Authors: Adina Hoffman
The two otherwise forthright scholars were Richard Gottheil and William H. Worrell in
Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection
(New York, 1927). For more on Cyrus Adler and the Egyptian role at the Columbian Exposition, see his
I Have Considered the Days
(Philadelphia, 1941); Egypt-Chicago Exposition Co.,
Street in Cairo: World’s Columbian Exposition,
1893; Erik Larson,
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
(New York, 2004).
Information about Wertheimer comes from
Manuscript and Book
[Heb] (Jerusalem, 1893/1990); Shelomo Aharon Wertheimer,
Batei midrashot
(Jerusalem, 1980); Wertheimer,
Ginzei Yerushalayim
(Jerusalem, 1901/1992); Reif,
A Jewish Archive;
and interviews with Shelomo Leshem and Shelomo Aharon Wertheimer (the elder Wertheimer’s descendants), Aug. 5, 2008, Jerusalem. The postcards and letters from Wertheimer to the Cambridge librarian quoted here are as follows: June 8, 1893, CUL Or. 1080.13viii; April 1893, CUL Add. 8398/12; Oct. 12, 1893, CUL Or. 1080.2viii. The list in Jenkinson’s hand is CUL Or. 1080.13iii, v, vi. Wertheimer’s reference to the “poor man” is to Ecclesiastes 9:14–15.
Neubauer’s biography is drawn from Stefan Reif, “A Fresh Look at Adolf Neubauer as Scholar, Librarian, and Jewish Personality,” unpublished paper (our thanks to Stefan Reif for showing us this paper); Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, “A Genizah Secret: The Count d’Hulst and Letters Revealing the Race to Recover the Lost Leaves of the Original Ecclesiasticus,
” Journal of the History of Collections
21/1, 2009; H. Loewe, “Adolf Neubauer, 1831–1931” (pamphlet, no date); S. R. Driver, Sinéad Agnew, “Adolf Neubauer,”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;
Alexander Marx, “The Importance of the Geniza for Jewish History,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
16, 1946–47. Quotations from Neubauer come from “The Mail,”
University Intelligence,
Oxford, Nov. 24, 1876; “Miscellanea Liturgica,”
JQR
6/2, 1894; “Grammatical and Lexicographical Literature,”
JQR
6/3, 1894.
Accounts of the synagogue “repairs” may be found in Mosseri, “The Synagogues”; Cohen and Stillman, “The Cairo Geniza and the Custom of Geniza” [Heb]; Lambert,
Fortifications.
According to one version of events, a certain German had in 1888 “been sinking a well in the neighbourhood of the Fostat Synagogue [when he] excavated a number of Hebrew MSS.” Documents had, in other words, been interred in the area before the synagogue was razed. See “The Cairo Geniza: How It Was Found,”
JC,
May 5, 1933. For further discussion of the “repairs,” see Elazar Hurvitz,
Catalogue of the Cairo Geniza Fragments in the Westminster College Library, Cambridge
1, introduction [Heb] (New York, 2006).
Rebecca J. W. Jefferson is single-handedly responsible for uncovering the remarkable story of d’Hulst and his role in the Geniza’s retrieval. We are enormously grateful to her for sharing her research with us. For more about d’Hulst, see Jefferson, “A Genizah Secret” and Jefferson, “The Cairo Genizah Unearthed.” Quotations from d’Hulst and Sayce are all drawn from BLR, d. 1084.
Elkan Adler’s second trip to the Geniza and its aftermath are described in his “An Eleventh Century Introduction”; “The Hebrew Treasures of England,”
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England,
1918; “Ecclesiasticus,”
JC,
March 11, 1904.
Background information relating to Solomon Schechter’s interest in Ben Sira is drawn from David Starr,
Catholic Israel;
Y. Zussman, “Schechter the Scholar” [Heb],
Madda’ei haYahadut
38, 1998; Francis Jenkinson’s 1891, 1894, and 1896 diaries (CUL Add. 7414, Add. 7417, Add. 7419); Stefan Reif, “The Discovery of the Cambridge Ben Sira MSS,” in
Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference,
28
–
31
July
1996
, Soesterberg, Netherlands,
Pancratius C. Beentjes, ed. (Berlin, 1997); Mathilde Schechter’s memoir; Schechter, “A Hoard of Hebrew Manuscripts,” “The Study of the Bible,” and “Jewish Life in the Time of Ben Sira,” all in
Studies
II. The last Jewish scholar to quote from the Hebrew Ben Sira was Saadia Gaon (about whom, see chapter 5, chapter 6, and especially chapter 8). “Badly mutilated” is Leo Deuel’s description in
Testaments of Time.
For general information about the Book of Ben Sira, see
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
(Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus, or The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), Revised Standard Version (New York, 1973);
The Wisdom of Ben Sira
(the Anchor Bible), A. A. Di Lella, ed., P. W. Skehan, trans. (New York, 1987); “Ecclesiasticus,”
The Catholic Encyclopedia;
Bernard Mack,
Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira’s Hymn in Praise of the Fathers
(Chicago, 1985); James Kugel,
The Bible As It Was
(Cambridge, 1997) and
How to Read the Bible
(New York, 2007); John J. Collins, “Ecclesiasticus,” in
Oxford Bible Commentary,
J. Barton and J. Muddiman, eds. (Oxford, 2001); Daniel J. Harrington,
Jesus Ben Sira of Jerusalem: A Biblical Guide to Wise Living
(Collegeville, 2005). The best introduction to the book is still the Hebrew critical edition,
The Complete Book of Ben Sira
[Heb], M. Segal, ed. (Jerusalem, 1958).
The lectures Schechter was “feverishly preparing” became
Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology
(London, 1909); their initial publication was in the
JQR
in three installments between 1894 and 1895. On Schechter and the Higher Criticism, see “The Law and Recent Criticism” and “The Study of the Bible,” in
Studies
I and II; Schechter, “Higher Criticism, Higher Anti-Semitism,” in
Seminary Addresses and Other Papers
(Cincinnati, 1915); D. Fine, “Solomon Schechter and the Ambivalence of Jewish Wissenschaft,”
Judaism
46/1, 1997; Julius Wellhausen,
Prolegomena to the History of Israel,
J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, trans. (Edinburgh, 1885). The first German edition was published (under a different title) in 1878.
Much of the so-called source critical approach would prove to be sound, and Jewish scholars would adopt it. For more on this, see Marc Zvi Brettler,
How to Read the Bible
(Philadelphia, 2005); Starr,
Catholic Israel;
Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Jewish Scholarship as a Vocation,” in
Proceedings of the International Conference Held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College, London,
1994
,
A. L. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, eds. (London, 1998). See also L. H. Silberman, “Wellhausen and Judaism,”
Semeia
25, 1983; and Kugel,
How to Read the Bible.
Schechter’s comments about the “German dogs” and Wellhausen are quoted in Starr,
Catholic Israel.
See also Robert Irwin,
For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies
(London, 2006). Schechter’s first article was “Antisemitische Ethnografie,”
Die Neuzeit
21, 1881; an English translation appears in Starr. Schechter’s comments on Wissenschaft in England are from a letter to Gottheil, July 10, 1883, JTSA Schechter 101/7.
For more on Schechter’s relation to Zunz, see Schechter, “Leopold Zunz,”
Studies
III (Philadelphia, 1924), and Starr,
Catholic Israel.
On Ben Sira’s importance for Jewish literary tradition, see Reif, “The Discovery of Ben Sira,” and R. Jefferson, “A Genizah Secret.”
The descriptions of the Book of Ben Sira and its author are as follows: “A kind of rabbinic self-help manual,”
The Bible,
D. Norton, ed. (London, 2006); “the first of the Paitanim,” Schechter and C. Taylor,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book of Ecclesiasticus
(Cambridge, 1899); “a tissue of old classical phrases,” Taylor,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira;
“to adapt the older Scriptures,” Di Lella,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira
(Anchor Bible); “Polonius without Shakespeare,”
The Bible,
Norton, ed.; “tedious,” E. Fleischer, “Hebrew Poetry in a Biblical Mode in the Middle Ages” [Heb],
Te’uda
7, 1991; “an idiom which is … hideous,” H. L. Ginsberg, “The Original Hebrew of Ben Sira 12:10–14,”
JBL
74/2, 1955; “the most attractive book,”
The Apocrypha: An American Translation,
Edgar J. Goodspeed, trans., Moses Hadas, introduction (New York, 1938/1989); “a self-conscious … artist,” Menahem Kister, “A Contribution to the Interpretation of Ben Sira” [Heb],
Tarbiz
59/3–4, 1990; “The chapters containing the praise of wisdom,” Schechter,
Expositor
5/4, July 1896. On Ben Sira and the Jewish liturgy, see Cecil Roth, “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
71/3, 1952.
Quotations from Ben Sira are given in the RSV (with changes), and are from (in order): 1:1–3, 24:2–6, 24:7–8, and 24:30–33. “Let us now praise famous men” is Ecclesiasticus 44:1–2. For more on this “teachable, practical sort of knowledge,” see especially chapter 38 of Ben Sira, and
The Wisdom of Ben Sira
(Anchor Bible); also Segal, and James Kugel,
Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader’s Companion with New Translations
(New York, 1999). Schechter’s comment about Judaism’s not knowing itself is from “Saints and Saintliness,”
Studies
II.
Quotations from, and information about, D. S. Margoliouth’s writing on Ecclesiasticus come from his
An Essay on the Place of Ecclesiasticus in Semitic Literature
(Oxford, 1890); D. S. Margoliouth,
The Expository Times
16, 1904; A. Di Lella,
The Hebrew Text of Sirach
(The Hague, 1966); Gilbert Murray, “David Samuel Margoliouth, 1858–1940,” in
Proceedings of the British Academy
26, 1940; “the kind of beautiful mind,” Irwin,
For Lust of Knowing.
Schechter’s article was “The Quotations from Ecclesiasticus in Rabbinic Literature,”
JQR
3/4, 1891. “I do not pretend to understand [them]” refers to Margoliouth’s reconstructed Hebrew passages; see Schechter,
Expository Times,
Jan.–Feb. 1900. For more on all this see Mathilde Schechter’s memoir.
In 1964, Yigal Yadin discovered at Masada badly damaged leather fragments of a scroll containing the Book of Ben Sira; the text was “invisible to the naked eye,” but infrared photographs showed that the Hebrew of these first-century
B.C.E
. fragments was almost identical to that of the Geniza’s Hebrew text and confirm its authenticity. This is the earliest extant copy of the Hebrew Ben Sira. For more on the Ben Sira manuscripts from Masada and Qumran, see Di Lella,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira
(Anchor Bible); Reif, “The Discovery of Ben Sira”; and Y. Yadin,
The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada
(Jerusalem, 1965) and
Eretz Israel
8, 1967, Hebrew section. Also, Reif, “Reviewing the Links between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah,” in
The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
T. Lim and J. Collins, eds. (Oxford, 2009).
The only text we have for the passage mentioning Ben Sira’s “house of learning” is a translation from the Syriac, so the authenticity of the term is questionable. See M. Kister, “A Contribution to the Interpretation of Ben Sira” [Heb]. Also Shaye J. D. Cohen,
From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
(Louisville, 1987); James Aitken, “Hebrew Study in Ben Sira’s Beth Midrash,” in
Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda,
W. Horbury, ed. (London, 1999); and Elias Bickerman,
The Jews in the Greek Age
(Cambridge, 1988).
Ben Sira’s first name is sometimes given in English as Jeshua, Joshua, or Jesus. Segal believes his name was Shimon (Simon). There is also uncertainty with regard to the various other parts of his name. Some sources have Yeshua (Jesus) bar Shimon Asira, others Yeshua ben Elazar ben Sira, and others still Shimon ben Yeshua ben Elazar ben Sira.
Schechter describes Ben Sira’s world as “a world very much like ours” in “Jewish Life in the Time of Ben Sira,”
Studies
II. For background on the way in which Ben Sira absorbed “elements of the surrounding Hellenistic society,” see Bickerman,
The Jews;
James Aitken, “Biblical Interpretation as Political Manifesto: Ben Sira in His Seleucid Setting,”
JJS
51/2, 2000; Di Lella,
The Wisdom of Ben Sira
(Anchor Bible); D. Stern, introduction to
Poetics Today
19/1, 1998; and B. Mack,
Wisdom.
Quotations from Ben Sira about “the full range of life’s pleasures, subtleties, and trials” are from 31:27, 22:17, 43:13–14, and 43:18.
Di Lella in the Anchor Bible writes of the “gnawing, unexpressed fear” felt by Jews of Ben Sira’s day. See James Aitken, “Biblical Interpretation as Political Manifesto,” for a somewhat different perspective. Also Schechter, “Jewish Life in the Time of Ben Sira,”
Studies
II. It seems clear from the grandson’s preface that the Greek translation was prepared two generations later in Egypt for Jews who had lost direct contact with the wisdom tradition of Hebrew.
D. S. Margoliouth describes the “miserable trap” in
The Origin of the “Original” Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus
(London, 1899). In other words, Margoliouth thought it was not a medieval copy of an ancient book, but a contemporary high-medieval Hebrew version of a much earlier Greek or Syriac translation. Margoliouth, it should be noted, was joined in his skepticism about the authenticity of Schechter’s Ben Sira fragment by several Jewish scholars of the day.