Sirach 44–50 · Featured Study · A Labeled Study Resource, Not Canon
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Around 180 BC, a Jerusalem wisdom teacher named Jesus ben Sira closed his textbook with a tour: Israel’s entire story, told as a portrait gallery. “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us”— and then, for seven chapters, the portraits: Enoch who pleased the Lord, Noah found perfect, Moses beloved of God and men, David chosen like the fat of the offering, Elijah standing up as fire. It is the era’s own hall of fame, and its refrain is the immortality an honor culture could offer: “their name liveth for evermore.” Two centuries later a Christian writer built a gallery in the same form — and changed the key from honor to faith, and the prize from a remembered name to a resurrection. This page walks Ben Sira’s gallery, and shows exactly where the better hall parts ways with it.
The Portrait Gallery
the Praise of the Fathers in the book's own order: each portrait a live door
1 · Sirach 44:16
Enoch
“pleased the Lord, and was translated”
2 · Sirach 44:17
Noah
“found perfect and righteous… left as a remnant”
3 · Sirach 44:19
Abraham
father of many nations
4 · Sirach 45:1
Moses
“beloved of God and men, whose memorial is blessed”
5 · Sirach 45:6, 23
Aaron & Phinehas
the priesthood's covenant
6 · Sirach 46:1, 7
Joshua & Caleb
the conquest's faithful pair
7 · Sirach 46:13
Samuel
prophet and judge
8 · Sirach 47:2
David
“chosen out of the children of Israel”
9 · Sirach 47:12
Solomon
wisdom, and its warning
10 · Sirach 48:1
Elijah
“stood up… as fire, and his word burned like a lamp”
11 · Sirach 48:17, 22
Hezekiah & Isaiah
the king and the prophet who held Jerusalem
12 · Sirach 49:1–10
Josiah · Jeremiah · Ezekiel · the Twelve
the last lights before the exile
13 · Sirach 49:11–13
Zerubbabel · Jeshua · Nehemiah
the rebuilders
14 · Sirach 50:1
Simon the high priest
“in his life repaired the house again”: the gallery's living climax
Quoted lines are the resident KJV Apocrypha text, verbatim. The gallery’s climax is not a patriarch at all but the author’s own contemporary, Simon the high priest, whom Ben Sira had watched officiate in glory (ch. 50). History, for this teacher, was not over; the roll call ran straight into his own morning services.
- 7 chsIsrael's story as portraits
- c. 180 BCa named, datable author
- 44:14“their name liveth for evermore”
- Heb 12:1the cloud of witnesses
The Man the Gallery Names Twice
Enoch opens the roll and returns at its close: Sirach's own emphasis
“Enoch pleased the Lord, and was translated, being an example of repentance to all generations.” (44:16) … “But upon the earth was no man created like Enoch; for he was taken from the earth.” (49:14)
Alone of all the fathers, Enoch gets two portraits — the gallery opens with him and circles back to him just before its living climax. It is one more witness to how large the seventh from Adam loomed in the century this book was written — the same century that produced the Enoch literature this site’s own Enoch study opens. Ben Sira, characteristically, keeps his Enoch modest: no visions, no throne scenes — just a man who pleased the Lord and was taken, “an example… to all generations.”
The Hall That Changed the Key
Sirach 44 beside Hebrews 11: the form shared, the engine different
Ben Sira’s key: honor
The gallery’s prize is a remembered name: “Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore” (44:14). Its shadow is the forgotten: “some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been” (44:9). Immortality, in this hall, is reputation: the best an honor culture without resurrection hope could promise.
Hebrews’ key: faith
The same catalogue form, re-keyed: “By faith… by faith…”: and the roll deliberately includes people an honor gallery would never hang: a prostitute, refugees, the tortured, the sawn asunder, “of whom the world was not worthy.” The prize is not a name kept alive in others’ mouths but “a better resurrection” (11:35): and the whole hall waits on one Person the gallery never saw: “looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith” (12:2).
Scholarship is content to call the relationship a shared form — the exemplar catalogue was the era’s way of teaching by biography (deSilva), and no verbal dependence is claimed. Which makes the difference the more striking: given the same form and largely the same names, the gospel writes a different last line. Sirach’s hall ends at the temple with Simon in his glory. Hebrews’ hall runs out the temple door, “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1, ASV), toward a city whose builder and maker is God. This book is a labeled study resource and never canon; read it, honor it: and notice exactly where the better hall was headed.
The Voices on the Gallery
with the work named
An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford University Press, 1957)
The standard account of Sirach: the one Apocrypha book whose author (Jesus ben Sira of Jerusalem, c. 180 BC), translator (his grandson, in Egypt), and occasion we actually know from the book's own dated prologue.
Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance (Baker Academic, 2002)
On the Praise of the Fathers as the book's crown: Israel's story told as biography, and the clearest ancient parallel in FORM to a catalogue of exemplars like Hebrews 11.
Prologue to the Books of Solomon (c. AD 393)
Public domain, verified text: the church reads Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) “for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church”, this page's exact posture.
in R. H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, vol. I (Oxford, 1913)
The standard early critical introduction to Sirach: including the story of the lost Hebrew text and its dramatic recovery from the Cairo Genizah, confirmed later at Masada.
Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all; within a tier, all voices are equal.
Read the Great Books
the works this study is built on
Sirach 44–50
c. 180 BC, Jerusalem: a labeled study resource, not canon
The whole Praise of the Fathers, portrait by portrait, in MannaFest’s own reader.
READ IT →Hebrews 11–12
Scripture: read it in MannaFest’s own reader
The hall of faith, and the race it opens onto: the catalogue form perfected.
READ IT →The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. I
R. H. Charles, ed. · 1913
Box and Oesterley’s Sirach: introduction, notes, and the story of the Hebrew text’s recovery from the Cairo Genizah.
READ IT FREE →