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The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) contains the sayings of Ben Sira, arguably the last of Israel’s wise men and its first scribe, whose world was defined and dominated by Greek ideas and ideals. This Hellenistic worldview challenged the adequacy of the religion passed down to Palestinian Jews of the second century B.C.E. by their ancestors. Ben Sira’s training in both Judaic and Hellenistic...

turned out to be weak and ineffective as a ruler (cf. Dan 11:20). Although the new king confirmed the privileges his father had granted the Jews (cf. 2 Macc 3:2–3), he sent his foster brother and finance minister Heliodorus on a mission to Jerusalem to pillage the treasury of the Temple (cf. 2 Macc 3:4–40). Seleucus was assassinated in 175 and was succeeded by his younger brother Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164), of whom we spoke above.
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