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Sirach teaches people to care for themselves, warning that grief destroys life while joy sustains it. The Christian theologian Augustine quotes this teaching in the City of God, showing how he treats this Jewish wisdom text as an authoritative source.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 30:23
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
22 Gladness of heart is the life of a man. Cheerfulness of a man lengthens his days. 23 Love your own soul, and comfort your heart. Remove sorrow far from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and there is no profit in it. 24 Envy and wrath shorten life. Anxiety brings old age before its time. 25 Those who are cheerful and merry will benefit from their food.
Augustine, City of God 10.6
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate. Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God. For this is a part of that mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, “Have mercy on your soul by pleasing God.”
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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 ..."
Corley, Jeremy
"Sirach" in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha
(pp. 284-305) Oxford University Press, 2021
* 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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