I started Alexander Di Lella's Anchor Bible commentary on The Wisdom of Ben Sira.
(Patrick Skehan provided the translation and the notes, whereas Di Lella wrote the Introduction and the commentary.) Di Lella contends that Jesus Ben Sira published his book "to convince
Jews and even well-disposed Gentiles that true wisdom is to be found
primarily in Jerusalem and not in Athens, more in the inspired books of
Israel than in the clever writings of Hellenistic humanism" (page 16).
Yet, Ben Sira made use of Gentile thought. Di Lella states that he did
this "to show others how the best of Gentile thought is no danger to the
faith but could even be incorporated into an authentically Jewish work,
the purpose of which was to encourage fidelity to their ancestral
practices" (page 50).
I found Di Lella's
section on "Canonicity of the Book and Place in the Canon" to be
interesting. Here are some things that De Lella says that I found to be
significant:
----Until some point in the 1960s, a prominent
scholarly view was that there were two canons: the Alexandrian or
Septuagint canon, which included the Deuterocanonical books, and the
Palestinian or Hebrew canon, which excluded them and only contained the
books that the Pharisaic rabbis later said were canonical. But
that view was challenged because it was argued that many Greek-speaking
Jews lived in Palestine and used the Septuagint prior to 90 C.E., which
was when the Pharisaic canon had been established. As Di Lella says on
page 18, "Thus there never was an actual Alexandrian (LXX) canon at all
or a Palestinian (Hebrew) canon before ca. AD 90." Di Lella
also refers to a Hebrew copy of Ben Sira at a first century B.C.E.
"Jewish community at Masada", and Hebrew fragments of Ben Sira at Qumran
(page 20).
----In terms of Christianity, Di Lella affirms that the church got Scriptures from Judaism, but not an actual canon. Di
Lella states on page 19 that "the final determination of the Christian
Old Testament canon was an activity of the Church that took place in the
West at the Council of Hippo (393) and two Councils of Carthage (397
and 419)." Yet, there was some difference of opinion even in the fifth
century C.E. After Jerome moved to Palestine and was
influenced by Jewish teachers, he differentiated between canonical books
and "ecclesiastical books", which (I think) were books that were read
in churches yet were not deemed to be canonical. The ecclesiastical
books were the Deuterocanonical ones. But Augustine disagreed with
Jerome and believed that even what we label as the Deuterocanonical
books were authoritative. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther sided
with Jerome and relegated the Deuterocanonical writings to a special
section of his Bible, taking them from "their logical and time-honored
locations in the canon (e.g., Tobit and Judith from the historical books
and The Wisdom of Solomon and The Wisdom of Ben Sira from the Wisdom
books)" (page 18).
----Regarding rabbinic Judaism, its
treatment of Ben Sira is (to use Di Lella's word) "complex". In
Jerusalem Talmud 28a, we find an opinion attributed to the second
century C.E. Rabbi Akiva that Ben Sira is non-canonical and that whoever
reads it will be excluded from the World to Come. (Wow! That's
heavy!) And Tosefta Yadayim 2.13 (third century) says that the
Book of Ben Sira does not defile the hands, which means that it is not
canonical. And yet, according to Di Lella, the Book of Ben Sira seems
to have influenced the Talmud, Midrashim, and Derek Etetz, and it is
quoted eighty-two times "with approval in the Talmud and other
rabbinical writings" (page 20). Sometimes, the quotation is
preceded by the phrase "it is written", a phrase often "reserved only
for quotations from the canonical Scriptures" ([Ch]agiga 12a; Niddah
16b; J. Berakot 11c).
As I write about these points
from Di Lella's commentary, I'm reminded of a debate that I saw between
Protestant James White and a Catholic on the canonicity and inspiration
of the Deuterocanonical writings. What I remember is that White
was arguing that Judaism even before 90 C.E. had a canon that excluded
the Deuterocanonical writings, for Josephus refers to twenty-two books.
If I'm not mistaken, White also said that the church father Athanasius
(third-fourth centuries C.E.) differentiated between inspired canonical
books and the Deuterocanonical writings (see here for Athanasius' discussion of the canon).
I'm open to correction on this, but I think that White was emphasizing
the sixteenth century Council of Trent as the place where the Catholic
canon (which included the Deuterocanonical books) was solidified.
The Catholic debater, by contrast, maintained that even first century Palestinian Judaism was open to the Deuterocanonical writings. He said that the New Testament itself alludes to the Wisdom of Solomon at some point (see here for
a list of supposed allusions to the Deuterocanonical writings in the
New Testament, as well as patristic references to the Deuterocanonical
writings). And, if I recall correctly, he held that Athanasius
was not dismissing the Deuterocanonical writings but other writings
(though, in my link to Athanasius above, you will see that Athanasius
did not include the Deuterocanonical writings in the twenty-two books of
the Old Testament). For the Catholic debater, the rabbis in the late
first century excluded the Deuterocanonical writings from the canon, and
this was partially because the Christians were using them.
I
think that things were messier than either White or the Catholic
debater presented them in that debate. In my opinion, there was
probably diversity within first-century Judaism and early Christianity
about whether or not to accept the Deuterocanonical books as
authoritative. But why was there controversy? A professor of
mine once said that a reason that rabbinic Judaism excluded the
Deuterocanonical books from the canon was that they were not in Hebrew,
but in Greek. Perhaps, but Ben Sira was in Hebrew before it was
translated into Greek.
The date of the writings probably
had something to do with whether they were accepted or not. The
Deuterocanonical writings were late, and there are statements in Jewish
writings that inspiration ceased at some point in the past, and so those who believed this way most likely dismissed the Deuterocanonical writings as uninspired. Early Christians, however, felt that inspiration was still going on, and so that could have opened many of them up to accepting the Deuterocanonical works. Moreover, perhaps early Christians were drawn to elements of certain Deuterocanonical works, such as the Wisdom of Solomon's description of the righteous sufferer, which reminded them of Jesus.