Quote from: drizabone on Apr 02, 2017, 10:01PMSirach 33 text
1) Abel and other would disagree with the first paragraph
Indeed! Job is perhaps the most egregious example.
Quote from: drizabone on Apr 02, 2017, 10:01PM2) v7-19 seem significant and I think I have missed the meaning here.
This particular author doesn't tend to go in for obscurity and cryptic references. He wants the reader to understand him immediately. With this in mind, it seems to me that the impression taken away on first reading is likely to be the correct one. I'll go through these verses with my responses (in red):
7
Why is one day more important than another,
when all the daylight in the year is from the sun?
8
By the Lords wisdom they were distinguished,
and he appointed the different seasons and festivals.
9
Some days he exalted and hallowed,
and some he made ordinary days.
Time has no sense of itself, no consciousness. It required the interpretation of conscious beings to lay a structure upon time.
10
All human beings come from the ground,
and humankind[a] was created out of the dust.
11
In the fullness of his knowledge the Lord distinguished them
and appointed their different ways.
12
Some he blessed and exalted,
and some he made holy and brought near to himself;
but some he cursed and brought low,
and turned them out of their place.
13
Like clay in the hand of the potter,
to be molded as he pleases,
so all are in the hand of their Maker,
to be given whatever he decides.
Humans are more complex. They are readiliy distinguished one from another in all sorts of dependable ways, unlike the natural processes of one day from those of the next.
14
Good is the opposite of evil,
and life the opposite of death;
so the sinner is the opposite of the godly.
15
Look at all the works of the Most High;
they come in pairs, one the opposite of the other.
Ben Sira has a theory. He notes that if something has an attribute, then other similar-looking things can typically have a contrasting attribute. This is in a way definitional - if humans have noticed something being some way, it is because they have compared it with something that is different. Rocks are hard; water is soft. But he oversimplifies in the name of rhetoric - things do not come exclusively in opposite poles; fudge is moderately soft. Humans do not divide neatly into 'good' and 'evil' piles.
It suits him to draw a sharp dividing line between those who do and don't subscribe to his religion (and which side of that line would Christians have been on to him, I wonder?), but similarly this is rhetorical artifice. And perhaps he doesn't quite mean it, as it seems to me that the short series of comparisons drawn he cannot mean entirely as they are presented, due to their oversimplicity.
16
Now I was the last to keep vigil;
I was like a gleaner following the grape-pickers;
17
by the blessing of the Lord I arrived first,
and like a grape-picker I filled my wine press.
18
Consider that I have not labored for myself alone,
but for all who seek instruction.
19
Hear me, you who are great among the people,
and you leaders of the congregation, pay heed!
Some puffery here, though nothing particularly objectionable. He's in his own opinion gathered wisdom in all places he might look, and it's worth listening to. To be fair to him, it's a good collection.
Did we get the same stuff out of this passage?
Quote from: drizabone on Apr 02, 2017, 10:01PM3) the advice for the treatment of slaves would be frowned on today
It seems to my eyes that Ben Sira was above all a pragmatist. He was very interested in helping the people around him live constructive and fruitful lives, but had no interest in prescribing social justice. He writes of how to treat slaves because the people around him included slaves and their owners. Although in some chapters we read of his personal reactions, in this one we simply see recipes for a happy owner-slave relationship as existed in his society.
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