Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
Chokhmat Ben Sira
True wisdom is not a free-floating philosophical ideal but is identical with the Torah given to Israel, so studying the law of Moses and living wisely are, properly understood, the same activity.
- Wisdom explicitly identified with the Torah
- a named author describing his own scribal profession
- Hebrew original partly preserved through the Cairo Genizah and Qumran
- a grandson's Greek translation as its route into wider canonical use
A lengthy wisdom anthology, explicitly modeled on the Book of Proverbs, by a named Jerusalem scribe and sage writing in Hebrew shortly before the Maccabean crisis. Unlike most biblical wisdom literature, its author identifies himself and describes his own teaching activity directly, and unusually for an ancient work, substantial portions of its original Hebrew text survive, both in medieval Cairo Genizah manuscripts and among the Dead Sea Scrolls, alongside the complete Greek translation made by his grandson. Its central and most influential move, identifying personified Wisdom outright with the Torah given at Sinai, closed a gap that earlier wisdom literature had left open between Israel's covenant law and the international genre of practical sage instruction.
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