A. Jordan Schmidt - Wisdom, Cosmos, and Cultus in the Book of Sirach

A. Jordan Schmidt
Wisdom, Cosmos, and Cultus in the Book of Sirach

Deuterocanonical and Cognate
Literature Studies

Edited by

Friedrich V. Reiterer, Beate Ego, Tobias Nicklas, and Kristin de Troyer

Volume 42

ISBN 978-3-11-060110-7
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-060022-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-060017-9
ISSN 1865-1666

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959971

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Boston/Berlin

www.degruyter.com

This volume is a slightly reworked version of my Ph.D. dissertation, which I submitted to the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America in December of 2017. Despite the rather broad title that I have given this work, I see it as being focused on one simple theme: Ben Siras teaching about the created order of the universe. Of course, this teaching has many points of application, ranging from the order reflected in the natural world to the order reflected in the cultic liturgy of the Temple. In this regard, the present study can also be described as an analysis of Ben Siras recourse to the created order as a fundamental category in his instructions about wisdom and wise behavior.

I extend my deepest thanks to Dr. Bradley Gregory who served as the director of my dissertation. His hiring at the Catholic University of America certainly was, I dare say, a providential event since it came just as I was beginning to search for a topic for my dissertation. His seminar on Sirach afforded me the tools to access the wisdom of this wonderful book and convinced me that it would be a fitting area of research for the remaining years of my doctoral work and beyond. I would also like to thank Dr. Gregory for his availability and for the many immensely helpful conversations we had; they always seemed to come at the right time.

I am also deeply grateful for my fellow graduate students and the faculty members at The Catholic University of America who provided me with an outstanding community of learning during my years there. I thank Dr. Edward Cook and Dr. Andrew Gross in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures for their many enriching courses and for their general accessibility whenever I had questions or needed assistance with linguistic research. I also thank Fr. Begg and Dr. Miller, my readers, for their attentiveness and care in reading my work, especially as it expanded in length.

Finally, I would also like to express my deep gratitude to my brothers in the Dominican province of St. Joseph for their fraternal and prayerful support as I have undertaken doctoral studies. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Fr. Joseph Alobaidi, OP, who first introduced me to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament and Fr. Stephen Ryan, OP, for his continued encouragement and infectious enthusiasm for biblical research. I also extend a heartfelt thanks to the friars at the Dominikanerkloster in Vienna, at Blackfriars in Cambridge, and at Blackfriars in Oxford for their hospitality and fraternity while I conducted research on the manuscripts of the book of Sirach.

Washington, DC

In this study, I use the sigla and abbreviations found in The SBL Handbook of Style , second edition (SBLHS2).:

For those journals and series that appear neither in SBLHS2 nor in IATG3, I use the following abbreviations in this study: