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Sirach tells people not to lie, describing it as a destructive habit with no benefit. The Christian theologian Augustine quotes this teaching in the City of God, showing how he uses the Jewish wisdom tradition as an authoritative source.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 7:13
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
11 Don’t laugh a man to scorn when he is in the bitterness of his soul, for there is one who humbles and exalts. 12 Don’t devise a lie against your brother, or do the same to a friend. 13 Refuse to utter a lie, for that habit results in no good. 14 Don’t babble in the assembly of elders. Don’t repeat your words in your prayer. 15 Don’t hate hard labor or farm work, which the Most High has created.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 14.8
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
In the same way, who would deny that it would be wrong to command men to do to others whatever they desire others to do to them, since they might then please one another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, “Whatever you will that men should do to you, do the same to them,” is very wholesome and just. And how is this, if not because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary speech would not have allowed the saying, “Be unwilling to tell any kind of lie,” if there were not also an evil will, whose wickedness separates it from the will which the angels celebrated, “Peace on earth, of good will to men.”
Date: 426 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Within early Christianity, the Letter of Barnabas echoes Sirach 5:12–14 about the danger of a double tongue, as well as the warning in Sirach 4:31 against an ungenerous attitude (Barnabas 19:7–9). Origen (d. 254 ce) quotes Ben Sira as scriptural when commenting on several Old Testament passages (Genesis 12:5; Joshua 15:6; Jeremiah 16:6). Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 CE) quotes about eighty Sirach verses, while John Chrysostom (d. 407 CE) includes about three hundred citations from the book. Augustine (d. 430 CE) not only cites Sirach about 300x, but also preached sermons on Sirach passages. Rabanus Maurus (d. 856 CE), abbot of Fulda in Germany, composed the earliest surviving Latin commentary on Sirach ..."
Jeremy Corley, “Sirach,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha, ed. Gerbern S. Oegema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 284–305.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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