Thesis (Ph. D.--Biblical Studies)--Catholic University of America, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-228). Also available on the Internet.

The fact that Ben Sira seemingly has a negative attitude towards women or femininity can easily lead to the assumption that the work has a negative attitude toward sexuality. However, this thesis will seek to demonstrate that the author's view on sexuality is complex, subtle, and depends on the context of the individual sayings. First of all we have to make a distinction between the attitudes of the writer of the original Hebrew text of the book and that of the Greek translator. The two texts, produced in different social settings, circumstances, times and places, differ substantially at times in regard to sexuality. Therefore it is essential to treat them separately and to compare them. In addition, the Book of Ben Sira, the longest Jewish wisdom book, is a complex combination of carefully composed wisdom poems that structure the whole work, and of teachings on everyday issues including marriage, family life, self-control, desires and passions, and sexual promiscuity. The openness about issues of eroticism that characterizes some of the poems concerning personified female wisdom is unprecedented in the wisdom writings of Second Temple Judaism. Similarly, the sage dedicates a greater number of passages than other wisdom books, to the discussion of social relations especially in regard to family. In so doing his regular point of departure seems to be what benefits or damages these relations mean, and whether they bring disgrace to a person, especially through sexuality. These all have bearings on the author’s and translator’s views of sexuality, including the position a person or situation under discussion might have in the sage’s social value system. Therefore the thesis examines the wisdom poems, and all sayings that concern sexuality found in discussions of passions, relations with parents, daughters and sons, wives and husbands, and warnings against sexual wrongdoing, including prostitution and adultery. All this is done with a special regard to the differences between the Hebrew original text and the Greek translation.

The Book of Ben Sira, written at some point between 198 and 175 BCE, is a Second Temple Jewish wisdom text which regularly echoes or quotes the Hebrew Bible. A recent area of study in biblical scholarship has been that of scribal culture, written sources and physical remains left behind by societies with manuscripts and a scribal profession. While scholarship on Ben Sira has centred on his use of texts and on his sociocultural background, these issues might be better understood by examining Ben Sira through the lens of scribal culture as understood in biblical scholarship. This thesis proposes first to study the primary data of Ben Sira closely in order to discern characteristics of Ben Sira's individual scribalism or personal compositional style. This can then be compared to other evidence of ancient scribal culture. The central argument of the thesis is that the lens of scribal culture tells us more about the complexity of this ancient composition. Chapter One introduces the thesis and covers scholarship on Ben Sira and on scribal culture. Chapter Two examines the portrayals of Noah (Sir 44:17-18) and Phineas (Sir 45:23-26), exploring how Ben Sira uses one major biblical source in each. Looking at the portrayals of Hezekiah-Isaiah (Sir 48:17-25) and Josiah (Sir 49:1-3), Chapter Three highlights the harmonization of multiple sources. Chapter Four examines Ben Sira's lines on weather (Sir 43:11-19) in order to evaluate the relationship between quotation and literary model. Chapter Five approaches the sociocultural and textual spheres on the subjects of death and the body (Sir 41:1-15). Chapter Six investigates Ben Sira's perspectives on physicians (Sir 38:1-15) in the light of ancient medicine. Each of the selected passages shed a slightly different light on the scribalism of Ben Sira.