Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

Dear Colleagues,
        Mr. Barre has written clearing up what has apparently been a
misunderstanding and assures me that not only does he not include me among
the minimalists but that the series of points he was criticising in the
series "against minimalism" had nothing to do with any position I had taken.
Perhaps now "minimalism" (= refracted ghosts of ideas that irritate whoever
uses the term) might be blessed with its well deserved demise. It is an
invidious term whose purpose is both to obfuscate and to   allow polemics
without responsibility. It has nothing to do with any particular scholar or
any particular scholarly program. The four pillars of "minimalism", full of
straw as they are, may be happily abandoned to the winds of change.

        Now, to turn to the invitation to comment on Ecclesiasticus'
prologue that attributes a collection of reflections gleaned from "Israel's"
wisdom "given to us through the law, the prophets and others that followed
them":
        This discursive work is presented as a translation from the Hebrew
of the writer's grandfather Jesus, whom the title identifies as ben Sirach.
The "translater" or author of this prologue, speaking in the first person,
refers to an event (?) or an opportunity when he first came to Egypt (in the
38th. year of Euergetes): "I found an opportunity for no little instruction"
or (in some manuscripts): "I found a copy affording no little instruction".
The author publishes the book "for those living abroad".

        This first person authorial voice presents himself as having begun
his work in the time of Euergetes and as publishing it some (considerable?)
time later. The 38th. year is a problem as Euergetes I ruled from 246-222
and Euergetes II from 145-116. Nevertheless, the seeming precision of the
dating functions well for its authorial purpose: to establish the text in an
historical context that gives the work the legitimacy of antiquity.

        "For those living abroad" offers a minor nuance begging
interpretation. "Abroad" from whose perspective? The purported translator's
or the actual publisher's? 

        The variants "found a copy" and "found instruction" suggest the
possibility of different understandings among the tradents of the text, not
only offering a Josianic echo to the text but (alternatively) suggesting
that the author is presenting a secondary tradition: an interpreted
tradition.

        The attribution of the work to the grandfather also carries
discursive overtones from a tradition of wisdom that goes back to Meri-ka-re
and Amen-em-het's discourses left to their sons to publish. This at least
requires us to consider a comparable prologue for the Book of Tobit, whose
story is given in the context of a first person account of one who was
exiled to Nineveh by the Assyrians.

        The references to the law, the prophets and other books of
instruction from which one might learn the wisdom of Israel, presents this
book as epitomizing "Jewish" wisdom and as belonging to the stream of
learning understood as Israel's. It claims to take part in the philosophical
discourse which created this wisdom as a written tradition. It knows the
torah, as does I Ezdras and Psalm 1. It knows the prophets as a literary
tradition, and it knows more . . . but it doesn't say it all.

        But that is enough for today.

        Thomas

        Thomas L. Thompson
        Professor, University of Copenhagen