Edition of the Hebrew text and old translations of Ben Sira

The extant text editions of the Book of Ben Sira are either outdated or unreliable, or they don`t allow an easy comparison of the most important main traditions of the Book of Ben Sira (the Greek-Latin tradition, the Hebrew tradition and the Syriac tradition). A synopsis of these main traditions alone is able to bring to light differences and the connections between these main traditions, which are normally not recognized by scholars, despite of their great relevance to textual interpretation. The "Studientext Ben Sira" shall contribute to fill this gap: on one hand by means of a synopsis of the Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Latin versions, on the other hand by means of separate texts, presenting each single Hebrew manuscript in its original textual structure, as well as the Old Syriac translation (Peschitta) according to the oldest manuscripts. In order to enable the readers to take through researches of their own, dictionaries and concordances will be added. The text edition will be both: philological reliable and as user-friendly as possible, in order to give transparency to textcritical decisions and the interpretation of manuscripts, thus, to wake the interest of a wider public to texthistorical research. The Book of Ben Sira with its largely different textual traditions can be regarded as model for textcritical and texthistorical research in the Old Testament as a whole, because in the Book of Ben Sira problems come to light, which, in the masoretical part, are conceiled by the relatively compact and homogene masoretical tradition. The "Studientext Ben Sira" should help to give more weight to the Book in the research of the Old Testament, being the most extensive reservoir of Israelite-Jewish wisdom traditions and Ancient Near East wisdom traditions as well, and the most extensive litererary document of pre--Maccebean Judaism or rather late Israel.