the Midrāshīm,[1] is all that we can, with some occasional hesitation, plausibly regard as genuine. There is indeed a small work, called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, consisting of two series of proverbs, one in Aramaic, and one in Hebrew. But no significance can be attached to this. The genuineness of many of the Hebrew proverbs is guaranteed by their occurrence in the Talmud, but the form in which the alphabetist quotes them is often evidently less authentic than that in the Talmud. The original work must have been lost since the time of Jerome, if we may trust his assurance[2] that he had found it in Hebrew, and that it bore the name 'Parables' (m'shālīm). Of the ancient versions, the Syriac and the Old Latin are (after the Greek) the most important; the former is from the Hebrew, the latter from a very early form of the Greek text. Neither of them is always in accordance with the Greek as we have it, but such differences are often of use in restoring the original text. All the versions appear to contain alterations of the text, dictated by a too anxious orthodoxy, and in these the one may be a check upon the other. Bickell indeed goes further than this, and states that an accurate text of Sirach can only be had by combining the data of the Greek and the Syriac. Lowth, in his 24th Lecture, strongly urges the re-*translation of Sirach into Hebrew. Such an undertaking would be premature, if Bickell's judgment be correct that the book consists of seven-syllabled verses or [Greek: stichoi], grouped in distichs,[3] except in the alphabetic poem on wisdom (li. 13-20). The latter, consisting of 22 [Greek: stichoi], he has translated into German from his own corrected text, dividing it into four-lined strophes, as also the preceding, 'alphabetising' poem, con-*Jesu filii Sirach liber et alius [Greek: pseudepigraphos] liber. . . . Quorum priorem Hebraicum reperi, non Ecclesiasticum, ut apud Latinos, sed parabolas prænotatum, cui juncti erant Ecclesiastes et Canticum canticorum.' Nowhere since has Sirach been found in this position, nor with this title.]
- ↑ See Zunz, Gottesdienstliche Vorträge, p. 102; Delitzsch, Zur Gesch. der jüdischen Poesie, p. 204 (comp. p. 20, note 5); Dukes, Rabbinische Blumenlese, p. 67 &c. It should be noticed that among these Talmudic m'shālīm there are some, and even long ones, which do not occur in the Greek Sirach.
- ↑ Præf. in libr. Sal. 'Fertur et [Greek: panaretos
- ↑ But is not a strophic division sometimes visible, e.g. ii. 7-17? See Seligmann, Das Buch der Weisheit des J. S., &c., p. 34.
