[81] Judaism (second series), p. 57.
[82] Cp. Pr. 216-19; E. 93-9, 192, 4120; and refs. on p. 153.
[83] See especially chaps. vii., viii., and xviii.
[84] This maxim was familiar among the Greeks, and is quoted by Æeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and other writers. Tradition ascribed its origin to Solon, the statesman of early Athens, who was reckoned one of the seven Sages of Greece. Its occurrence in Ecclesiasticus is an interesting illustration of the cosmopolitan aspect of the Wisdom movement.
[85] Pr. 1432, The righteous hath hope in his death ... comes nearest to the idea of immortality; but the accuracy of the Hebrew text is doubtful. Pr. 1524 and 2317, 18 are to be understood as referring to the character of the good man’s life on earth (see Toy’s notes on these passages).
[86] “The influence of the synagogue as a religious factor, even in the times of Ben Sirach, was felt more deeply than the scarcity of references to it in the contemporary literature would lead us to believe”, Schechter, Judaism [Second Series], p. 65; cp. J. Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, pp. 1ff.
[87] The reader familiar with the Gospels should guard against the notion that the Scribes were always guilty of the worst qualities that legalism is apt to foster. A class ought not to be equated with its less worthy representatives, unless we are willing, for example, to condemn the first Christians for the sins of certain orders in the Mediæval Church, or to saddle the eager pioneers of the Reformation with the shortcomings of their followers in the eighteenth century.
[88] See the article Hasideans and Hellenism (Jewish Encyclopædia, Vol. VI.).
[89] Commonly referred to by the abbreviation LXX.
[90] See Dr. Taylor’s edition (Cambridge, 1877).