Pancratius C. Beentjes. “Happy the One who Meditates on Wisdom” (Sir 14,20): Collected Essays on the Book of Ben Sira

Earlier in the current issue of TC, we had the privilege to review a collected volume of Johannes Marbck, a volume that contains primarily essays on the early Jewish wisdom book of Jesus Ben Sira.This magnificent book has experienced a sort of a renaissance in research in the last quarter of century.This is conveniently witnessed by the fact that in the same year that Marbck's volume appeared (2006), another collection of articles has been published, too, focusing on diverse problems of Ben Sira. 2.Pancratius Beentjes is certainly one of the most engaged and pre-eminent students of Ben Sira.Since his dissertation on the relationship of this book to the rest of the Old Testament, and especially to the Pentateuch (Jesus Sirach en Tenach, 1981), he has published extensively on this important document of early 2nd century BCE Palestinian Judaism.This volume collects together these contributions, written during the last two decades.