Popularity Among Christians. TThe l website that you have a link to has so many obvious lies that it cannot be trusted for any information.Any scholar worth their salt knows about the Hebrew texts of the Deuterocanonical books. If you don’t trust a Catholic site Use the Jewish encclopedia were they have intergity enough to tell the truth.
The Book of Ecclesiasticus has been honored still more highly among the Christians, being cited in the Epistle of James (Edersheim, in Wace, “Apocrypha,” p. 21), the Didache (iv. 5), and the Epistle of Barnabas (xix. 9), while Clement of Alexandria and Origen quote from it repeatedly, as from a γραφή, or holy book. In the Western Church, Cyprian frequently appeals to it in his “Testimonia,” as does Ambrose in the greater number of his writings. In like manner the Catalogue of Cheltenham, Damasus I., the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), Pope Innocent I., the second Council of Carthage (419), and Augustine all regard it as a canonical book. This is contrary, however, to the opinions of the Council of Laodicea, of Jerome, and of Rufinus of Aquileia, which authorities rank it among the ecclesiastical books. It was finally declared canonical by the Council of Trent; and the favor with which the Church has always regarded it has preserved it in its entirety.
Discovery of Hebrew Fragments.
Until recent years Ecclesiasticus was known only from the Greek and Syriac versions—the sources of all other translations—and from the Hebrew quotations already mentioned. At present the greater part of the original is known. In 1896 Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson brought from the East a sheet of parchment covered with comparatively antiquated Hebrew characters. At Cambridge this was shown to S. Schechter, who recognized in it Ecclus. (Sirach) xxxix. 15-xl. 7, and who published the decipherment, which was by no means easy. Almost simultaneously Sayce presented to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a collection of fragments of Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts, among which Neubauer and Cowley found nine leaves of the same volume to which the Lewis-Gibson leaf had belonged, and following immediately after it. These manuscripts contain also some passages that are lacking in the translations, including a psalm fifteen lines in length inserted after li. 12.
Originality of the Hebrew Fragments.
Prof. S. Margoliouth, noticing the decadent character of the language, the number of rabbinisms, and the derivatives from the Arabic and Aramaic, regarded the Hebrew text as a reconstruction of the lost original on the basis of the Greek and Syriac versions, the variants representing different attempts at retranslation. The discovery of manuscript C, however, disproved this hypothesis, since this manuscript reproduces with exactness the greater part of the variants of B, even when they are obviously false, while the transcriber of this latter manuscript discharged his task with such scrupulous care that he even recorded variants which were meaningless. If, therefore, the difference between the text and the marginal glosses corresponds to the difference between the two translations, this only shows that there were two recensions of the original. It is clear, moreover, that these fragments are not the work of some medieval scholar, but are more or less perfect copies of the Hebrew text, as a single example will show. In xxxii. 22 the Hebrew version has . For the latter word the Syriac text substitutes (= “thy way”), which the context shows to be faulty, the reading being due to a confusion of with . The Greek version reads “thy children,” the meaning attributed to in several passages of the Bible. But had the Jewish scribe used the Greek version, he would never have found beneath τῶν τέκνων σου the Hebrew , the correctness of which is attested by the Syriac. There are numerous examples of a similar nature.
Although Margoliouth’s theory must be rejected as a whole, certain details indicate that both A and B are derived from a copy characterized by interpolations due to a retranslation from Syriac into Hebrew. In a number of passages the same verse is given in two distinct renderings, one of which usually corresponds to the Syriac, even when this text represents merely a faulty or biased translation of the original. These verses, moreover, in their conformity to the Syriac, become at times so meaningless that they can be explained only as incorrect translations from that language. Such suspicious passages are characterized by a comparatively modern style and language, by a commonplace phraseology, and by a break in the parallelism which is affected by Ecclesiasticus. It may therefore be safely concluded that these doublets are merely additions made to render the Syriac version more intelligible. The same statement holds true of certain textual emendations made by the glossarist. In this, however, there is nothing strange, since it is a well-known fact that the Jews of certain sections were familiar with Syriac, as is shown by the quotations made by Naḥmanides from the Wisdom of Solomon, from Judith, and from Bel and the Dragon, and also by the introduction of the Peshiṭta of Proverbs into the Targum of the Hagiographa.
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