volume 15, issue 1, 2023, pages 13-36

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsBALE6049
Published online: 2023-06-01
Published in print: 2023-06-30

Abstract: There has already been in past decades serious research regarding possible structure(s) of the Book of Ben Sira. In this essay I focus my attention only on the Hebrew text of the medieval Manuscript “A”. I propose to perceive a possible structure of the book as formed in a manner of a skeleton composed by didactic poems, which contain prohibitive negative sentences. Prohibition, as such, has naturally strong rhetorical force, and therefore I believe that negative sentences in fourteen poems of the Manuscript “A” concentrate pedagogical emphases of each poem. Hence, I believe that these didactic poems, by the force of their compositional integrity, together with the strength of their prohibitive mood, form a basic structural skeleton interwoven and complemented with all remaining shorter or longer literary compositions.