Sirach 1:9

Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon

6 The root of wisdom—to whom has it been revealed? Her subtleties—who knows them? 8 There is but one who is wise, greatly to be feared, seated upon his throne—the Lord. 9 It is he who created her; he saw her and took her measure; he poured her out upon all his works, 10 upon all the living according to his gift; he lavished her upon those who love him. 11 The fear of the Lord is glory and exultation, and gladness and a crown of rejoicing.

Athanasius Discourse Against the Arians 22

Patristic

But if this too fails to persuade them, let them tell us themselves, whether there is any wisdom in the creatures or not? If not how is it that the Apostle complains, 'For after that in the Wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God?' or how is it if there is no wisdom, that a 'multitude of wise men ' are found in Scripture? For 'a wise man fears and departs from evil ' and 'through wisdom is a house built' and the Preacher says, 'A man's wisdom makes his face to shine;' and he blames those who are headstrong thus, 'Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire in wisdom concerning this.' But if, as the Son of Sirach says, 'He poured her out upon all His works; she is with all flesh according to His gift, and He has given her to them that love Him' and this outpouring is a note, not of the Essence of the Very Wisdom and Only-begotten, but of that wisdom which is imaged in the world, how is it incredible that the All-framing and true Wisdom Itself, whose impress is the wisdom and knowledge poured out in the world, should say, as I have already explained, as if of Itself, 'The Lord created me for His works?' For the wisdom in the world is not creative, but is that which is created in the works, according to which 'the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handywork.'

 Notes and References

"... But to this first terminus ante quem we can now add a second, even more precise one— that is, the sending of Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 on the occasion of Easter in 367. In this letter the patriarch makes a clear distinction between the biblical books, truly “inspired by God,” to be read by the faithful, and “the so-called apocrypha,” which are but “an invention of heretics,” to be proscribed. To the first category belong not only the writings “that have been canonized” (i.e., the “twenty-two books of the Old Testament” and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, listed at §§ 17– 18), but also the books “appointed to be read,” that is, the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint (the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit), to which Athanasius adds the Teaching of the Apostles (most probably, the Didache) and the Shepherd of Hermas. As for the second group, in spite of the intentionally generic tone he uses, the reference Athanasius makes to the different writings attributed to Enoch, Moses, or Isaiah, written with the purpose of “deceiving the simple folk” (§ 21), seems to perfectly apply to 1 Enoch,32 Jubilees, and the Ascension of Isaiah, the three most significant pseudepigrapha translated into Ethiopic. If these texts, apparently popular among Egyptian monks, were officially forbidden by the inflexible bishop of Alexandria in 367, it is difficult to imagine that they would still have been sent to Aksum or elsewhere for translation after that date ..."

Piovanelli, Pierluigi "Ethiopic" in Kulik, Alexander (ed.) A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission (pp. 35-47) Oxford University Press, 2019

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