i. History. — The history of the book, which in the English Bible retained the Latin name Ecclesi- astictis, while it is called in German the book (of) Jesus Sirach or, abbreviated, Sirach, falls into two periods, the second beginning on 13th May 18'JG, when S. Schechtcr, Tahnudic reader in the Uni- versity of Cambridge, wrote in a letter to Mrs. A. S. Lewis there, that the fragment of a Hebrew MS of her.-), which he liad taken with him, represented ' a piece of the orif/imtl Hebrew of Ecclesiastic ms. It is the first time that such a thing was discovered ' (see .\. S. Lewis, In I fie Shadow of Sinai : A Story of Travel and Research from 18'J5 to 1897 ; Cam- bridge, 1898, p. 174). Since that day, 39 out of the 51 chajiters of whicli the book consists have been recovered totally or in part in Hebrew from 4 dillorcnt MSS, and a new period in the history of this book has thus been opened. \Vhat we knew about it before that time or believed we knew, is,
perhaps, best summed up in the Introduction and Commentary of A. Edcnsheim, in the Spcnhcr't Commentarij ('Apocrypha,' ed. by Henry Waca (London, 18SS), ii. I-l'39).
ii. Importance. — In many respects this book is the most important of the so-called Apocrypha. It is important for the student of history who wishes to trace the Jewish religion in its transition from the OT to the NT, and it is important on account of the influence it exercised and still exer- cises on the religious life of generations. Both the Jubilee lUiythm of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (partially translated in Hi/mns Ancient and Modern, 178, 177), and what may be called the German Te Deum, S an dunket atle Gott (ih. 379), are taken from this book. How much has been lost bj- tlio.se parts of the Church which excluded it from tlicir Bibles may be gathered from the use made of it in other parts, not only in the Greek and Roman, which place it on the same footing as the whole Bible, but also in the Lutheran, which placed it among the Apocrypha but made a verj' large use of it.
On the Latin Church compare especially Auj^stine. When he culleeted from the Bible, tow;irds the end ot his life, his so- cilkHl Speculum, i.e. those passages which he considered useful for the guidance of the religrioua life, he found in this book more for his puri^ose (.plura huic open necessana) than in any other book of the OT or NT (no fewer than 3C pages out of 2b."» in the edition of Weihrich [C.'^KL, vol xii. 1S67J ; from Proverbs 21 pafjes, from Matthew IS). After the excerpts from those books 'quosetJudffii canonicos habent,' he goes on to say ' sed non aunt omittendi et hi quos quidem ante salvatoris adventum constat esse couscriptos, sed eos non receptos a Ju<l;uis recipit tanien ciusdem s.\lvatoris ecclesia. in his sunt duo qui Salonioriis appellantur a pluribus propter quandam sicut existiino eloquU sniiilitudinem. nam Salomonis non esse nihil dubit-iuit (|uique docliores. nee tamen eius qui Sapientife dicitur quisnani sit autor apparet. ilium vcro alterum quem vocamus Ecclesi- asticum, quo<l Jesus quidam scripserit, qui co;,'nominatur Sirach, constat inter eos qui eundeni librum totum Icf^erunt.'
As to the Lutiieiun Church it may be noted that tlie protocols of the Meistursini;jer of Niirnberg alone mention about 100 songb all bcpnning Mcsus Sirach' or 'Sirach (the wise man)'— see the Indexes published by K. Drescher in vol. 214 (1S97) of the Literarische Vercin. In 1676 a preacher published the themes and dispositions of 170 sermons on this book,' and the Bible Society of llalle (founded by Francke-Caastein) circulated from 1712-1823 no fewer than 77,105 copies, t
iii. Name and Place in the Bible.— (a) Place. (1) The book had at no time a place among the 24 (or 22) books of the Hebrew Bible, thou"li it is quoted in one passage of the Bab. Talmud (ISerakh- oth, 48a) with the quotation-formula ^-nri ' as it is written,' which is used elsewhere only of the acknowledged books ; but in the parallel passages the name of the book is addeif. In two otlier passages two rabbinical authorities actually quote from our book, while believing themselves to be (luoting from Scripture (.see Strack, ' Kanon des AT ' in PllE^ ix. 753). The book is therefore not mentioned in those lists of the canonical books which profess to give the Jewish Canon, as Melito, Origon, Cyril of Jeru.salcm, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ainpliilocliius, pseudo - Athanasius' Si/nopsis, Canon of Laodicea, capitulus (Zalin, Geschichte dr^ Kanons, vol. ii.). Epiphanius, de Mens. 4 (Lagarde, Symmicta, ii. li)7), says on tlie two books, mentioned above by Augustine, Wis- dom and Sirach : aiVoi x/xictM"' l'^" f'"'' "O' uxp^^'P-oi, d\y eli if)t$p.6if Twv I)7jtujv ovk ai'a<p^jtofTai'X 3i' 6 ou5i ill TV dpiin (i"t<) li>eTiBr)(rai>, tout' iarlv iv rg T^s &o-
(2) But Sirach had a sure and prominent place among the books of the Bible in the Greek and
* Sacrarwn U 'nniliariim Thejmiticarum e Sapuint'a llata- ^1T», tive EceleniOKlico Jem filii Sirach ctnlinn el septuw/inla digpogitioTva, atinfitati'milnm texluatibit* itlxtgtratip, gxiiMi4 prajlxiu, lilier Siracidii 'jrttctu cum miriin leelionibtu . . . autore . . . W. M. Stissoro, Lipsioi, 2 pts. (1U76). Ito.
t On the use made of the book in the English Church see below, p. GPOi".