For over one hundred years International Critical Commentaries have had a special place among works on the Bible. They bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the meaning of the books of the Old and New Testaments.
In this volume Jeremy Corley and Bradley Gregory provide an in-depth critical and exegetical commentary on Ben Sira 1-10. The volume’s begins by focusing on the author and book, exploring the historical and sociological context, followed by the sage’s view of women, the book’s teaching on social ethics, ending with the rediscovered Hebrew text and the early translations.
The commentary sections each begin with bibliographies of relevant studies and include a double English translation: first of the Greek text and then of the Hebrew or the Syriac text. The exegesis aims to take note of relevant parallels in Second Temple Jewish writings, ancient Greek and Egyptian literature, and the New Testament.