symbolic meaning to the author. He may have had deficient sympathy with those elaborators of minute legal precepts, who took Ezra as their pattern. Not that he disbelieved in the continuity of inspiration—for in some sense he claims it for himself (e.g. xxiv. 33), but that he did not fully recognise the workings of the spirit in the 'fence about the Law.' Other names which he passes over in silence are Daniel and Mordecai. Does this mean that he was unacquainted with the Books of Daniel and Esther? Whatever be the date of these books, so much as this is at least a probable inference.
The panegyric seems to have originally closed with the ancient liturgical formula in verses 22-24. But the writer could not resist the temptation of giving a side-blow to the hated Samaritans (those 'half-Jews,' as Josephus the historian calls them), called forth perhaps by the dispute respecting the rival temples held at Alexandria before Ptolemy Philometor.[1] The last chapter of all (chap. li.) contains the aged author's final leave-taking. It is a prayer of touching sincerity and much biographical interest. The immediateness of the religious sentiment is certainly greater in this late 'gatherer' than in many of the earlier proverb-writers.
Enough has been said of the contents of the book to give a general idea of its moral and religious position. Let us now consider its outward form. The work, as we have seen, was originally written in Hebrew. This indeed was to have been expected. For although the influence of the Seleucidæ had greatly strengthened the hold of Aramaic on the Jewish population of Palestine, Hebrew was still, and for a long time afterwards remained, the language of scholars and littérateurs. The author of the 'Wisdom of Sirach' was both. He was thoroughly penetrated with the spirit and style of the Scriptures, especially of those of the Khokma, and he would have thought it as much a descent to lavish his great powers on Aramaic as Dante did at first to write in Italian. Is this Hebrew original still extant? Alas! no; Hebrew literature, so scantily represented for this period, has to mourn this great loss. A page of fragments, gathered from the Talmud and
- ↑ Jos., Ant., xiii. 3, 4.
