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The Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria treats the Wisdom of Sirach as an authoritative source for preserving family and social order, adopting its teaching about raising children and managing households.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 7:23
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
21 Let your soul love a wise servant. Don’t defraud him of liberty. 22 Do you have cattle? Look after them. If they are profitable to you, let them stay by you. 23 Do you have children? Correct them, and make them obedient from their youth. 24 Do you have daughters? Take care of their bodies, and don’t be overly indulgent toward them. 25 Give your daughter in marriage, and you will have accomplished a great matter. Give her to a man of understanding.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 1.9
Paedagogus
Early Christian
With all His power, therefore, the Instructor of humanity, the Divine Word, using all the resources of wisdom, devotes Himself to the saving of the children, admonishing, upbraiding, blaming, chiding, reproving, threatening, healing, promising, favouring; and as it were, by many reins, curbing the irrational impulses of humanity. To speak briefly, therefore, the Lord acts towards us as we do towards our children. Do you have children? Correct them, is the exhortation of the book of Wisdom, and bend them from their youth. Do you have daughters? Attend to their body, and let not your face brighten towards them, — although we love our children exceedingly, both sons and daughters, above anything else whatever. For those who speak with a man merely to please him, have little love for him, seeing they do not pain him; while those that speak for his good, though they inflict pain for the time, do him good for ever after. It is not immediate pleasure, but future enjoyment, that the Lord has in view.
Date: 198 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The eighty-fifth of the Apostolical Canons gives a list of the books of the Hebrew Canon, and adds the first three books of the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach; these last four are not, however, included in the Canon, though the Wisdom of Sirach is specially recommended for the instruction of the young. Again, in the Apostolical Constitutions, 6:14, 15, quotations from Sirach are given with the same formula as those from the books of the Hebrew Canon, but in the list given in 2:57 of the same work, there is no mention of any of the books of the Apocrypha ... The evidence of Clement of Alexandria is conflicting; in his Paedagogus he quotes very often from Sirach, and speaks of it as 'scripture', from which it would evidently appear that he regarded it as canonical Scripture; but, according to Eusebius, Clement reckoned Sirach among the 'Antilegomena', for in speaking of Clement's works he mentions the Stromateis, or 'Medleys', and says: 'He quotes in them passages from the disputed Scriptures, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, for example, and of Jesus the son of Sirach, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and those of Barnabas, Clement, and Jude ..."
R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford University Press, 1913), 299.
* 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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