But in the meantime — between the second and third publications — there had suddenly fallen a bitter drop into the general joy. D. S. Margo- liouth, who had published in 1890 as his Inaugural Lecture an Essay on the place of Ecclesiasticus in li>emitic Literature, and before that time had con- tributed largely to the commentary of Edersheim, declared in a paper on The Orif/in of the ' Original
• With ' New York, Frowde, 6 dollars,' mentioned by W. IIus» Amolt in the Theot. and Sem. Lit. /or 1900, p. 82.
SIEACH (BOOK OF)
SIEACH (BOOK OF)
547
Pi
ffebreW of Ecclesiasticvs (Parker, ISOO, 20 pp.), that the newly-discovered Hebrew was not the original, but a retranslation ; a certain reading, 43", appeared to him to be a translntion of a corrujDttun of a Persian translation of a corrupt reaclmr/ in the Greek, the work of a Jew, whose native language was Arabic, about the 10th cent. He closed his paper with the remark that 'Mrs. Lewis by her precious discovery has hit biblical criticism harder tlian it was ever hit before, or is ever likely to be hit again. For, the next time we proceed to parcel out Isaiah, will not our \ery street boys call out to us, "You who misdate by 1300 years a document before you, what do
•ou know of the dates of the Prophecies and
•salms"?'
Startling even as this was, a similar verdict was pronounced bv such a scholar as Bickcll, who in earlier years liad discovered under the Greek dis- guise that the closing chapter must have been an alphabetical poem (' l^in alphabetisches Lied Jesus Sirach's. Naehgewiesen von G. B.' in Z. f. hith. Theohriie, vi. 319-333), and had tried to restore the verj- metres of the Hebrew ('Die Strophik des Ec- clesiasticus ' in Zeilschrift fiir die Kundc des Mor- genlandes, 1892, 87-96). Bickell published hia view in a sliort paper on this aljihabetical poem (' Der hebriiische Sirachtext eine RUcUiibersetzung,' ib. 1899, 2.51-250). Other scholars took upthe challenge of Prof. Margoliouth — among them Th. NiilJeko (' Bemerkungen zum hebraischen Ben Siia' in ZATW XX. [1900] 81-94); Smend {T/iL/C, 1899, col. 506) ; M. v. Gibson (The Record, June 23, 1899, p. 641) ; Ed. Koiiig in a series of papers in the Expos. Titnes, 1900, and 6ei)arately (see Literature, 6, at end of present art.) and in other periodicals ; •ce Muss-Amolt, p. 33.
Fortunately, the new documents which came to light afterwards enable us to place our judgment cc a broader basis. The four MSS seem to be all of alwut the same age, the 11th cent. D is apparently the oldest of them, but even on C Adler remarked : ' From a comparison of paper and character with my earliest fragment from the Genizah, dated 8.32, there is nothing to induce one to assume that its date is later.' Some pas.sages of Sirach occur in these four MSS twice, a, few even three times. Now if JlJ — to use this sj^mbol for the Hebrew texts — u-cre the original, the MSS of '^ must aqree, — apart, of course, from such transcriptional variations as are common to the transmission of works before the invention of Gutenberg, — according to the rule laid down by Jerome on the Latin texts of the Gospels as compared with the Greek, ver-um non esse quod variat. But what do we iind ? One of the first rerses now lying before us in two MSS of JtJ is 4* —
(S M^l '"S' <I>s X/uv iv T(p otKif (v.l. t5 olKii/.) aov Kdl ^at'TacrioKO-iruv iv toTs olKtrais sov.
1> Noli esse sicut leo in domu tua ;
evertens domesticoa tuos et opprimens subiectos tibi.
" be not a daij in thy house,
and rehukinf) B.nd fearful in thy work*.'
Nobody doubted that * •« xi«ft ' and ' a dog ' went back to ao original '375, read n^'S by S, and that 'a» a lion" waa right. Ag«in, In the Bccond member It appeared necessary to seek a common Hebrew equivalent (or ;a>T<criM«»^> on the one hand, •nd 'rebuking anil tearful' on the other; Turther, (or 'alavcs' »nd ' works.' The latter waa, so It seemed, (ound easily : D'njy^ Irom i^i;, would ^ ' slaves," from 15^^ (Ec B')-' works'; the other was more difflr;ult to guess, because #«ir«v»«»ri;. Is a tapax leyommon in the Greek Bible, and a rare word, with
doubtfiil meaning ; some ^oo<l examples o( it (rom Ecclesiastical authors may be tound in the editiou of LloesuheL*
And now for the te-\ts of J^ — A yy'22 2^22 'nn S«
C in'aa .tind '.in Sit
i.e. A ' be not like a doff in thy house,
and [ — ?] and fcaiful in thy labour.' C ' be not like a strong lion t in thy house, and raffing over thy works.' X Can there be any doubt that A agrees with S and C with (5 1 Compare especially the second clause, where 5 has two words, A has also two,§ C for one word of (5 has one word. What is more natural than the conclusion that A and C are not the original, but dependent upon S and <5, rctranslations, aa Margoliouth aflirnied of B? But we must not be too rash : we ask. How would a late Jewish trans- lator hit upon ir.sna to render so obscure a word as (parToaiOKoiruv^. ina is rare in biblical Hebrew (Gn 49*, Jer 23^*) ; it suits the context very well ; it might be easUy confounded with ins ' fear,' and thus explain the rendering of 5, and it is a favourite word with Sirach (.see ^j 8- 19^ 41""«- 4210 mg.^ S 192 23''- »■'»•") ; it ma!/ therefore hare preserved the oriffinal.W This supposition gains probability from a comparison of Zeph 3'- * ' her princes are lions in her midst . . . her prophets are D'lqs,' where the two words stand together just aa here in clause a and h. Schechter has shown that the whole text of l) is full of allusions to the OT (cf. p. 548'': 11=^ a reminiscence of Gn 42"). These are used, of course, also by pious Jews of later times ; but when the grandson testifies in his prologue that his giandfather ' having given him- self to the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the other books of our fathers, and having gained great familiarity therein, was drawn on also himself to write somewhat pertaining to instruction and wLsdom,' why should we hesitate to consider those characteristics as belonging to the original ?