Leiden und Gerechtigkeit: Studien zu Theologie und Textgeschichte des Sirachsbuches.

• Author: Crenshaw, James L.

By LUTZ SCHRADER. Beitrage zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie, vol. 27. Frankfurt am Main: PETER LANG, 1994. Pp. 327. DM 52.95 (paper).

This slightly revised and expanded dissertation was accepted in 1992 by the theological faculty of the Christian-Albrechts Universitat in Kiel. It consists of two distinct parts: a textual analysis of the book of Sirach and an investigation of suffering and righteousness in Ben Sira's thought. The second part depends on the conclusions reached in the first part, thus assuring an integrated study. The author is at home in primary and secondary literature, a feature that enhances the book's value.

Schrader's approach is that of old-fashioned literary criticism, in contrast with Oda Wischmeyer's Die Kultur des Buch Jesus Sirach, BZNW 77 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), where sociological and anthropological issues of material culture prevail. Neither of the two types of analysis currently in vogue, critical theory and socio-anthropological study, has made any impression on Schrader, who searches for indications of glosses and confidently isolates several texts as later additions. The success of his endeavor to describe Ben Sira's understanding of the relationship between suffering and righteousness depends on the accuracy of his judgments about editorial additions to the book of Sirach.

In his view, the book underwent four stages: (1) the original teachings of Ben Sira, a lay teacher associated with the temple and/or an intense partisan for it; (2) an enlarged edition intended for use as a text book in a school; (3) the addition of a few editorial comments (50:27-29; 51:1-30); and (4) a further editing during the volatile period of rule by Antiochus IV. The primary criterion for considering texts secondary is content, although occasional linguistic arguments come into play. For example, the exhortation in 4:28 ("Strive even to death for the truth and the Lord God will fight for you") is linked with the hostile political situation in the Maccabean era, and the identification of wisdom and the Mosaic torah is said to be a gloss. Similarly, the prayer in 33:1-13a and 36:16b-22 + 32:22-25 is judged to be secondary, as are 48:10, 45:26; 50:22-24. Schrader thinks the hymn between verses 12 and 13 of chapter 51 may have originated at Qumran. On the other hand, he concludes that Ben Sira could have written that in 51:1-12, inasmuch as the allusion to passing through the fire derives from Ps. 66:12 and Isa. 43:21...