Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/312

 ECCLESIASTICTTS

266

ECCLESIASTICnS

has been of late seriously questioned, and Ph. Thiel- mann, the most recent investigator of its text in this respect, thinks that chs. xliv-1 are due to a translator other than that of the rest of the book, the former part being of European, the latter and chief part of .African, origin. Conversely, the view formerly doubted bj' Cornelius a Lapide, P. Sabatier, E. G. Bengel, etc., namely that the Latin version was made directly from the Greek, is now considered as altogether certain. The version has retained many Greek words in a latinized form: eremus (vi, 3); eucharis (vi, 5); basis (vi, 30); acharis (xix, 21); xenia (xx, 31); dior!/x (xxiv, 41); po- deres (xxvii, !)); etc., etc., together with certain Grse- cisms of construction; so that the text rendered into Latin was unquestionably Greek, not the original He- brew. It is indeed true that other features of the Old Latin — notably its order tor xxx-xxxvi, which dis- agrees with the Greek translation, and agrees with the Hebrew text — seem to point to the conclusion that the Latin version was based immediately on the origi- nal Hebrew. But a very recent and critical exami- nation of all such features in i-xliii has led H. Her- kenne to a different conclusion: all things taken into consideration, he is of the mind that: "Xititur Vetus Latina textu vulgari graeco ad textum hebraicum alter- ius recensionis gripce castigato." (See also Jos. Kna- benbauer, S.J., "In Ecclesiasticum", p. 34 sq.) To- gether with grsecized forms, the Old Latin translation of Ecclesiasticus presents many barbarisms and sole- cisms (such as defunctio. i, 13; reli/jtositas, i, 17, IS, 26; compartioT. i, 24; receptibilis, ii, 5; peries. periet, viii, 18; xxxiii, 7; obdudin, ii, 2; v, 1, 10; etc.), which, to the ex- tent in which they can be actually traced back to the original form of the version, go to show that the trans- lator had but a poor command of the Latin language. Again, from a fair numljer of expressions which are certainly due to the translator, it may be inferred that, at times, he did not catch the sense of the Greek, and that at other times he was too free in rendering the text before him. The Old Latin version abounds in additional lines or even verses foreign not only to the Greek, but also to the Hebrew text. Such important additions — which often appear clearly so from the fact that they interfere with the poetical parallelisms of the book — are either repetitions of preceding statements under a slightly different form, or glosses inserted by the translator or the copyists. Owing to the early origin of the Latin version (probably the second cen- tury of our era), and to its intimate connexion with both the Greek and Hebrew texts, a good edition of its primitive form, as far as this form can be ascertained, is one of the chief things to be desired for the textual criticism of Ecclesiasticus. Among the other ancient versions of the Book of Ecclesiasticus which are de- rived from the Greek, the Ethiopic, Arabic, and Cop- tic are worthy of special mention.

V. Author and D.\te. — The author of the Book of Ecclesiasticvis is not King Solomon, to whom, as St. Augustine bears witness, the work was oftentimes as- cribed " on account of some resemblance of style " with that of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticle of Can- ticles, but to whom, as the same holy doctor says, " the more learned" (apparently among the church writers of the time) "know full well that it should not be re- ferred" (On the City of C!od, Bk. XVH,ch. xx). At the present day. the authorship of the book is univer- sally and rightly assigned to a certain "Jesus", con- cerning whose person and character a great deal has indeed been surmised but very little is actually known. In the Greek prologue to the work, the author's proper name is given as'Iij^oOs, and this information is corrob- orated by the subscriptions found in the original He- l)rew: 1, 27 (Vulg., 1, 29) ; Ii, 30. His familiar surname was B^n Sira, as the Hebrew text and the ancient ver- sions agree to attest. He is described in the Greek and I,atin versions as " a man of Jerusalem " (1, 29), and in- ternal evidence (cf. x.xiv, 13 sqq.; 1) tends to confirm

the statement, although it is not found in the Hebrew. His close acquaintance with " the Law, the Prophets, and the other books delivered from the fathers", that is, with the three classes of writings which make up the Hebrew Bible, is distinctly borne witness to by the prologue to the work ; and the 367 idioms or phrases, which the study of the Hebrew fragments has shown to be derived from the sacred books of the Jews, are an ample proof that Jesus, the son of Sirach, was thor- oughly acquainted with the Biblical text. He was a philosophical observer of life, as can be easily inferred from the nature of his thought, and he himself speaks of the wider knowledge which he acquired by travel- ling much, and of which he, of course, availed himself in writing his work (xxxiv, 12). The particular per- iod in the author's life to which the composition of the book should be referred cannot be defined, whatever conjectures may have been put forth in that regard by some recent scholars. The data to which others have appealed (xxxi, 22 sqq.; xxxviii, 1-1.5; etc.) to prove that he was a physician are insufficient evidence; while the similarity of the names (Jason-Jesus) is no excuse for those who have identified Jesus, the son of Sirach, a man of manifestly pious and honourable character, with the ungodly and hellenizing high priest Jason (175-172 B. c. — concerning Jason's wicked deeds, see II Mach., iv, 7-26).

The time at which Jesus, the author of Ecclesias- ticus, lived has been the matter of much discussion in the past. But at the present day, it admits of being given with tolerable precision. Two data are particu- larly helpful for this purpose. The first is supplied by the Greek prologue, where we read that the grandson of Jesus of Sirach came into Egypt iv tu oyS6u /coi rpiaKoBTw (TCi (TTi ToC Evepyirov BairiX^us, not long after which he rendered into Greek his grandfather's work. The "thirty-eighth year'' here spoken of by the translator does not mean that of his own age, for such a specification would be manifestly irrelevant. It naturally denotes the date of his arrival in Egj'pt with a reference to the years of rule of the then mon- arch, the Egj-ptian Ptolemy Eviergetes: and in point of fact, the Greek grammatical construction of the pas- sage in the prologue is that usually employed in the .Septuagint version to give the year of rule of a prince (cf. .\ggeus, i, 1 ; ii. 1, 10; Zach., i, 1, 7; vii. 1 ; I Mach., xiii, 42; xiv, 27; etc.). There were indeed two Ptol- emvs of the surname Euergetes (Benefactor): Ptolemy III and Ptolemy VII (Physcon). But to decide which is the one actually meant by the author of the prologue is an easy matter. As the first, Ptol- emy III, reigned only twenty-five years (247-222 B. c), it must be the second, Ptolemy VII, who is intended. This latter prince shared the throne along with his brother (from 170 b. c. onwards), and after- wards ruled alone (from 145 b. c. onwards). But he was wont to reckon the years of his reign from the earlier date. Hence "the thirty-eighth year of Ptol- emy Euergetes", in which the grandson of Jesus, the son of >Sirach, came to Egypt, is the year 132 b. c. This being the case, the translator's grandfather, the author of Ecclesiasticus, may be regarded as having lived and written his work between forty and sixty years before (between 190 and 170 b. c), for there can be no doubt that in referring to Jesus by means of the term ird-inros and of the definite phrase 6 irdinros ^loO 'ItjitoOs, the writer of the prologue designates his grand- father, and not a more remote ancestor. The second datum that is particularly available for determining the time at which the writer of Ecclesiasticus lived is supplied by the Ijook itself. It has long been felt that since the son of Sirach celelirates with such a genuine glow of enthusiasm the deeds of "the high priest Simon, son of Onias", whom he praises as the last in the long line of Jewish worthies, he must himself have been an eyewitness of the glorj' which he depicts (cf. I, 1-16, 22, 23). This was, of course, but an inference.