5 "The He])Luagint is said here to have been made 'sixyeorf after the return of the cliil<lrcn of Israel from Babel, which was the 17th year of the death of Alexander the Greek, and 1400 years after the Law was jfiven to .Moses. Simeon the old (K3D), the father of Je.sus bar Sira, the Wise, was one of the seventy-two old men just mentioned ; and he was the Simeon bar Xe'thaniah bar Chonja ( = Sir 60'), and Simeon was brother of the priest Eleazar ; and it was lie who carried our Lord in liif arms, and his life was stretched over 210 years, and he called himself with a contemptible name (KTCD N2i;'3), like Abraham, who called himself dust and ashes, and David, who said, I am a worm and no man, KTO, i.e. dust from the white-waaluny, which is beaten off the walls. Instead of Sira th« Greek aayi ./l»ira(K-)'CK).'
542
SIRACH (BOOK OF)
SIRACH (BOOK OF)
Zecliariah the father of John the Baptist, Protev. Jnrobi, ch. 24 ; 'I'/te Book of the Bee (p. 71) : ' Simeon the son of Sira died in peace in his own town.' In one Greek recension of the Lives of the Prophets, ^vneCiv 6 lepevs found a place towards the end between Zechariah the son of Barachiali and Nathan (see Nestle, M(ir(j. unci Mat. p. 33). That Simeon Beodoxot was one of tlie Seventy, is stated, among Greeli writers, by Euth3'mius Zigabenus, Kedrenns, Ni ;eiihorus Kallisti. The pedigrees we tlius obtain are —
lb
Simeon.
Jesua
I Eleozar.
Sira.
Jesus.
I
Sirach.
I
[Eleozar].
S
Jesua
SimeoD.
I
Sita.
Jesus Bar-Sira.
I
Simeon.
It lias been suggested by Blan that ' the two traditions, that of the Greek and that of the Syriao, are mutually complementary.' Thus we should have in 5{) a combination of both, what textual critics call a conflation. The decision depends on the general question of the value of |S, see § ix. As to whether Simeon or Eleazar can be identified with one of the known bearers of these names, see below.
(i) The name Sirach. — The latest contribution to Hebrew lexicography, M. Jastrow's Di.iliunary of the Targitmim, etc., contains the following words which come into consideration for the explanation of this name: (1) to 'pot'; (2) ntd = Heb. rrny 'coat of mail'; (3) ntd 'thorn'; (4) xTD=the present proper name : (5) ii";"?, sy:i. (a) '[degenerate growth],' 'thorn,' ' thornbush,' (6) 'refuse,' 'foul matter'; (6) n-i'P, N-i-pf. 'sur- rounded place,' 'court,' 'prison.' From Thes. Syr. we may add (7) -i'2 = avp, ' Sir' ; (8) Kfz = tTet.pa ; and (9) the explanation of the name given by the Syriac lexicographers =k'v?' 'thin dust from the walls.' If there was not the constant tradition that the initial letter was o, the Greek 1 might correspond also to other letters, as i, or s, or a, and the name might be connected with .^TiM, xyi'S, 'small,' 'little,' 'lesser,' i";.] or ntv! being, in fact, the name of several Jewish Amoraim.
Tlie X ^t tlie end of the Greek form may corre- sjwnd to: (cf. Tlepovx, <!>a\epc), n(Ka\ax, '*''"''f3ax), to T| (many names In -fieXex). to i'(Ba\ox), to p {'A/juiXtjx, Bapax), to still other letters, as i {KecEX. Maux) or r {BaiOafax, Aeirax) ; but it is most probably a mere representation of the mater lectiotus k ; cf. 'AkeX- SffAax, "iwarix Lk 3-" = 'cv, the spelling 'AXXax = Allah [Schlatter takes it for u=i)iijs]. A. Meyer {Miittersprrirhe Jesu, p. 39) takes the word (o mean coat of mail or irns oculi; I?yssel (p. 234), 'more probably thorn or thorn-hedge than mail-coat,' referring to Le^'y, NHWB iii. 519, 520. Ryssel takes bar-Sira as name of the family ; we should thus have only three generations: Jesus, Simeon, Eliezer — not four as in JIJ.* In view of the Pro- logue, '6 iriTTTTos /aoy 'It/o-oPs,' it seems certain that the author was Jesus (the .son of Simeon), and not Simeon the son of Jesus. Whether the translator, loo, bore the name of his grandfather, as is stated by the Prologus incerti auctoris, is not certain. This second Prologue, which was first printed from cod. 248 in the Complutensian Polyglot, and was first shown by Hoeschel (1604) to be part of the BO-called pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis, begins —
• . . e «t/» vutTT^t ttiiTou . . . ^tkevovt! Tl yiy6*t* eivxp iv 'E^fixiOi; . . . iTlJ »t/» Tr.v ^'i^Xoy TaCTr,v 6 trp-jjTot ' \nffou! ffX'^^* ■" cvvti?.ly- lu'rnr SdcToAiirw* ii tcnQpai^mt Zxi^». -'^^X «?T«( /ait' «^t«v ir(K>.i»
* This is possible ; cf. Joseplius, Vita, 1 : i wpirxwvu nf^*
'.'m^it ivrljb' TtvTain iffTi/ MxToieu i 'Hfee^sv (v.2. 'H^A/cv) Ai>^
tS tf*z!.'w vetiii xttriXfTti' *Imii ' at 3n cti^.s }.et^iuttis lit ]• eiret^Kv tteceucnot a^i-vvayuec o'v^zyayi Sa^<«v Er/ TC ixv'«v xeti rm r«u fretrfac a^Aie /^r.l' tuti -rot ^as-^df* iycfjutri (j:)ueXt;x^;.
Thus we have the pedigree : Jesus [11, the trans- latorJ^Sirach [11] — Jesus [I, the author]— Sirach [I, Eleazar].
Another enlargement has taken place in the translator's Preface, as it seems, in Latin MSS, though it is known to the present wTiter only from the pre-Lutheran German Bible. There it is stated that the 'anherre' (aims, Trawiros) was a son of Josedek (see ch. 49'-), and one of the Seventy, and that the grandson Jesus the son of Sirach pursued higher studies. Finally, Euergetes is stated in the same connexion to have reigned after Philadelphus, his brother, under whom the Bible had been translated from Hebrew into Greek (see Nestle, ' Zum Prolog des Ecclesiasticus ' in ZA T IV, 1897, p. 123 f.). Already Isidore of Seville identihes Jesus the son of Sirach with Jeshua the son of Jozedek. This is of course impossible. For the translator states : ^i^ yap raJ dydoip /cat TpiaKoirri^ Itru iirl ToO Ei'e/ry^Toi' /^afftX^ajs wapayevriOeU fls Atyvwrop Kal (Tuyxpovicras eupov ov fitKpds TratScias d(p6fioLoy. This date is not to be understiood of the 38th year of the life of the translator (Camerarius) nor of any unknown era, but of the reign of Euergetes (see especially Deissmann, Bibelstudien, i. 255 [Eng. tr. 339 tt.]; R 235; Ed. 4 ft". As only Euergetes II. reigned more than 38 years (from B.C. 170 with his brotlier, from 145 alone, reckoning his years from 17U),t it is the year B.C. 132 ; and as he states that he stayed some time in Egypt (avyxpoi>iixii%) before he undertook his task, we may place the translation about 180, and the original some forty or hfty years earlier (B.C. 190-170). Then we must understand the high priest Simon, who is so highly praised in Sir 50"-, from personal knowledge as it seems, to be Simon II. Others, taking TroTTTros in the sense of ' ancestor,' prefer to place the author more than a hundred years earlier, under Simon I. In the former case it would be possible to identify our author 'l-qaovs with the high priest 'liauv (,175- 172) ; but beyond the identitj' of the time and name nothing leads to this identification. That the author of our book was high priest is stated by Syncellus (Chron., ed. Dindorf, i. 525) ; the reading Ifpei's 6 ^oXvi/elTTi! by the hrst hand of S cannot be more than a clerical error. J