Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/18/06, Peter Kirk wrote:

> Thank you, Yitzhak. Maybe Kraft and Tov were embarrassed by the contents
> of verse 26; otherwise I can't explain their editorial choice. I assume
> that the main fragment was available to them before 1994 which is the
> date of the text I was working from.

I am not sure where Kraft and Tov entered the discussion but it appears
to me you are confused.  The parallel hebrew-septuagint text at ccat is
based probably on the original collection of published Genizah fragments
that have to do with Ben Sira and which were published decades ago before
the identification of the triangular fragment as belonging to this collection.
While this fragment was identified before the internet and hence before
the ccat site, the way Genizah fragments are identified and published it
would have been easy to miss.  This page is apparently the only one
from the Genizah that contains Ben Sira 25.  I am not familiar with the
scholarship on the various representatives of Ben Sira in the Genizah.
One has to study that in order to suggest why these particular verses
are missing.  However, the Ben Sira 26 page begins approximately
where the Ben Sira 25 page leaves off, even continuing the exact point at
the middle of the verse, so it appears to me that they are parts of the
same manuscript.  The same is true also for the other side which stops
and continues right in the middle of Ben Sira 4:22/23.  Unlike the earlier
page which skips a few verses, the Ben Sira 26 page skips whole
chapters.  In light of this, and this is what I  meant by "editorial choice",
the author of these pages that were found in the Genizah, or the author
of the manuscript that was passed down and he eventually copied,
perhaps left 25:25-26 due to an editorial choice in the Medieval or earlier
times.

Yitzhak Sapir