Teaching of a
Jerusalem sage (ca. 190 BCE)
translated into Greek by his grandson.
The translation was regarded as sacred scripture by Greek speaking Jews who
included it in the Septuagint.
The continued popularity of the original Hebrew version
through the 1st c. CE is
demonstrated by mss. discovered at Qumran
& Masada
& in the genizah of the old Cairo synagogue. But it was not accepted into
the canon of the Hebrew Bible adopted by the rabbis at Jabneh.
Christians, however, accepted it as an apocryphal
work. The Latin Vulgate endorsed its scriptural status by entitling it Ecclesiasticus
["belonging to the church"].
[Edition used: Rahlfs, Alfred, ed.
Septuaginta. Stuttgart: Deutsche Biblestiftung, 1935].
Other resources on
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