We know more about the provenance (to use an art term) of the Book of Sirach than most books of the Bible. The author Ben Sira was of the priestly family in Jerusalem who apparently fled to Egypt because of the persecution which eventually led to the Macchabean revolt. He captured the wisdom of the Jewish tradition in a book he wrote sometime around 185 B.C. It is called the Wisdom of Ben Sira or Sirach or Ecclesiasticus. His grandson translated it into Greek and it was this form that it became know to the early Christian movement where is was very popular. In this age where so much is new we will benefit if we can recover the wisdom of the ancients.
