelation is especially
appropriate in the case of Ben Sira, because, as I shall show in
chapter 3, he views wisdom as a kind of revelation to human beings.
I shall demonstrate that Ben Sira distinguishes a gen- eral wisdom
revealed to all human beings and a special wisdom revealed only to
Israel.
13 Jon D. Levenson, “Response to the Papers of Stephen Geller,
Neil Gillman, and David Novak” (paper presented at the Conference
on Judaism and the Natural World, Harvard Divinity School, 1998),
2.
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6 CHAPTER ONE
The problem occurs, to cite just one example, at the beginning
of
Judaism’s scriptures, in Genesis and Exodus, which suggest that
the
same God who created the universe, including all humanity, is
also
the particular God of Israel.14 To put it another way, the
same God
who revealed himself through his creation of the world also
revealed
himself to Israel by means of the Torah. The problem arises in
re-
lating the two resultant sources for knowledge of this one God:
na-
ture or creation, on the one hand, and the Torah of Israel, on
the
other.15 Thus, as a Jewish devotee of ancient Israel’s sacred
writ-
ings, Ben Sira inherited the problem of the universal and
particular.
Ben Sira’s correlation of universal Wisdom with Israel’s
Torah
signals a significant development in Israel’s older wisdom
tradition,which, as I noted, paid scant attention to the
particularities of Is-
rael’s historical or religious traditions. The mere juxtaposition
of the
two notions, however, does not solve the problem of the
universal
and particular; the juxtaposition only raises the question of the
rela-
tion between the two. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of
Ben
Sira’s correlation of Wisdom and Torah, and on this point two
di-
vergent avenues of scholarly interpretation are evident.
According to the first avenue of interpretation, Ben Sira’s
correla-
tion of Wisdom and Torah nationalizes Wisdom and essentially re-
stricts it to the province of God’s chosen people, Israel.
Martin
Hengel argues, for example, that Ben Sira’s correlation of
Wisdom
and Torah destroys
the universality of the influence of wisdom . . . The originally
universal wisdom becomes the possession of a limited number of
elect, the people of Israel or the pious devoted to the
law.16
E. P. Sanders states the matter more moderately: in the
worldview
of Ben Sira, “that wisdom which is universally sought is in fact
truly represented by and particularized in the Torah given by God
through
Moses.”17 Otto Kaiser interprets the relation in terms of the
Torah’s
preeminence:
———— 14 See Birnbaum, Place of Judaism in
Philo’s Thought , 1. 15 See Novak, Election of
Israel , 6. 16 Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism:
Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine
During the Early Hellenistic Period , trans. John Bowden, 2
vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:160–1.
17 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 331.
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 7
The Torah, as the “law of life” (Sir 17:11; 45:5), has in [Ben
Sira’s] eyes a superiority both theoretical and practical over
every other source of wisdom, since it is the epitome of divine
wisdom
and thereby the source of all true wisdom. 18
In the view of these scholars, Ben Sira either subsumes Wisdom
into
Israel’s Torah, or he has such regard for the Torah as a
document
without compare that the sage becomes a Jewish particularist
with
little concern for universal wisdom.
According to the second avenue of interpretation, Ben Sira’s
cor-
relation of Wisdom and Torah universalizes the Torah and
defines
the Mosaic covenant in terms of the older wisdom
tradition.19 Ger-
hard von Rad, for example, contends,
It is not that wisdom is overshadowed by the superior power of the
Torah, but, vice versa , that we see Sirach endeavouring to
legitimatize and to interpret the Torah from the realm of under-
standing characteristic of wisdom.20
Later von Rad continues:
The Torah is not a subject of particular interest to Sirach . . .
For Sirach [the Torah] is of relevance only in so far as it is to
be un- derstood on the basis of, or as it is otherwise connected
with, the
great complex of wisdom teachings.21
Put another way, Robert Pfeiffer suggests that “wisdom . . .
looms
much more prominently in Sirach’s book than the Law with
which
———— 18 Otto Kaiser, “Covenant and Law in
Ben Sira,” in Covenant as Context: Essays
in Honour of E. W. Nicholson , ed. A. D. H. Mayes and R. B.
Salters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 237. Cf. Skehan
and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira , 76; and Ernst Gunter
Bauckmann, “Die Proverbien und die Sprüche des Jesus
Sirach,” ZAW 72 (1960): 33–63.19 See, e.g., Randal
A. Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and
Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and
Judgment , SBLEJL 8 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 56 with n
144.
20 von Rad, Wisdom in Israel , 245. Italics in original.
Cf. Gerald T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct: A
Study in the Sapientializing of the Old Testament , BZAW 151
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 61; and Johannes Mar-
böck, Weisheit im Wandel: Untersuchungen zur
Weisheitstheologie bei Ben Sira (Bonn: Peter Hanstein,
1971), 85–96. The latter has been reprinted in Johannes Mar-
böck, Weisheit im Wandel: Untersuchungen zur
Weisheitstheologie bei Ben Sira. Mit Nachwort und Bibliographie zur
Neuauflage , BZAW 272 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), which
includes a comprehensive bibliography on Sirach, as well as a
brief review of unresolved research issues.
21 von Rad, Wisdom in Israel , 247.
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8 CHAPTER ONE
he identified it.”22 John Collins, in comparing Ben Sira’s
views on
Wisdom and Torah to that of Bar 3.9–4.4, argues:
In the case of Sirach, however, it would be more accurate to
saythat the sage was defining the Mosaic covenant in terms of the
well-established wisdom tradition. He does not cite biblical laws
directly; he draws on other sources of wisdom besides the Torah,
and he grounds all wisdom, including the law, in the order of
creation.23
These scholars see Ben Sira’s correlation of Wisdom and Torah
as
an expansive move which equates Israel’s special revelation par
ex-
cellence with the wisdom accessible to all human beings. In
this
view, Ben Sira subsumes Israel’s Torah into the category of
Wisdomand thereby takes a universalist stance.
Both of these avenues of interpretation prove unsatisfactory in
that
they define one idea—Wisdom or Torah—in terms of the other.
One
category subsumes the other, with the result that the subsumed
cate-
gory wanes in importance. On the one hand, if all Wisdom is
sub-
merged into Torah, no role remains for the former. All wisdom
de-
rives from the specific revelation of the Torah.24 On the
other hand,
if the Torah is defined in terms of Wisdom, no separate purpose
en-
dures for the former. The special revelation of the Torah is
general- ized to such an extent that Wisdom alone suffices as a
guide for
life.25 Given the reductionist nature of both avenues of
interpreta-
tion, a fresh approach to interpreting Ben Sira’s correlation of
Wis-
dom and Torah is required.
In order to avoid the reductionism evident in the scholarly
inter-
pretations cited above, I suggest that Ben Sira views Wisdom
and
Torah not as identical but rather as correlated. In his frequent
asyn-
detic juxtaposition of the terms, as in Sir 24.23 cited above, the
sage
intends to signal the congruity of Wisdom and Torah, not the
reduc-
———— 22 Robert Henry Pfeiffer, History of
New Testament Times, with an Introduction
to the Apocrypha , 1st ed. (New York: Harper, 1949), 370.
23 John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic
Age , OTL (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1997), 55. 24 See Novak, Election of
Israel , 7. 25 Some scholars who hold the universalist
reading of Sirach still maintain a dis-
tinctive role for the Torah. Collins (Jewish Wisdom in the
Hellenistic Age , 56–61), for example, suggests that, for Ben
Sira, Torah study offers one avenue for the pur- suit of wisdom,
and that “the point of the identification [of Torah with Wisdom] is
to accredit the Torah as a valid concretization . . . of universal
wisdom.”
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 9
tion of one to the other. It is this complexity of the correlation
be-
tween Wisdom and Torah that the two dominant avenues of
inter-
pretation fail to appreciate.26
Additionally, I suggest that Ben Sira distinguishes two kinds
of
wisdom. In his view, all wisdom originates with YHWH. As the
creator of the universe and as the particular God of Israel,
YHWH
has revealed wisdom to human beings in two apportionments. In
one
apportionment, YHWH gives a general wisdom to all human
beings,
and in another apportionment he gives a special wisdom to his
cho-
sen people, Israel. The notion of “wisdom’s root” (Sir 1.6)
provides
a fitting metaphor for this core of wisdom reserved for Israel.
The
two apportionments of wisdom are in essence two revelations
ofwisdom: a general wisdom which is available to all human
beings
through creation, and a special wisdom which is available to
Israel
through YHWH’s commandments. To stretch the metaphor a bit
fur-
ther, special wisdom corresponds to the root which generally
lies
hidden and must be especially revealed, whereas the general
wisdom
seen by all in creation corresponds to the portion of the plant
visible
above ground. Thus, pursuing the title of the present book,
one
might answer the sage’s rhetorical question, “To whom has
wis-
dom’s root been revealed?” thus: It has been revealed to God’s
elect, Israel. Understanding Ben Sira’s view of wisdom in this
way
complicates any simple “identification” of wisdom with Torah.
Ben
Sira does not construe wisdom as completely universal, since in
his
view Israel alone received a special measure of wisdom. Nor
does
he view wisdom in wholly particular terms, because all human
be-
ings partake in a general outpouring of wisdom upon the
created
world. Neither completely universal, nor wholly particular—that
is
the conundrum of wisdom; it is also the leitmotif of the
present
study.
ELECTION IN SIRACH
The preceding discussion of a general wisdom given to the
nations
and a special wisdom granted to Israel will no doubt call to mind
the
doctrine of Israel’s election by YHWH. The doctrine of
election
———— 26 Clearly, Hengel’s statement that
“in practice, wisdom and the law become
one” is too simple (Judaism and Hellenism , 1:139).
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draws a similar distinction between YHWH’s relationship to
humanity
in general and the particular relationship that YHWH enters
into with
Israel. Thus, it is reasonable to inquire after Ben Sira’s ideas
about
election, to see whether they can inform the present discussion of
his
ideas about wisdom and revelation. As I will show, Ben Sira
incor-
porates these apportionments of general and special wisdom
into an
integrated worldview by means of the idea of election. By
appropri-
ating the doctrine of Israel’s election, the sage correlates the
univer-
sal wisdom bestowed upon humanity generally and the
particular
wisdom bequeathed to Israel especially.27
Election tends to be thought of in terms of particularism. That
is,
for many people, the idea that God chooses to enter into a
specialrelationship with some persons and not others connotes
exclusiv-
ism.28 And thus one may wonder how election can relate a
universal
entity such as Wisdom to a particular entity such as Torah. But
my
understanding of election is not identified solely with
particularism.
Rather, I interpret election as a way to understand a specific
rela-
tionship between part and whole. In the situation of election,
one
part of a whole is set apart for a special (in this case)
divine pur-
pose. I contend that Ben Sira draws on the concept of
Israel’s elec-
tion to mediate the tension between the wisdom tradition’s interest
in universally available knowledge of God and Israel’s own
particular
traditions of special revelation.
Surprisingly, few studies on the book of Sirach treat the topic
of
election. Some commentaries do not mention the theme at
all.29 Of
those that do, most note allusions to the election of Israel in
this
———— 27 The doctrine of election is a
natural tool for Ben Sira to use, since he views
wisdom as a kind of revelation, and the doctrine of revelation is a
correlate to the
doctrine of election. See Novak, Election of Israel ,
8.28 See, e.g., Jeremy Cott, “The Biblical Problem of
Election,” JES 21 (1984): 199–228; Regina M. Schwartz,
The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Mono-
theism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997),
17–21; and R. Christopher Heard, Dynamics of Diselection: Ambiguity
in Genesis 12–36 and Ethnic Boundaries in Post-Exilic Judah ,
SemeiaSt 39 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 2– 4,
182–4. What all these interpretations share in common is the notion
that the doc- trine of election results in particularism and
exclusivism.
29 James L. Crenshaw, for example, does not mention election
in his treatment of Sirach (Old Testament Wisdom: An
Introduction , rev. ed. [Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
1998], 140–64). Only when discussing the topic in Wis 3.9; 4.15;
and 15.1–2 does he suggest that Ben Sira’s hymn In Praise of the
Ancestors of Old “paved the way for the adoption of particularistic
thinking,” by which he means the idea of election (Old Testament
Wisdom , 166–7).
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 11
passage or that, or mention the theme almost in passing
without de-
veloping the larger implications of election for interpreting Ben
Si-
ra’s work. Certainly, no monograph-length—or even
article-length—
treatment of the subject exists.
Von Rad, for example, treats the topic of election in his
discus-
sion of Sir 33.7–15. He proposes that, for Ben Sira, Israel’s
election
results from “a primeval decision on God’s part.”30
Nevertheless,
von Rad never develops the implications of this observation for
un-
derstanding the book of Sirach. He even dismisses the allusion
to
Israel’s election as “only an example” of divine
determination.
Moreover, von Rad interprets Ben Sira’s “limited” interest in
Is-
rael’s election in terms of a dualism between good and evil.
31
Whilehis observations about primordial determinism prove to
be useful for
understanding the connection between Ben Sira’s doctrine of
election
and his creation theology, von Rad’s interpretation of Ben
Sira’s
notion of election in dualistic terms distorts the subtle
relationship
between Jews and non-Jews envisioned by the sage.
Dualists view the world through a stark “us versus them” lens,
in
which “us” connotes good and “them” signifies evil. While Ben
Sira
perceives the world in terms of Jew and non-Jew, he does not
asso-
ciate good with the Jew and evil with the non-Jew. Instead, as I
will demonstrate later on, he sees good and evil, wisdom and
foolish-
ness, both within non-Jews and in his own Jewish people (see,
for
example, Sir 16.5–14; 39.4). Moreover, whereas the dualist
con-
cerns himself only with his own particular people—everyone else
be
damned—Ben Sira seeks the well-being of all humanity,
especially
their acquisition of wisdom, which aids them in living a good
life.
In this respect, Luis Alonso Schökel’s brief discussion of
election
in Sirach should be seen as an improvement on the work of von
Rad. In his study of Sir 16.24–17.14, Alonso Schökel notes both the
purposeful nature and the universal and particular dimensions
in Ben
Sira’s understanding of election. He observes that, for the sage,
Is-
rael’s “election” responds to an “exigency of mankind.”
Moreover,
he notes that Israel’s election is given “not as a monopoly, but
in
order that Israel may share it with others.”32 My study
develops
———— 30 von Rad, Wisdom in Israel ,
270; cf. 267. 31 von Rad, Wisdom in Israel , 267.
32 Luis Alonso Schökel, “The Vision of Man in Sirach
16:24–17:14,” in Israelite
Wisdom: Theological and Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel
Terrien , ed. John G.
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12 CHAPTER ONE
Alonso Schökel’s characterization of election in Sirach both as
pur-
poseful and as a device by which Ben Sira correlates the
universal
and particular.
Collins treats the topic of election primarily with respect to
Wis-
dom’s settlement in Israel (Sir 24). Like von Rad, Collins
interprets
this passage as suggesting “that the association of wisdom with
Is-
rael is primordial.”33 Importantly, Collins notes the
influence of
Deut 32.8–9 on Sirach 24. As I will show, this Deuteronomic
pas-
sage had an enormous influence on the significance and character
of
election for Ben Sira. Like von Rad, however, Collins also
interprets
Ben Sira’s doctrine of election in terms of dualism.34
Leo Perdue treats the theme of election in Sirach more fully
than, perhaps, any other scholar.35 He identifies
allusions to Israel’s cho-
senness in Sir 16.24–18.14; 24; 33.7–15; and 44–50. Perdue
ob-
serves that Ben Sira ties his doctrine of election to his creation
the-
ology36 and associates Israel’s election with divine
sovereignty and
determination.37 Like Collins, Perdue notes the significance
of elec-
tion for interpreting Wisdom’s residence in Israel, especially in
the
metaphor of “inheritance.”38 Perdue, however, suggests that
Israel’s
election reveals that “God predestines some humans to be
righteous
and others to be evil.”39 Thus, like von Rad and Collins,
Perdue interprets Ben Sira’s understanding of election in dualistic
terms.
Johannes Marböck’s literary and structural analysis of Ben
Sira’s
wisdom poems locates the sage’s notion of election within a
com-
———— Gammie, et al. (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
Press for Union Theological Seminary, 1978), 243. Alonso Schökel
concludes, “Thus, the elect people becomes a model for
understanding man, and as [sic ] a model from which man may
learn.”
33
Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age ,
51.34 Collins (Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age ,
84–5) comments on Ben Sira’s views of election in his discussion of
Sir 33.7–15, a passage he interprets dualisti- cally: “v. 12
contrasts the election of Israel with the dispossession of the
Canaanites . . . Finally, in 33:14–15, Sirach argues that divine
election is not random, but is part of a coherent system:
‘Good is the opposite of evil, and life is the opposite of death;
so the sinner is the opposite of the godly.’” In chapter 2, I argue
that Sir 33.7–15 should not be understood dualistically.
35 Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom and Creation: The Theology of Wisdom
Literature (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 243–90.
36 Perdue, Wisdom and Creation , 269–70. 37
Perdue, Wisdom and Creation , 274. 38 Perdue, Wisdom and
Creation , 269–70. 39 Perdue, Wisdom and Creation ,
290. Cf. 273–4.
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 13
prehensive worldview.40 In the structure of Ben Sira’s
wisdom think-
ing, the idea of election is connected to wisdom and law.
Specifi-
cally, the concrete manifestation of wisdom in Israel by means
of
the Torah constitutes a reappropriation of election. Marböck
rightly
suggests that Ben Sira is concerned to hold Israel’s national
tradi-
tions, which were based on election and history, in creative
tension
with the universal wisdom tradition, which is based on the
human
capacity to reason. In Marböck’s interpretation, Wisdom serves
as
the device by which Ben Sira holds these traditions in tension,
be-
cause for the sage, wisdom relates both to creation (universal) and
to
fear of YHWH (particular). Thus, for Marböck, election stands
for
the particular historical traditions of Israel, while “profane”
wisdomrepresents the universal.41 My interpretation of wisdom
in Sirach
resembles that of Marböck, in that I also envision both a
universal
and a particular dimension to wisdom. Nevertheless, I maintain,
the
idea of election stands behind Ben Sira’s two-tiered construction
of
wisdom and, thus, serves to bridge the universal and particular
in
Ben Sira’s thought. Moreover, like most commentators, Marböck
also interprets election in dualistic terms.42 Another
drawback of his
study is its overemphasis on the wisdom poems in Sirach. As a
re-
sult of this focus, it fails to take into account the wisdom
sayings and instructions which take up an equally large portion of
the
book.43
My study demonstrates that Ben Sira derives the doctrine of
Is-
rael’s election from an observation he makes about the natural
world
———— 40 Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel .
Cf. Johannes Marböck, “Gesetz und Weisheit:
zum Verständnis des Gesetzes bei Jesus ben Sira,” BZ 20
(1976): 1–21; and, more recently, his collection of essays in idem,
Gottes Weisheit unter Uns: Zur Theologie
des Buches Sirach (Freiburg: Herder, 1995).41 See
Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel , 125. 42 Marböck, Weisheit
im Wandel , 152–4. 43 While most of the book of Sirach
can be classified as poetry, the wisdom po-
ems make up only a part (a significant part, to be sure) of the
various genres em- ployed by the author. Marböck relies on a
group of wisdom poems (Sir 1.1–10; 14.20–15.10; 24; etc.),
especially wisdom hymns, to interpret Ben Sira’s theology, at the
expense of other literary forms, which are no less important for
reconstructing the sage’s ideas. Beyond the wisdom poems and hymns,
Sirach includes many ex- tended rhetorical constructions, what some
term instructions or lectures, as well as individual sayings,
prayers, and the like. On the literary genres employed by Ben Sira
in general, see Walter Baumgartner, “Die literarischen Gattungen in
der Weis- heit des Jesus Sirach,” ZAW 34 (1914): 161–98;
and Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira , 21–30.
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14 CHAPTER ONE
and from sources in the Hebrew Bible. In various biblical texts,
God
inexplicably chooses certain figures over others for special roles
in
the divine economy. Sometimes this choosing of a particular
person
(or in the case of Israel, a nation or people) is considered to
have
universal implications. In Gen 12.1–3, for example,
YHWH chooses
Abram to father a great people and to inherit a particular land.
But
the effect of choosing the particular person of Abram has
universal
implications: all the nations of the earth will experience
blessing
through Abram.44 Similarly, Ben Sira’s notion of Israel’s
election
has a universal purpose: like rivers which channel water to
the
ocean, the elect play a role in the distribution of wisdom to the
lar-
ger world (Sir 24.10–22; cf. Deut 4.6–7). 45
By appropriating Israel’s election tradition, Ben Sira
maintains a
focus upon the universal concern of the wisdom tradition for
the
well-being of all humanity and also upon the particular traditions
of
Israel’s own national heritage contained within its ancient
literature.
Moreover, the tradition of election offers Ben Sira a means
for
bridging these two concerns. For Ben Sira, the election of
Israel
suggests not only that the universal and the particular—the
distinct
phenomena of Wisdom and Torah—are correlated, but that there
is a
purposefulness to the relation. Whereas the correlation of
general and special revelation simply suggests the whole and the
part, elec-
tion maintains that the special revelation is given with the intent
of
providing universal benefits.
———— 44 On the long-standing debate over
the proper translation of the Niphal of brk in
Gen 12.3b, see Claus Westermann, Genesis 12–36 , trans. John
J. Scullion (Minnea-
polis: Fortress, 1995), 151–2, and the literature cited
there. Whether the passive meaning (“be blessed”) or the reflexive
meaning (“bless themselves”) of the Niphal should be read is, in
one sense, a moot point. On either interpretation, the nations
partake in the blessing accorded Abram. Ben Sira, along with
LXX, Vulg., and Tg., understands the verb in a passive sense. Sir
44.21 suggests that YHWH elected Abram “in order to bless the
nations by his offspring (lbrk bzr w g w
y m).” In Ben Sira’s case, this is all the
more interesting, since his allusion to the blessing has more
affinities with Gen 22.18 and 26.4, where MT uses the Hitpael,
which does not have a passive sense.
45 Ben Sira’s view of Israel as a dispenser of wisdom to the
nations corresponds to his portrayal of Solomon in Sir 47.14–15.
According to the tradition of 1 Kings, the nations come to Solomon
to experience his wisdom (1 Kgs 5.14 [Eng. 4.34]; 10.1–13, 24–25).
In Ben Sira’s depiction, however, the king’s wisdom radiates out-
ward to the nations. I am indebted to Eugene McGarry for pointing
out this parallel.
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 15
PLAN OF THE PRESENT STUDY
The famous complexity of the textual history of the book of
Sirach
presents numerous challenges to the textual critic. Although
Ben
Sira composed his work in Hebrew, only some 68 percent of the
Hebrew text is extant. In addition to the Hebrew text,
various
Greek, Syriac, and Latin manuscripts provide important witnesses
to
the text of Sirach. Hence, my attempt to grapple with Ben
Sira’s
arguments and reasoning has required frequent attention to the
multi-
farious manuscript evidence for his book, as the footnotes will
indi-
cate. In addition, textual reconstructions of four principal
passages
treated in the study, accompanied by my translations, appear in a
setof appendixes at the end of the book. The appendixes are
intended to
serve as a convenient reference for the reader who wishes to
see
how I handle each of the four passages as a whole. Footnotes to
the
text-critical appendixes are duplicated in the footnotes to the
chap-
ters, where relevant to my argument; thus, it is possible to read
the
chapters without consulting the appendixes. Finally, a brief
intro-
duction to the witnesses and modern editions and reference
tools
precedes the appendixes.
In my attempt to recover Ben Sira’s arguments and to reconstruct
his conceptual framework, I have naturally had to pay close
attention
to philological matters. I construe philology not simply in the
nar-
row, lexicographic sense, but more broadly to include the task
of
studying lexical items and their textual context with
the goal of in-
terpreting literature.46 Since words take on meaning within
larger
literary contexts, I also have had to ascertain carefully the
literary
features of his text. The analysis of literary structures and
styles is
essential for understanding the sense of larger units in Ben
Sira’s
discourse. In addition to the analysis of genre, I pay attention to
li- terary figures, such as metaphor and chiasmus; to poetic
features,
such as parallelism; and also to rhetorical techniques, such as
analo-
gy and amplification. I aim to interpret Sirach in a holistic
manner,
taking into account his wisdom poems as well as his sapiential
dis-
courses. For example, in my discussion of a chiastic structure
in
———— 46 See Jan Ziolkowski, “‘What is
Philology’: Introduction,” in On Philology , ed.
idem (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1990), 5–7, and the other essays contained in the same volume,
especially those of W. Clausen and C. Watkins.
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16 CHAPTER ONE
Sirach 32 (see chapter 5), I show that Ben Sira sometimes argues
in
a formally complex way. Frequently, the literary and stylistic
fea-
tures of Ben Sira’s work provide clues to or confirmations of
his
argumentative content. At the same time, because Ben Sira writes
in
the parallelistic Hebrew “poetic” tradition, he sometimes uses
con-
structions whose precise meaning is difficult to elucidate. Such
are
the asyndetic expressions juxtaposing Wisdom and Torah in Sir
24.23 that I mentioned at the beginning of this introduction.
Such asyndetic juxtapositions and Ben Sira’s uses of poetic
paral-
lelism provide certain challenges in the interpretation of the
book.
The sage juxtaposes or parallels many of the terms that prove
most
significant for understanding the book: Wisdom and Torah, Wisdomand
the fear of YHWH, fear of YHWH and observance of the
com-
mandments, fear of YHWH and love of YHWH. One shortcoming
in
the history of interpreting the book, I believe, is the frequent
failure
of scholars to consider the precise relationship intended by the
sage
through juxtaposition and parallelism. A literal interpretation of
a
statement such as “Wisdom is Torah” results in a tautology,
and,
were this all that Ben Sira intended to communicate by the
juxtapo-
sition, his book would turn out to be quite dull. One could
simply
summarize his message using a mathematical equation in which all
the important terms were linked with a series of equals signs.
Based
on my appreciation for Ben Sira’s complex arguments elsewhere
in
his book, I operate on the assumption that his uses of
juxtaposition
and parallelism can express something other than mere equality
or
identity.47 I therefore look for contextual clues that might
help me
understand the precise relation intended between two
asyndetically
related objects or two terms appearing in poetic parallelism. It
must
be admitted that a precise understanding of the intended
relation
cannot always be securely deduced. Nevertheless, I have tried to
extract as much meaning from the text and context without
injecting
meanings of my own.
As a scribe versed in the national traditions of Israel, Ben
Sira
frequently refers to texts from the Israelite literary heritage.
For this
reason, I examine similarities and differences between Sirach
and
other cognate texts and explore his citations of, allusions to, and
re-
———— 47 In this respect, James L. Kugel’s
critique of the interpretation of biblical paral-
lelism as indicative of synonymity is instructive (The Idea of
Biblical Poetry: Paral- lelism and Its
History [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1981], 1–58).
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WISDOM, TORAH, AND ELECTION 17
workings of texts which were, or later became, biblical.48 In
this
way, I can observe the distinctive ways in which Ben Sira
develops
antecedent traditions.
In the end, Ben Sira was a Jewish scribe who flourished in
the
first quarter of the second century B.C.E. in Jerusalem. Therefore,
I
also attempt to locate Ben Sira in his sociohistorical context. As
a
scribe, he likely served high officials, and he seems to have
had
close associations with Jewish priests. He lived during a
relatively
stable period between the Seleucid conquest of Palestine (200
B.C.E.) and the turbulence associated with Antiochus IV
(175–164
B.C.E.). Nonetheless, Ben Sira resided under foreign occupation
in
the city considered by many of his fellow Jews to be their
God’sholy dwelling place. All of these factors contribute to Ben
Sira’s
worldview and, therefore, must be taken into account in any
inter-
pretation of the book of Sirach.
I present my exposition of Ben Sira’s doctrine of election and
its
implications for interpreting his book in chapters 2 through 7. In
the
overall design of the book, I have arranged the chapters with a
cer-
tain symmetry in mind. Chapter 7—where I synthesize my
findings—
corresponds to the present chapter, in which I have established
the
initial problem. Chapter 2 on Ben Sira’s creation theology finds
its counterpart in chapter 6, where I explicate the sage’s
eschatology.
Chapter 3’s distinction between general wisdom and special
wisdom
mirrors chapter 5’s discussion of non-Jewish piety and Jewish
piety.
At the center of the book stands chapter 4, where I analyze the
tra-
dition of transmitting wisdom from generation to generation.
Thus,
———— 48 Describing the status of texts
alluded to by Ben Sira is problematic. Clearly
some of the sage’s allusions are to traditions that eventually
became part of the bibli- cal tradition. Whether those traditions
were regarded by Ben Sira as biblical is an- other matter. Some
scholars are more willing to conclude that Ben Sira was citing
texts that he regarded as canonical; see, e.g., Sheppard, Wisdom as
a Hermeneutical Construct , 109–16; and Pancratius C.
Beentjes, “Canon and Scripture in the Book of Ben Sira,” in “Happy
the One Who Meditates on Wisdom” (Sir. 14,20): Collected Essays on
the Book of Ben Sira , CBET 43 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006),
169–86. Other scholars are more guarded on the question; see, e.g.,
Robert A. Kraft, “Scripture and Canon in the Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its
Interpretation , ed. Magne Sæbø, Christian Brekelmans, and Me-
nahem Haran (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996),
1:199–216; and Benja- min G. Wright III, “Biblical Interpretation
in the Book of Ben Sira,” in Companion to Biblical Interpretation
in Early Judaism , ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, forthcoming).
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18 CHAPTER ONE
chapter 4 forms a bridge from the idea of special wisdom
developed
in chapter 3 to the discussion of Israel’s special piety in chapter
5.
In addition to this overall chiastic structure, several of the
chapters
form natural pairs. Together, chapters 2 and 3 explain how
general
and special wisdom are revealed to their respective recipients.
And
chapters 5 and 6 elucidate how Ben Sira thinks Israel and the
nations
should act, each on the basis of its respective apportionment of
wis-
dom. Before moving on, let me briefly summarize the contents
of
each chapter.
In chapter 2, I demonstrate that Ben Sira distinguishes human
be-
ings on the basis of two unequal apportionments of divine
wisdom.
The first apportionment involves a general outpouring of wisdomupon
all creation, including all humanity. The second consists in
a
special distribution of an extra measure of wisdom to a select
group
of humanity. While most scholars interpret this classification
dualis-
tically, I argue that Ben Sira bases the distinction on the idea
of
election with no implication of dualism. That is, Israel’s
election
does not include a rejection of the non-elect. The sage derives
his
notion of Israel’s election from older biblical traditions, as well
as
from his theology of creation. For Ben Sira, the wise creator
YHWH
established his mastery through the confinement of chaos in the
pri- mordium. As a result of his sovereignty, YHWH dispenses
wisdom to
whomever he chooses and in whatever amount he chooses.
Accord-
ing to Ben Sira, YHWH made a primordial decision to elect
Israel to
receive a special dispensation of wisdom.
In chapter 3, I show that Ben Sira views the two
apportionments
of wisdom discussed in chapter 2 as forms of divine revelation.
The
outpouring of wisdom upon all creation constitutes a “general
wis-
dom” that is available to all humanity through the natural
world.
Analogously, the lavish distribution of wisdom upon the elect con-
stitutes a “special wisdom” to which Israel alone is privy.
Recog-
nizing that the sage distinguishes between general wisdom and
spe-
cial wisdom complicates most scholars’ facile description that
Ben
Sira characterizes wisdom as either universal or particular. The
sage
develops his understanding of the relationship between the elect
and
special wisdom through the metaphor of inheritance. As it is used
by
Ben Sira, the metaphor suggests the relation of part to whole:
YHWH
set apart the land of Canaan (part) from all the earth (whole) as
a
place for Israel to dwell in. In the same way, the deity
separated
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special wisdom from universal wisdom and bestowed it upon the
Jewish people as a special inheritance.
Ben Sira’s description of Israel’s special wisdom as an
inheritance
suggests a portion to be preserved and transmitted within a
lineage
from generation to generation. Chapter 4 seeks to identify the
mech-
anisms that the sage envisioned as the proper means of
safeguarding
special wisdom and handing it on from generation to
generation
among the elect. I compare the various institutions for guarding
and
transmitting wisdom evident in the book of Proverbs to those
alluded
to in the book of Sirach. Such a comparison allows me to
measure
the significance Ben Sira attaches to each institution relative to
the
significance placed on the same institutions by the compilers of
the book of Proverbs. I argue that Ben Sira marginalizes the
role of the
king and, to a certain extent, the family, while he elevates the
im-
portance of the scribe and introduces the role of the priests
as pre-
servers and transmitters of wisdom. These sociological changes
ma-
nifested in the book of Sirach reflect the new political
configuration
of early-second-century B.C.E. Jerusalem.
Chapter 5 probes the content and purposes of the special
wisdom
that the elect receive and transmit to future generations. I show
that
Ben Sira uses “fear of YHWH” primarily to refer to a piety that I
characterize as Jewish. According to the sage, this Jewish piety
has
primordial roots, along with wisdom, and was associated from
the
beginning with the pious elect, that is, with those who fear
YHWH.
Fear of YHWH implies loyalty to the covenant relationship
between
Israel and God. A Jew demonstrates loyalty to YHWH’s covenant
through observance of the covenantal stipulations, which for
Ben
Sira are the pentateuchal commandments. These commandments
in-
clude ethical and cultic requirements, both of which are
important
for the sage. By enacting the ethical and ritual commandments of
the Torah, the elect bring their lives into harmony with the
primeval
order. Such harmony with the primeval order bestows benefits
upon
the elect and leads to yet greater wisdom. The benefits are not
re-
stricted, however, to the elect. Observance of the Torah’s
covenantal
commandments renews and sustains the primeval order upon
which
the world is built. In this way, the elect play an active role that
ben-
efits the whole of humankind, indeed the whole world. While in
one
sense fear of YHWH designates a Jewish piety and, thus,
applies to
Jews, in a general way it may refer also to literal fright or awe,
and
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20 CHAPTER ONE
in this sense connotes a universal kind of piety applicable to
non-
Jews.
Chapter 6 explores the implications of Ben Sira’s understanding
of
Israel’s election for his eschatology. Ben Sira’s generally
positive
attitude toward non-Jews derives from his view that they are the
re-
cipients of general wisdom. As such, the nations have the
capacity
to fear YHWH in the general sense of experiencing awe at
creation
and, as a result, recognizing his sovereignty as creator of the
world.
If, however, the awesomeness of creation does not move the
Gen-
tiles to fear YHWH, then God’s miraculous rescue of his
oppressed
people becomes necessary. In this way, the elect, as
recipients of
divine deliverance, play a passive role in bringing about the
escha-tological reality in which all nations recognize YHWH as
sole deity.
Ben Sira does not, however, expect the nations to practice a
Jewish
piety. The sage views YHWH as a supergod or emperor who
rules
directly over Israel alone. Since he appoints intermediaries to
rule
over other nations, non-Jews are required to practice only a
univer-
sal piety.
Chapter 7 synthesizes the findings of my study. I compare Ben
Sira’s view of Israel’s election to that of the book of
Jubilees , on the
one hand, and to that of Philo, on the other. In general, I show
that Philo tended toward a universal view, in which anyone could
de-
velop an intimate relationship with the Jewish God through the
phi-
losophical quest of seeing God. Nonetheless, Philo, like Ben
Sira,
inherited the biblical tradition of Israel’s covenant with
YHWH and
also had particularistic understandings. Jubilees , in
contrast, has a
radically particularistic understanding of Israel as the elect
people of
YHWH. Like Ben Sira, Jubilees attributes Israel’s
election to a pri-
mordial decision on God’s part to charge one people with the task
of
practicing a particular piety. From such comparisons, one can
see that other Jewish authors of the Second Temple period also
struggled
with the problem of universalism and particularism and offered
a
range of solutions.
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CHAPTER TWO
ELECTION AND CREATION: THE SUN, THE MOON, AND ISRAEL’S
CHOSENNESS
Israelite sages classified human beings into two groups.
According
to the sapiential tradition, a person was either wise or foolish.
The
wise person possessed wisdom, that is, had mastered the
accumu-
lated insights of previous generations on how best to live one’s
life. The fool, in contrast, lacked such knowledge. In this way,
the wis-
dom tradition generated an anthropology that contained a rather
sim-
ple typology.
The second-century B.C.E. Jewish sage Ben Sira also
categorizes
human beings into two groups. As I shall relate, many scholars
de-
scribe the nature of the distinction between the sage’s two groups
as
“opposition.” In this chapter, however, I argue that Ben Sira
distin-
guishes human beings based on a nonoppositional understanding
of
election, a notion he derives from older biblical traditions and
from
a cosmological observation. His doctrine of election emerges
from
his theology of creation, in which YHWH as wise and
sovereign
creator dispenses wisdom to whomever he chooses, in whatever
amount he chooses. Moreover, in contrast to most biblical
authors,
who portray Israel’s election as a historical event, Ben Sira
grounds
his election doctrine in the creation of the world.
TWO APPORTIONMENTS OF WISDOM
In the poem that opens his book (Sir 1.1–10; see appendix A),
Ben
Sira distinguishes two apportionments of divine wisdom:
Sir 1.9b
κα ξχεεν ατν π πντα τ ργα ατο
10a
μετ πσης σαρκς κατ τν δσιν ατο
b
κα χοργησεν ατν τος γαπσιν ατν1
———— 1 In place of “those who love him,” a
few Gk. MSS (and Syr.) read φοβουμνοις
ατν (those who fear him). For my purposes the question is
moot, since, as I shall show in chapter 5, for Ben Sira, those who
love God are those who fear him.
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22 CHAPTER TWO
Sir 1.9b He poured out [wisdom] upon all his works, 10a among all
flesh according to his largess,
b and he lavished her upon those who love him.
According to Ben Sira, YHWH “poured out” a first allocation
of
wisdom upon all of his creations, including all human
beings (vv 9b,
10a). The deity then “lavished” a second allotment upon
a particular
subset of humanity , referred to here by Ben Sira as “those
who love
him” (v 10b; see my discussion in n 1, above). As I will discuss
in
chapter 3, the sage uses this same verb (χορηγω) in Sir 1.26 to
de-
scribe the extra wisdom that YHWH lavishes on those who keep
the
divine commandments.
Ben Sira’s mention of these two apportionments of divine
wis-dom—which in the next chapter I will call general wisdom and
spe-
cial wisdom, respectively—occurs at the very end of this
opening
poem, in which the sage recounts wisdom’s origin. In the poem
as a
whole, he affirms that all wisdom originates with God (v 1).
Ben
Sira considers Wisdom herself to be a creation of God and,
further-
more, the first of all divine creations (v 4; cf. v 9a). In order
to em-
phasize the exceeding wisdom of God, Ben Sira uses a series
of
rhetorical questions (vv 2, 3, 6), asking, for example, who can
fath-
om “the height of heaven, the breadth of the earth, the abyss, and
wisdom” (v 3).2 The presumed answer to all these rhetorical
ques-
tions is, of course, no one—except for God. If, as Ben Sira
suggests,
God is the original possessor of wisdom, it follows, then, that
God
can dispense wisdom to whomever he chooses, and in whatever
amount he chooses. In the final three cola of the poem,
quoted
above, Ben Sira narrates that YHWH chose to dispense wisdom
in
two apportionments (Sir 1.9b–10b).
Moreover, Ben Sira’s language suggests that he viewed these
two
divine apportionments of wisdom to be uneven. The unevenness re-
sults not from a qualitative difference in the wisdom of the two
al-
lotments, but rather from a quantitative disparity. Upon all his
crea-
tions and upon all humanity, Ben Sira relates, YHWH dispensed
(κ- χω, literally “to pour out [like water]”) wisdom in a
calculated
amount. Thus, according to Ben Sira, all human beings receive
a
certain measure of wisdom by virtue of their created status. In
the
———— 2 In place of most Gk. witnesses,
which read “abyss, and wisdom,” Lat., Copt.,
and Eth. read “depths of the abyss,” while Syr. reads “the great
ocean.” Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira , 137.
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next colon, however, he indicates that God has granted wisdom
more generously to a select group. Upon those who love him,
YHWH bequeathed wisdom profusely (χορηγω, literally “to
furnish
abundantly”).3 While the former verb suggests a simple,
deliberate
pouring of wisdom on all creation equally, the latter
indicates that
Ben Sira had in view a more bountiful outpouring of wisdom upon
a
select group of persons.4