Texts in Conversation
Sirach echoes Ecclesiastes, saying God is the source of good and bad. It expands this into a description of creation balanced by opposites, reflecting Hellenistic ideas of harmony, though this view seems to clash with Sirach’s teaching on free will.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ecclesasties 7:14
Hebrew Bible
13 Consider the work of God: For who can make straight what he has bent? 14 In times of prosperity be joyful, but in times of adversity consider this: God has made one as well as the other, so that no one can discover what the future holds. 15 During the days of my fleeting life I have seen both of these things: Sometimes a righteous person dies prematurely in spite of his righteousness, and sometimes a wicked person lives long in spite of his evil deeds.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Sirach 33:12
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
10 And all men are from the ground. Adam was created from dust. 11 In the abundance of his knowledge the Lord distinguished them, and made their ways different. 12 Some of them he blessed and exalted, and some of them he made holy and brought near to himself. Some of them he cursed and brought low, and overthrew them from their place. 13 As the clay of the potter in his hand, all his ways are according to his good pleasure, so men are in the hand of him who made them, to give to them according to his judgment. 14 Good is the opposite of evil, and life is the opposite of death; so the sinner is the opposite of the godly. 15 Look upon all the works of the Most High like this, they come in pairs, one against another.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Ben Sira appears to give conflicting accounts of evil. In Sirach 15:11–20, for example, Ben Sira explicitly denies identifying God as the source of sin while affirming human agency. Later, in Sirach 33:7–15, creation is described as a harmony of opposites in which God creates both good and evil (see also Eccl 7:13–14). The “harmony of opposites” doctrine was an important part of ancient Greek philosophy, especially among the Stoics. The tension between Sirach 15:11–20 and 33:7–15 has led numerous scholars to suggest a strong similarity between Ben Sira and Stoic providence. However, Sharon Mattila argues that Ben Sira has no logical reconciliation for the apparently contrasting notions of human agency (Sirach 15:11–20; see also 32:14–18; 37:17–18) and divine providence (Sirach 33:7–15; see also 39:25), whereas Stoicism does ..."
Tyler Allen Stewart, “‘The Present Evil Age’: The Origin and Persistence of Evil in Galatians” (diss., Marquette University, 2019), 308.
* 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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