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The Christian theologian Athanasius uses Sirach as a source of teaching, with his use of this text in a theological argument showing how Sirach functioned as an authoritative source to determine theology and practice.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 1:9
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
6 To whom has the root of wisdom been revealed? Who has known her shrewd counsels? 8 There is one wise, greatly to be feared, sitting upon his throne: the Lord. 9 He created her. He saw and measured her. He poured her out upon all his works. 10 She is with all flesh according to his gift. He gave her freely to those who love him. 11 The fear of the Lord is glory, exultation, gladness, and a crown of rejoicing.
Early Christian
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 since, in the Wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God'? Or how is it, if there is no wisdom, that a 'multitude of wise men' is found in Scripture? For 'a wise man fears and turns away from evil'; and 'by wisdom a house is built'; and the Preacher says, 'A man's wisdom makes his face shine'; and he rebukes the headstrong this way: 'Do not say, Why were the former days better than these? For you do not ask about this in wisdom.' But if, as the Son of Sirach says, 'He poured her out on all His works; she is with all flesh according to His gift, and He has given her to those who love Him,' and this outpouring is a mark not of the Essence of the true and Only-begotten Wisdom, but of the wisdom that is imaged in the world, how is it unbelievable that the All-creating and true Wisdom Itself, whose impression 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 what is created in the works, according to which 'the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork.' If people have this within them, they will acknowledge the true Wisdom of God, and will know that they are truly made in God's Image. Consider a king's son, when his father wished to build a city: he might have his own name stamped on each of the works as they rose, both to assure them that the works would last, because his name appeared on everything, and to make them remember him and his father from the name; and when he had finished the city and was asked how it was made, he would answer, 'It is made securely, for according to my father's will I am imaged in each work, for my name was placed in the works.' But in saying this he does not mean that his own essence is created, but the impression of himself by means of his name. In the same way, to apply the illustration, the true Wisdom answers those who admire the wisdom in the creatures, 'The Lord created me for the works,' for My impression is in them, and I have condescended in this way for the making of all things.
Date: 355-360 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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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, 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
* 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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