Introduction

Students attending the lectures of Professor Núria Calduch-Benages at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome who wish to consult the professor have to climb the stairs to the fifth floor of the building where the offices of the lecturers are located. Once there, the student walks down a hallway with no natural light while looking for the proper room number. Upon finding it, the student, accustomed to the magisterial and spacious classrooms of the university, knocks on the door of a surprisingly small office. The student who is welcomed by Prof. Calduch-Benages notices some shelves holding dissertation volumes on the left, a clothes hanger on the right, a desk opposite the door, and a couple of chairs on either side of the desk, and realizes that these items represent the total furniture of the tiny office. The window behind Prof. Calduch-Benages draws one’s attention to the only picture on the wall behind her: a finely written Hebrew text on a parchment. Any advanced student of Hebrew soon understands the text and recognizes it as the final verses of the book of Proverbs, the poem on the eshet hayil.

At that moment, one considers possible translations: a virtuous woman, a noble woman, an excellent woman, a capable woman, or simply, a good woman, or wife. But perhaps, the simplest and more literal translation may be the best option: “a strong woman, who can find her?”

The student begins to appreciate that he or she is sitting opposite such a woman, and is in the presence of a hard-working individual who not only produces exceptional scholarship, as attested in the number of articles and books Prof. Calduch-Benages has edited and published, but also supervises a goodly number of doctoral students. Academically demanding and meticulous, she takes outstanding care of those entrusted to her, encouraging their further development. In a firm yet gentle manner, she meets her responsibilities and shares her impressive scholarship and excellent insights with the students at the university, with colleagues at different academic events, and with the public, by way of her publications, both scientific and popular.

Prov. 31:29 continues to describe the woman of substance in this way: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” In many respects, this description is wholly fitting for Prof. Calduch-Benages. She is currently the Chair of the Biblical Theology Department at the Gregorian. She has also been the Book Review editor for Biblica, an esteemed journal in biblical scholarship, and for the Gregorianum, another journal in academic learning, taking the pulse of the current trends in biblical and theological scholarship. She also serves on many editorial boards, including the Vetus Testamentum and its supplements and is presently a Vice-President of the International Society for Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature (ISDCL). In 2008, Pope Benedict invited her to serve as one of the experts at the Synod on the Word of God. More significantly, she is counted among the first female members named to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and is the first woman to function as Secretary of that academic advisory board in the Roman Catholic Church.

The poem ends with “Let her works praise her in the city gates” (Prov. 31:31). This Festschrift volume bears witness to such praise. Colleagues and former students at various city gates around the globe have authored original studies to honor and celebrate the achievements of an extraordinary woman.

The present volume, which follows the honoree’s scholarly interest in Ben Sira, gathers together essays that explore the various relationships between the book of Ben Sira and other mainly Jewish traditions. The word “conversation” in the title of the volume implies an act of engaged listening and interaction. In this case, it means listening to Ben Sira’s text in all its permutations. Doing so also includes hearing, no matter how faintly, some of the other background conversations of the sage’s time; it amounts to discerning Ben Sira’s negotiations with other traditions in light of his own. Ultimately, Ben Sira forms part of a tradition with which later tradents interact. True conversations, of course, often yield insights and delights; it is our hope that this volume offers our honoree and other readers with a storehouse of them.

In their description of such conversations, these contributions employ a variety of approaches ranging from the textual, to the literary, to the theological. The collection is divided into four parts. The first part includes four essays that analyze how Ben Sira represents the Torah he received. The second part’s four essays examine Ben Sira’s links with the prophetic tradition. The third part has four essays that consider the work of Ben Sira in light of the wisdom tradition. The fourth part consists of four essays that study the interconnections between Ben Sira and other literature of the Second Temple. The five studies of the final section investigate how other traditions engaged Ben Sira in conversation, or how his work was later interpreted and received.

John Collins opens the first part with an essay entitled “The Creation of Humanity in Hebrew Wisdom Literature of the Second Century” in which he argues that, despite the number of reflections prompted by the creation stories in Gen 1–2 and Gen 3, Ben Sira does not view any segment of humanity as having been denied the revelation of good and evil because it had a spirit of flesh, as some Qumran documents assert. The differences within the reflections of the period provide a window into the development of dualistic thought in Hellenistic Judea. In “Torah, Paideia, and Sophia in Ben Sira,” Jean-Louis Ska makes a case for considering Ben Sira’s work as a kind of pedagogical handbook that prioritizes the Torah, in particular, as the highest and most prestigious form of wisdom that may proudly be set alongside the Hellenistic ideals of paideia. Pancratius Beentjes, in “Ben Sira’s Portrayal of Aaron and Phinehas (Sir 45:6–25),” examines how Ben Sira employs scripture in a special way in his portrayal of the priestly families of Aaron and Phinehas in order to underscore continuity in Israel’s history. Finally, Benjamin Wright III looks closely at the Greek translation of Sir 4:1–10, which is considered as Ben Sira’s broad commentary on the covenantal obligations as delineated in Exod 22:22–23, Lev 19:9–10, 23:22 (the poor), Deut 15:7–11 (the poor), and 24:17–22 (widows and orphans), in order to understand how the grandson approached and later represented the thought of Ben Sira on these matters.

The second part begins with Jeremy Corley’s essay entitled “Ben Sira and Ezekiel” which explores connections between the two eponymous writers, starting with the brief note in Sir 49:8–9 that refers to Ezekiel’s inaugural vision, the reference to the revival of bones in Sir 46:12 and 49:10, and the motif of water flowing out of the Jerusalem temple in Sir 24:30–31. Bradley Gregory, in his study “‘Bread to the Hungry and Clothes to the Naked’: A History of a Prophetic-Sapiential Motif from Tobit to the Syriac of Ben Sira,” focuses on the prophetic and sapiential motif “bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked,” tracing its interesting trajectory in Tobit, the Sibylline Oracles 1–2, Pseudo-Phocylides, the Gospel of Matthew, 2 Enoch, and the Syriac version of Ben Sira. In “The Metaphor of a Woman Giving Birth: The Book of Ben Sira in the Light of Prophetic Literature,” Paweł Paszko examines the image of a “woman giving birth” in Sir 19:11–12 and 48:19 in light of the image’s appearance in Isa 42:10–14, concluding that such an image does not symbolize weakness but illustrates inner confusion and anxiety caused by critical life situations. Finally, in “The Banquet of Life in Sir 24:12–23 and Hos 14:5–10? Allusions in the Book of Ben Sira to the Book of Hosea,” Ibolya Balla analyzes the plant metaphors in both Hosea and Ben Sira as a point of connection and concludes that such images reinforce the notion that it is God who is the only legitimate and ultimate provider who sustains a restored Israel and a Torah-observant individual into life, not Baal or other foreign gods in the case of Hosea, or Hellenistic culture in the case of Ben Sira.

The third section examines texts in the book of Ben Sira in connection with the wisdom tradition. In “‘Yet, No One Remembered that Poor Man’: Qoheleth and Ben Sira on the Wisdom of the Poor,” Tova Forti engages in a comparative analysis of Qoh 9:13–10:1 and Sir 10:30–11:3, two passages that employ animal imagery in order to address the wisdom of the poor, and argues that the images underscore the pedagogical gap between Qoheleth’s skeptical ambivalence and Ben Sira’s conservative didacticism. Sergio Rotasperti and F. Javier Ruiz-Ortiz also analyze animal metaphors as they are applied to women in Sir 25:13–26:27 in light of their use in biblical literature, specifically in its wisdom iteration. In his essay “On the Gifts of the Lord in Ben Sira,” Friedrich V. Reiterer examines in light of Hellenistic ideas the action of the Lord as the giver. Finally, Dinh Anh Nhue Nguyen, in “Family Ethos and Wise Behavior in Proverbs, Sirach, and Vietnamese Folk Sayings,” reads Ben Sira’s teachings on filial piety and wise behavior with Proverbs in mind and also in comparison with Vietnamese folk sayings on the subject, thus emphasizing Ben Sira’s “interculturality.”

The fourth section covers the...