Sirach

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Book of Sirach is a wisdom text included in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament, composed by Jesus ben Sira and offering moral and practical instruction
2. Sirach names a deuterocanonical biblical book of wisdom sayings and ethical teaching, traditionally ascribed to the scholar Jesus ben Sira
3. A wisdom book found in some Bible canons, containing proverbs and moral counsel attributed to the sage Jesus ben Sira

Etymology: "Sirach" is the name of a book of the Bible, and the word in English is essentially that name carried over unchanged. It comes from Latin "Sirach" and Ancient Greek "Seirách" (Σειράχ), the Greek rendering of a Hebrew personal name, ben Sira, meaning "son of Sira." The book is traditionally attributed to Jesus ben Sira, a Jerusalem scribe who wrote in Hebrew around 180 BCE, and the Greek translation made by his grandson is the form that reached the wider Christian world. Because the name is a proper noun, its English use has stayed fixed to the book and its author rather than drifting into a general sense. Readers of older English Bibles may also meet it under its alternative title, Ecclesiasticus, a Latin label meaning roughly "church book," which was used to distinguish it from Ecclesiastes.