Commentary of the Book of Ben Sira

The book of Ben Sira belongs to the canon of the old churches. Since Martin Luther it is also called apocryphal or deuterocanonical and it isnt in the centre of exegetical research. Therefore it doesnt exist a commentary of Ben Sira on the level of usual exegetic standard which we can find in the commentaries of protocanonical literature. The secondary literature about the book of Ben Sira is collected in the first step of preparation of the commentary (in print). Beside the collection of this literature the team prepared a preliminary stage of commentary including the chapters 25 to 33. The chapters 34 - 42 are ready for publishing. The program for the future is: 1. Textcritical aims: The translation to modern languages show the problems. There are five Hebrew manuscripts which sometimes are very different. Only 60% of the book are discovered in Hebrew. The translator needs the Greek or Syriac tradition if he wants to translate the whole book. But also these traditions sometimes differ from each other and from the Hebrew manuscripts. If a translator tries to find the Urtext and is going on to translate - on the basic of the traditions in Hebrew, Creek and Syriac - he forms a new text. 2. The poetic analysis of Ben Sira is still in its infancy. Therefore we try to find arguments for the decision when a literary unity begins and when it ends, which are the arguments of the inner structure and so on. 3. We try to interpret this unity in the context of siracidic thought. 4. Next we compare the form of expressions, of words, phrases in the book of Ben Sira with references in protocanonical books. 5. We are checking central themes of the book of Ben Sira, f.e. the poor - the rich, wisdom, policy, friendship, creation. 6. We compare Ben Siras teaching with the contemporary background. 7. In comenting we use the recent secondary literature.