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The Universalization of Torah: Sirach 24:23 As a Resource for Jewish

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The Universalization of Torah: Sirach 24:23 as a Resource for Jewish-Christian Dialogue David Alcorn Contained within the great wisdom traditions of Israel are many sage counsels about how to live a good life “marked by length of days, prosperity, and prestige.”1 Israel was certainly not the sole pursuer of wisdom; wisdom was, rather, as James Kugel notes, an “international pursuit” among the peoples of the ancient Near East.2 Certainly there are commonalities between Israel’s wisdom traditions and those of other nations, but there is also something unique. Situated within a monotheistic framework, the attainment of wisdom was often connected to God and, more precisely, to the fear of God and the observance of his commandments.3 Yet, there is more that makes Israel’s wisdom tradition distinct, and this leads us to the Book of Sirach (or Ben Sira) and his celebrated poetic discourse on wisdom in chapter 24. Here, wisdom is personified as a female figure like in Proverbs 8. Ben Sira, however, does something striking when he takes the image of wisdom a step further and equates her with the Torah of Moses. Sir 24:23 reads as follows: “All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob” (NRSV). Suddenly, wisdom is no longer some sort of independent pursuit, but is, in fact, what God has already given the people of Israel in his revelation to Moses. Sir 24:23 is a direct allusion to Deut 33:4: “This is the Law 4 (or Instruction) that Moses appointed for you as a possession of the congregation of Jacob.” 1 Roland E. Murphy, “Introduction to Wisdom Literature,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 447. 2 James Kugel, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” Prooftexts 17.1 (1997): 9. 3 Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, The Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 75-76. Cf. Prov 3:5-7. 4 This is my own translation from Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. What, therefore, does this mean, and what impact should it have on Christian theology and Jewish-Christian dialogue? In our attempt to discover the meaning of Ben Sira’s equation of Wisdom and Torah, I will proceed by first looking at the passage in question and making some observations. Then I will examine three different explanations as follows: the first argues that Ben Sira has “nationalized” Wisdom and made it the property of Israel; the second advocates the opposite, namely, that Ben Sira has “universalized” the Torah to such an extent that it is subsumed by Wisdom; and the third attempts to bridge these two explanations by saying that neither Wisdom nor Torah loses its identity, but that they are “correlated.” I do not find myself satisfied by these explanations, and so will offer my own in an attempt to make sense of this most intriguing (and sometimes controversial) passage of Ben Sira. Finally, I will end our this study by looking at the implications of my conclusions, and see how they might apply to Jewish- Christian relations and the practice of these faiths. 1. Sirach 24 in Context Scholars believe that the Hebrew text of Ben Sira, which we do not have in its entirety, was composed around 180 BCE and later translated by the author’s grandson into Greek around 5 117 BCE. Chapter 24 begins with the personified Lady Wisdom praising herself and describing her movements across the heavens and the earth seeking a resting place, and eventually finding one at God’s command among the people of Israel. Gerald T. Sheppard comments that “[i]t is as though the wisdom song in Sir 24:3-22 were a kind of riddle and one could not speculate on how long a reader would take to discover the proper key.”6 Maurice Gilbert observes that this text 5 Daniel J. Harrington, Invitation to the Apocrypha (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 79. 6 Gerald T. Sheppard, “Wisdom and Torah: The Interpretation of Deuteronomy Underlying Sirach 24:23,” in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies: Essays in Honor of William Sanford LaSor, ed. Gary A. Tuttle (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978), 167. does not have any legal statements or citations of ritual laws. “None of the Law’s commandments are recalled,” he writes, “not even an allusion, and the closing verses of the speech are more like an exhortation, an invitation of the sapiential style, than a legal injunction.”7 Gilbert also comments that the Torah, with which Ben Sira was familiar, was composed of more than just legal statutes. It also contained the history of Israel from creation to the “eve of the Conquest.” So “it is not for nothing that Sir 24:3 can make allusion to Gen 1:1-3, while Sir 24:23 quotes Deut 33:4.”8 Verses 13-17 contain images of Wisdom comparing herself to a cedar, a palm tree, a rose-bush, and so on. There are in fact, as Alain Fournier-Bidoz notes, several first- 9 person verbs accompanied by the repetition of hōs and kai in the Greek text. This brings us to the famous and contentious statement of Ben Sira in v. 23 that this personified Lady Wisdom, which sages across creation have sought after, is actually the Torah of Moses revealed by God. What are we to make of this? How can Wisdom be the same thing as Torah, or vice-versa? Is there some middle way that nuances Ben Sira’s apparent equation of the two? Is there a way to understand their relationship in a way that honours the plain sense of Ben Sira’s statement, but which can propel us forward in such a way that neither Torah nor Wisdom are negated? To these questions we now turn. 2. Wisdom is Nationalized The first explanation of Sir 24:23 suggests that, by equating Wisdom and Torah, Ben Sira is “nationalizing” the former.10 E. P. Sanders argues that Ben Sira, as part of a covenant 7 Maurice Gilbert, “L’Éloge de la Sagesse (Siracide 24),” Revue théologique de Louvain 5 (1974): 345. My translation. 8 Ibid. My translation. 9 Alain Fournier-Bidoz, “L’arbre et la Demeure: Siracide XXIV 10-17,” Vetus Testamentum 34.1 (1984): 1. 10 Greg Schmidt Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 6. I am borrowing Goering’s phrase because it fits very well. We will hear more from him shortly. community had a special relationship with God that, “was intentionally defining the values of the well-established wisdom tradition in terms of the Mosaic covenant: that wisdom which is universally sought is in fact truly represented by and particularized in the Torah given by God through Moses.”11 In other words, Sanders is arguing that Sir 24:23 “nationalizes” Wisdom in the sense that, if it is equal to the Torah of Moses, and only the Jews possess the Torah of Moses, then only the Jews have real, true, and authentic Wisdom. Although the other nations may seek Wisdom, they will not find it in its perfection unless they find it in the Torah.12 Sanders then bolsters his argument by noting that Ben Sira does not say much about gentiles, except to pray for the day when they will be eviscerated so that Israel could be re-united and re-establish their theocracy.13 This interpretation may sound harsh, but it is not unreasonable given the circumstances of the day. Hellenism was a creeping threat to Jewish culture and religion, and, if Sanders’ view is correct, one cannot completely fault Ben Sira for this reaction given the threats and obstacles he and his followers were no doubt facing. Furthermore, Ben Sira, if indeed this is his view, was not the only one to hold it.14 What foundation, therefore, would he or an interpreter like Sanders have to posit this kind of “nationalization” of Wisdom? At least a partial answer to this question involves the theology of election. Election is the idea that God specifically chose Israel as his Chosen People and set them apart from all other nations. As Sanders expresses, “Ben Sirach, like the Rabbis after him, presupposed the biblical view of the election of Israel and wrote within the context of the 11 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 331. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 A good example of this occurs in the Book of Baruch, which, while not in the Hebrew canon, is in the Catholic and Orthodox canons. See Bar 3:9-4:4, especially 4:1. The NRSV reads: “She is the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures for ever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die.” Throughout 3:9-4:4, Baruch withholds no emotion when he explains the cause of the exile, but also the uniqueness of Israel. The other nations do not have wisdom—only Israel does because it has the Torah of Moses given by God. doctrine of the covenant.”15 This is true, but to interpret election in a way that excludes other nations or makes it seem that God does not have any regard for them is not at the doctrine’s essence.
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