Ecclesiasticus
Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, is the longest wisdom book in the Bible, basically a practical manual for living well in the Hellenistic world.
Read this if you…
- want a Jewish wisdom book that didn't make the Protestant cut but stayed in the Catholic Bible
- like practical advice from a 2nd-century-BCE sage on everything from dinner-party etiquette to handling grief
- care about the 'praise of famous men' finale — the literary ancestor of every 'great men of history' catalog
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
Why It Matters
Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, is the longest wisdom book in the Bible, basically a practical manual for living well in the Hellenistic world. Its 'praise of famous men' in chapters 44-50 got the genre of exemplary biography going.
Depicted in Art
The Virgin enthroned with the infant Christ in a niche of roses, lilies, palm, cypress, and plane trees, each plant labeled with a Latin tag — 'sicut lilium in campis,' 'quasi cypressus in monte Sion,' 'quasi palma exaltata' — drawn directly from Sirach 24.
Sandro Botticelli, 1485
The personification of Divine Wisdom enthroned in clouds hands a book down to Jesus Sirach, who kneels at the foot of a Corinthian colonnade with the underworld gaping open beside him.
Cornelis Galle the Elder, 1634
A stained glass figure of personified Wisdom robed in blue, set against a celestial backdrop, with the scrolled inscription of Sirach 24:4 — 'I dwelt in the highest places.'
1900
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Cambridge University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.”
“He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith; and he that hath fellowship with a proud man shall be like unto him.”