Canonicity
As we have just seen, Sirach has never formed part of the Hebrew
Bible, but there are indications that in some quarters it was regarded as
‘quasibiblical’. Its inclusion in the Septuagint shows the reverence accorded
to it in some Jewish groups, and it has also been argued that the particular
form of the Hebrew manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and from Qumran (see
Chapter 3 for details of these) was that confined to biblical texts. The
reference in the Mishnah to ‘heretical books’ (m. Sanh. 10.1; Danby 1933: 397), with a condemnation of those who
read them, has often been taken as referring to Sirach (Beckwith 1985: 367).
The corresponding Tractate in the Babylonian Talmud contains an extensive
discussion (b. Sanh. 100b) on why ‘it
is also forbidden to read the book of Ben Sira’, ending with the assertion by
R. Joseph that ‘we may expound the good things it contains’ (Epstein 1935:
680–82). Epstein goes on to raise the question whether it may at some point
have been included in some canonical lists. (It is interesting to note that the
talmudic discussion then moves on to Song of Songs, about whose canonicity
there was also debate.) Sirach is also quoted in the Talmud in the form ‘It is
written’, a designation normally reserved for quotations of Scripture. (See ABD, VI, 934.) Nevertheless, despite
these indications of regard for the book it seems never to have been the
subject of detailed scrutiny as a possibly canonical text within Judaism.
Its position in the Christian tradition is more complex. Should the
church confine its Scriptures to the ‘Hebraica veritas’ and limit its Old
Testament’ to works found in the Hebrew Bible? Or was the whole Septuagint
tradition to be taken over and regarded as scriptural? These positions,
represented classically by Jerome and Augustine, have divided Christians since
the Protestant reformation. The Catholic tradition has regularly regarded
Sirach as one of its ‘Deutero-canonical’ books, and it is found in all Bibles
in the Catholic tradition. Protestants have relegated it to the Apocrypha, and
it is therefore excluded from many Bibles produced in that tradition (thus
still, for example, niv). More recently, however, in many quarters a more
relaxed attitude has developed, and Sirach and the other books of the Apocrypha
are studied for what they can tell us of the world from which they arose, and
such translations as reb and nrsv include the Apocrypha. Nevertheless the
claims made by some scholars that the canon must be the basis of authority has
led to continuing interest in the role of the apocryphal books; M. Gilbert, for
example, has claimed (1987) that all the different primary forms of the book
(Hebrew, Greek and Latin, in both their short and long forms) should be
regarded as canonical and therefore inspired. The matter is further
complicated, as we shall see in Chapter 3, by the discovery of Hebrew fragments
of Sirach within a ‘Psalms scroll’ discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls at
Qumran. To pursue this issue of canonicity in any greater detail would,
however, lead us to become involved in a larger debate, which would take us a
long way from the study of Sirach. (R. J. Coggins, Sirach [Guides
to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998],
20-21)
