Jubilees, Sirach, and Sapiential TraditionBen Sira's watery odyssey ends at the sea, the place of Wisdom's thought.
Only then can he engage in the activities of the sage outlined in w. 32-34. In
this central chapter of the book Ben Sira claims to have tapped the primor
dial Wisdom embodied in Torah. In fact, his teaching becomes the conduit
to Wisdom for anyone who would seek her (v. 34). The discourse of chap. 24
makes the adjurations to seek Wisdom found elsewhere in the book all the
more meaningful.
Ben Sira's authorizing strategy in chap. 24, then, works very much like
the first of the strategies that Najman discovers in jubilees. For Ben Sira, au
thority is not as bound up in writtenness as is true of Jubilees, even though he
does speak of the Torah of Moses as a book and he refers to his own teaching as
inscribed "in this book" (50:27). But the authority for his teaching does derive,
as in Jubilees, from a primordial source that existed long before the actual To
rah of Moses. Unlike the heavenly tablets, which Najman calls "a great corpus
of teachings kept in heaven," Wisdom is not a corpus of teachings but is the di
vine presence that inhabits the Torah. Find Wisdom, as Ben Sira clearly thinks
he has, and one has access to what Torah is all about. Thus, whereas Jubilees
authorizes its teaching by appealing to the heavenly tablets, Ben Sira legiti
mates the activities and teaching of all the sages, not just his own, since hypo-
thetically anyone who single-mindedly pursues Wisdom can possess her.
The second of Jubilees' authority-conferring strategies is that Jubilees
is the product of divine revelation. The angel of the presence ensures the ac
curacy of what is dictated to Moses, who transcribes it all faithfully. Here the
angel's intermediary function reinforces the authority of the revelation as
divine. James VanderKam has demonstrated that the angel of the presence
not only speaks in God's name but also performs acts attributed elsewhere to
God.^15 As both VanderKam and Najman argue, such intimacy with God en
hances Jubilees' authority and frames it as revelation from the deity given to
Israel via the scribal hand of Moses.^16
Ben Sira does not frame his work as the product of revelatory activity,
but nonetheless he does try to connect his teaching with revelation. We have
seen that in the discourse of 24:30-34 he derives his teaching from Wisdom,
which is embodied in Torah. As a result, he can characterize his teaching as
prophecy. Later, in chap. 39, Ben Sira describes the activity of the scribe/sage.
- J. C. VanderKam, "The Angel of the Presence in the Book of Jubilees," DSD 7
(2000): 378-93. - VanderKam, "Angel of the Presence," 392-93; Najman, Seconding Sinai, 60-63;
Najman, "Interpretation as Primordial Writing," 400-403.