An Alphabet in Halves

• Anchor Bible Dictionary — its entries on Ben Sira (Sirach), Simon, Onias, the Genizah, Masada and the Old Testament Apocrypha.
• Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — its entries on Ben Sira, the high priests and the Psalms scrolls.
• Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — its entries on Ben Sira and on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The entry titles differ from one work to another and were not checked against the volumes, none of which is held here.
• On the text — any article that keeps the Hebrew manuscripts, the shorter Greek and the longer Greek apart. An article that cites ‘the Hebrew of Ben Sira’ without naming a manuscript is not usable for chapters 44–51, where three manuscripts are extant here and they disagree.

• Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible 39, 1987) — a commentary on the whole book, in English.
• Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (1997) — the text edition of all the Hebrew manuscripts. Not held here.
• Yigael Yadin, The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada (1965) — the first edition of the Masada scroll.
• James A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPsa) (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert IV, 1965) — where Sirach 51 appears among psalms.
• Joseph Ziegler, Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach (Göttingen Septuagint) — the critical Greek, whose numbering the Hebrew file follows. Not held here; the Greek on this page is Rahlfs via CATSS.
• Burton L. Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira’s Hymn in Praise of the Fathers (1985).
• Otto Mulder, Simon the High Priest in Sirach 50 (2003).
• Solomon Schechter and Charles Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Cambridge, 1899) — the edition of the Genizah leaves given to Cambridge (in this range it prints MS B from 49:12); held on this disk only as page images, used by the acquiring check and, for three of its pages, by this page (Stage 5).

No — five more are held here, and the page measured each against Sirach 44:1–50:24 (159 Greek rows). Mattathias’ deathbed list in 1 Maccabees 2; the unnamed saved ones of Wisdom 10; two short lists in 4 Maccabees; and, in the New Testament, Hebrews 11.

The deepest contact any of them makes with Ben Sira’s list is four words, and it is Abraham in both: ἐν πειρασμῷ εὑρέθη πιστός, ‘in testing he was found faithful’ (our literal gloss) — Sirach 44:20 and 1 Maccabees 2:52, and among the 30,348 screened Greek Old Testament units those two only; 0 in the New Testament.

Hebrews 11 reaches three, five times, and every one is a stock phrase — upon the earth, him, and in, Jacob, and, of the sons of Israel, of his fathers. Its Enoch verse, 11:5, reaches a run of one with Sirach 44:16: both have the name and the verb μετετέθη (was translated), but Sirach sets three words between them and Hebrews none. Its deepest Greek Old Testament partner is Genesis 5:24, four words, band 1: μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός·.

What the lists name, counted from the text. Between 44:1 and 50:24 the Greek of Sirach names 44 individuals and no woman. Hebrews 11 names 19 people besides Christ (11:26) — two of them women, Sarah (Σάρρᾳ, 11:11) and Rahab (Ῥαὰβ, 11:31) — and 9 of its names are in Sirach’s list too: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Samuel. Hebrews begins with Abel, whom Sirach never names (0 times in 1,402 rows); the roll-call’s last name is Adam (49:16), whom Hebrews 11 does not name. And Daniel — named in 1 Maccabees 2:60 and in both lists in 4 Maccabees, with Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael — stands 0 times in Sirach. So does Ezra (0), while Nehemiah has a verse to himself (49:13). These are absences in the text, counted; the page does not explain them.

Ben Sira’s translator is the author’s own grandson, and he says that translating costs something. The Greek prologue, rows 21–22: οὐ γὰρ ἰσοδυναμεῖ αὐτὰ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς Εβραϊστὶ λεγόμενα καὶ ὅταν μεταχθῇ εἰς ἑτέραν γλῶσσαν — ‘for the things said in Hebrew in themselves do not have equal force when they are carried over into another language’ (our literal gloss). He came to Egypt, he says, ἐν γὰρ τῷ ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ ἔτει ἐπὶ τοῦ Εὐεργέτου βασιλέως — ‘in the thirty-eighth year in the time of King Euergetes’ (our literal gloss).

The KJV verse-per-line file on this disk has no prologue — its Sirach opens at 1:1 — so the English here is our own gloss, marked as such. The grandson’s warning is the reason this page never measures his Greek against the Hebrew word by word.

• MS B — a medieval codex from the Cairo Genizah, the storeroom of an Old Cairo synagogue whose leaves reached Cambridge and other libraries from the 1890s (Schechter and Taylor published the Cambridge leaves in 1899). In 44–51 it supplies 293 of the 320 Hebrew rows, and it is the only Hebrew witness here for most of the range.
• The Masada scroll — a scroll found in the fortress at Masada, which fell to Rome in the 70s AD, so copied before that. In this range it covers 16 verse numbers, 44:1–44:15 and 44:17 — and not 44:16.
• 11QPsa — the large Psalms scroll from Qumran Cave 11, in which Sirach 51:13–30 stands among psalms. The file carries it at 8 verses, 51:13–20, and two words of 51:30.

Chapter 50 is a portrait in similes. In 50:6–10 the Greek has ὡς (like) 11 times in five verses: the morning star, the full moon, the sun on the temple, the rainbow, roses, lilies, frankincense, fire and incense, a vessel of gold, an olive, a cypress. Commentators commonly identify him with the high priest Simon II, about 200 BC (see Mulder in Stage 5); the page measures the text, not the man.

Then a numerical saying (50:25–26) about ‘two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth’ and a third that ‘is no nation’ (KJV 50:25). It is reported here because the witnesses part on it: the Greek names ἐν ὄρει Σαμαρείας (on the mountain of Samaria), and so does the KJV; MS B reads יושבי שעיר, ‘the dwellers of Seir’ (our literal gloss), and so does the Latin (50:28), qui sedent in monte Seir. The page reports a hostile saying in a Second-Temple book because its witnesses differ on it; it does not extend it or apply it.

Read in Hebrew, 51:13–30 is commonly described as an alphabetic acrostic: each line opening with the next letter, aleph to tav. The Greek, the KJV and the Latin cannot show that, and do not. Two Hebrew manuscripts carry the poem in the file held here. Neither shows all twenty-two letters.

11QPsa. The first letters of its eight rows for 51:13–20 are א ב ג ה ו ז ח ט. The letters that sequence skips — ד, then י and כ — each begin exactly one word inside the row where the sequence needs them. That is 11 letters, א to כ, in order — and then the file has nothing from this scroll until two words at 51:30.

MS B, the same verses. It files ten rows at 51:13–20, in its own order (15 before 14), and they make 9 lines; their first letters run א ב ו ע ח ח נ י ו. The first two are א and ב, as the alphabet needs; the next seven (ו ע ח ח נ י ו) do not continue it. At the same verse number the two manuscripts begin with the same letter 2 times (51:13 and 51:19); and MS B opens a line with ידי, the very word that carries the scroll’s י inside its 51:20. The scroll’s ד-word stands in MS B too — as the second word of a line.

MS B, where the scroll has nothing (51:21–29). Its ten lines begin מ נ פ ע פ ו ק ר ר ת. Set beside the last ten letters of the alphabet, מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת: 7 stand in place; an eighth, צ, does once the conjunction ו is set aside (51:26); 2 do not — פ where ס would stand (51:23) and ר where ש would stand (51:28). No line in MS B begins with ל.

Where the missing letters stand in MS B. Each of them begins a word close to its place — but not the word at the head of a line. ל opens two words of MS B’s last row before 51:21 — ולב, the third word, once its conjunction is set aside, and לה, the fifth word, with nothing before it — a row the transcription leaves undivided, so the page cannot say whether a line once began at either; ס opens the third word of the line that holds its place (51:23, סכלים); ש opens the second word of the line that holds its place (51:28, שמעו). The page reports where the letters are; it does not restore a line.

A second reading of MS B, checked by eye. Schechter and Taylor’s 1899 edition of these leaves is held on this disk as page images. For this page its pages 23–24 (51:12–30) were read against the transcription: all 19 lines of 51:13–29 open with the same word in both, and the 1899 printing also sets MS B’s last first-half row as one undivided line. Elsewhere in these lines the two differ by a word or a letter (51:21, 51:23) — never in a line’s first word; at 51:30, the line after them, the two spell the first word differently, with the same first letter. That is a by-eye check made for this page, not a measurement; Stage 5 says what else it found.

Each of the 194 Greek rows of 44–51 against the 28,946 other screened Greek Old Testament units (Sirach itself excluded): all 194 reach two, 150 reach three, 77 reach four, 16 reach five, 8 reach six, 4 reach seven, 2 reach eight, and nothing reaches nine.

The deepest two are eight words, band 1 each and band 1 from the other side too, and they land in opposite places. 47:24 shares Ιεροβοαμ υἱὸς Ναβατ ὃς ἐξήμαρτεν τὸν Ισραηλ καὶ with 2 Kings 23:15 (4 Kingdoms in the Greek) — ‘Jeroboam son of Nebat, who made Israel sin’ (our literal gloss), the story’s own formula in the story’s own book. 44:21 — Abraham’s oath — finds its eight-word partner outside Genesis. The partner is Psalm 71:8 (72:8 in English numbering), the king’s dominion: ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἕως θαλάσσης καὶ ἀπὸ ποταμοῦ ἕως. Among the 30,348 screened units its seven-word core stands in 2: Ps 71:8 and Sir 44:21. In MS B the same line is damaged at its start and ends with ים \ ומנהר ועד אפסי ארץ:. Against Psalm 72:8 in Hebrew (עַד־יָם וּמִנָּהָר עַד־אַפְסֵי־אָרֶץ) that is a run of two words, then a word with one letter more than the psalm’s (ועד), then two more. Read that word without its first letter and the run would be five. One psalm verse, measured in each language against its own Bible: eight words in Greek, two in Hebrew — and the Hebrew run breaks at a single letter.

Three more deep runs land outside the story being told. 50:17 — the people falling on their faces to worship the Lord while Simon ministers at the altar — shares seven words with 1 Maccabees 4:40, the rededication of the temple under Judas: καὶ ἔπεσαν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν (band 1 both ways). 48:22 — Hezekiah — shares six with 2 Chronicles 34:2, which is a verse about Josiah: ἐν ὁδοῖς Δαυιδ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ (from the Chronicles side 2 units tie at six: 1 Kgs 16:28b and Sir 48:22; the map below still counts it as landing in Hezekiah’s books, because 2 Chronicles tells his story too). And 45:5, Moses brought into the dark cloud, shares five with Genesis 29:13, Laban bringing Jacob into his house — a verse whose own deepest partner is Gen 33:4, at eight.

And the one line Ben Sira’s list shares with another list of the fathers (Stage 2) reads differently from the other side: 1 Maccabees 2:52 reaches four with Sirach 44:20 but five with Gen 15:6 and Ps 105:31 — καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην, ‘and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’ (our literal gloss). Sirach’s Abraham line is that list’s second-closest partner, not its closest.

For each line of the roll-call (44:16–49:16), take its deepest partner and ask whether it lies in the book that tells that figure’s story. Only distinctive contacts count: a run of three words or more shared with no more than three units. The same rule is applied to the Greek (against the Greek Old Testament) and to the Hebrew (against the Masoretic Bible).

Greek: 44 lines qualify, and 10 of them land in the figure’s own book. Hebrew: 15 lines qualify, and 10 of them do. Restrict the Greek screen to the books of the Hebrew canon, so that the two are searching comparable libraries, and the Greek count is 11 of 45.

On this count the Hebrew lines, where they reach that depth at all, mostly land in their own figure’s book, and the Greek lines mostly do not — Joshua’s line in Hebrew shares five words with Joshua 1:1; in Greek its deepest partner is Nabal. Read that with four cautions. (1) The Hebrew is damaged, so many of its lines cannot reach three at all, and its rows are fewer and differently cut. (2) Greek writes its articles, prepositions and conjunctions as separate words and Hebrew mostly joins them to the next word, so a three-word Greek run is a smaller thing than a three-word Hebrew one — Greek rows qualify on runs like about your people (45:16) or and from Ephraim (47:21). (3) The count is by book, not by episode, which flatters the Greek: 4 of its 10 are in the right book but on another man — 45:16 on Moses before Pharaoh (Exod 8:5); 47:18 on Elijah at Carmel (1 Kgs 18:24); 47:21 on Hezekiah’s reign (2 Chr 31:1); 48:22 on Josiah (2 Chr 34:2). (4) ‘The book that tells the story’ is the page’s own assignment, printed in full below so that anyone can change it and recount.

Each language measured against its own Bible, side by side. No Greek word is compared with a Hebrew one; what is compared is where each column’s deepest partner lies.

Where Greek partners tie, any that stand in the book telling that figure’s story (the roll-call map’s assignment, above) are listed first; the rest follow in corpus order.

Elijah (48:10) is five words in Greek and nothing in Hebrew. MS B is damaged there, and the two words that survive at the head of its line, להשיב לב, are not the form Malachi 3:24 has, וְהֵשִׁיב לֵב־אָבוֹת — a conjunction where MS B has a preposition. Phinehas (45:23) touches his own verse, Numbers 25:13, in both languages, but not alike. In Greek the four words αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐξιλάσατο περὶ, ‘… his, and he made atonement for’ (our literal gloss), are one contact in a tie of 7 units (the table above); in Hebrew ויכפר על בני ישראל: stands in Numbers 25:13 alone, וַיְכַפֵּר עַל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל. The people on their faces (50:17) meet 1 Maccabees in Greek and Manoah and his wife in Hebrew (Judges 13:20).

All 320 Hebrew rows of 44–51 against the 23,204 verses of the Masoretic Bible (single words not counted; lacunae break a run; the manuscripts’ abbreviation of the divine name read as the divine name): 163 reach two, 32 reach three, 10 reach four, 2 reach five, and 1 reaches ten. 157 rows share no two consecutive words with any Masoretic verse. Read the divine name strictly as written and the counts at two and four fall to 157 and 9; nothing else changes.

The deepest Hebrew run in these eight chapters is in text the Greek does not have. The last line of MS B’s litany at 51:12 shares 10 consecutive words with Psalm 148:14, band 1: וַיָּרֶם קֶרֶן לְעַמּוֹ תְּהִלָּה לְכׇל־חֲסִידָיו לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עַם קְרֹבוֹ — the whole verse but its last word: MS B writes הללויה: as one word, the Masoretic text הַלְלוּ־יָהּ as two joined by a maqaf, and the run stops before it. The next deepest is Joshua’s line (five words, band 2: Joshua 1:1 and Numbers 11:28).

Read from the other side — each Masoretic verse against all 1,411 rows of the Hebrew file, every chapter and every manuscript — Psalms 148:14, Joshua 1:1, Numbers 11:28, Numbers 25:13, Judges 13:20, Jeremiah 1:10, Jeremiah 18:7, Genesis 17:5, Numbers 8:19 each find their deepest partner in one Ben Sira row and no other (band 1 every time), and it is the row this page names.

Across the 194 Greek rows of 44–51 against 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament: 192 reach two, 103 reach three, 21 reach four, and nothing reaches five. The fours are phrases like and to his seed, and in the days, in this book, of David his father. From the other side: the 21 rows touch 29 New Testament verses at four; 17 of those verses reach deeper with some other Greek Old Testament unit, and the other 12 reach four and no further — 1 of them with Sirach rows alone, the rest in a tie that includes other books.

• Sirach 48:10 → Luke 1:17 — run of ONE. Both speak of Elijah and of turning hearts: in Sirach Elijah is ordained “to turn the heart of the father unto the son” (KJV); in Luke the angel says John will go before the Lord in Elijah’s spirit and power, ἐπιστρέψαι καρδίας πατέρων ἐπὶ τέκνα, ‘to turn hearts of fathers to children’ (our literal gloss). The two share single words — three of them, the infinitive ἐπιστρέψαι among them — but never two in a row. Where Greek Sirach and Greek Malachi 3:23 both have the singular, καρδίαν πατρὸς πρὸς υἱὸν, Luke has the plural. Counted across the languages, with no word run claimed: the Masoretic Malachi 3:24 has the plural, לֵב־אָבוֹת עַל־בָּנִים (fathers … sons), and MS B’s damaged line at 48:10 has the plural for the sons, בנים. Luke 1:17 reaches one word with Greek Malachi 3:23 as well; its own deepest partner in the Greek Old Testament is Exodus 34:7, four words, band 1: πατέρων ἐπὶ τέκνα καὶ, from the visiting of the fathers’ iniquity on the children. Sirach and Malachi share five words with each other — and the four-word core stands in those two units only, and in 0 New Testament verses.
• Sirach 51:23–27 → Matthew 11:28–30 — at most TWO. Both bid the hearer come to me, both speak of a yoke and both speak of rest. 15 pairings; the deepest is πρός με (51:23 / 11:28); every other pairing shares one word. Matthew 11:30’s own deepest Greek Old Testament partner is elsewhere in Sirach — Sir 28:20, three words, ὁ γὰρ ζυγὸς, where the yoke is the tongue’s and made of iron.
• Sirach 44:16 → Hebrews 11:5 — run of ONE. Both have Enoch’s name and μετετέθη; Sirach sets three words between them, Hebrews none. Against Genesis 5:24, also one: the verb Sirach and Genesis share stands on the other side of the name.
• Sirach 49:7 → Jeremiah 1:5 — ONE; → Jeremiah 1:10 — TWO (ἐκριζοῦν καὶ). In Hebrew, MS B’s second line shares THREE with Jeremiah 1:10 and 18:7, band 2: לנתוש ולנתוץ ולהאביד. The Greek row’s own deepest run is THREE, band 19, and four of those partners are in Greek Jeremiah: Jer 26:13 (ἐν χειρὶ Ιερεμιου); Jer 38:28 (οἰκοδομεῖν καὶ καταφυτεύειν); Jer 44:2 (ἐν χειρὶ Ιερεμιου); Jer 45:7 (καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν).
• Sirach 51:12 → Romans 15:9 — FOUR, band 1, διὰ τοῦτο ἐξομολογήσομαί σοι. Romans introduces its line with καθὼς γέγραπται· (as it is written) and shares 6 words with Psalm 17:50 (18:49 in English numbering), its deepest partner anywhere in the Greek Old Testament. The Sirach row shares the psalm’s first four words too; the six-word run, after the citation formula, is with the psalm.
• Sirach 48:9 → Acts 1:11 — TWO, band 1: ὁ ἀναλημφθεὶς, the one taken up — Elijah in Sirach, Jesus in Acts. Two words; Acts 1:11’s own deepest Greek Old Testament partner is Isa 45:18, four words. Reported as the measured size of a link, not as a claim about it.

All 1,402 Greek rows of Sirach, prologue included: 1,323 reach two, 596 reach three, 74 reach four, 4 reach five, and nothing reaches six. The five-word contacts: Sir Prologue 1 → Acts 13:15 / Rom 3:21; Sir 15:17 → Rev 20:13 / Rev 20:14; Sir 33:13 → Eph 1:9; Sir 39:9 → Rev 22:4. 1 row shares no word at all: the prologue’s last, ἐννόμως βιοτεύειν.

From the other side: of the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament, 37 have their deepest Greek Old Testament partner in Sirach and nowhere else. The deepest of them reach five: Eph 1:9 → Sir 33:13; Rev 20:13 → Sir 15:17; Rev 20:14 → Sir 15:17; Rev 22:4 → Sir 39:9. 2 of the 37 fall in this page’s range: Matt 4:8 (4 words: Sir 45:26, Sir 49:5); 1 Tim 2:5 (3 words: Sir 45:1) — καὶ τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν and θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων — the devil showing the kingdoms and their glory, and the one mediator of God and men; Sirach 45:1 is Moses, “beloved of God and men” (KJV). From Sirach’s side that row’s deepest New Testament contact is 3 words in a band of 1. A short run of common words is exactly what this count is made of.

It is a set of diplomatic-style transcriptions on Hebrew Wikisource, made almost entirely by one unnamed editor, pinned here by revision (MS B ch. 44, revision 3017058; MS B ch. 45, revision 2826686; MS B ch. 46, revision 2766427; MS B ch. 47, revision 2762930; MS B ch. 48, revision 1409009; MS B ch. 49, revision 2744808; MS B ch. 50, revision 1381752; MS B ch. 51, revision 1425613; Masada ch. 44, revision 2708379; 11QPsa ch. 51, revision 1354185). It is not a critical edition, and it is quoted on this page under CC BY-SA 4.0 with that attribution.

• Wikisource itself marks the MS B pages for chapters 44, 45 and 46 ‘to be completed’ — the marginal readings there are not yet typed. Nothing on this page uses a margin.
• The Masada transcription had no second source to be checked against. The scroll is not in the Dead Sea Scrolls dataset the acquiring check used, so its 18 rows here — including the blank space where 44:16 would stand — rest on one transcription.
• MS B 51:12–20 was spot-checked by the acquiring check against Schechter and Taylor’s 1899 page images: consonantal agreement throughout, Wikisource more cautious on damaged letters. For this page three more of those page images were read by eye (the 1899 edition’s pages 19, 23 and 24: MS B 49:12–50:10 and 51:12–30). Every line-head the alphabet table uses agrees, and so does the word at 49:14 where the Greek has Enoch, כהניך. Six other words differ by a letter or a word: חרביתנו: at 49:13, where the 1899 printing has the yod after the tav; היא at 49:14, where it has a waw for the yod; ככלי at 50:9, which it begins with a beth; כתנור at 51:21, which it follows with one word more; אל at 51:23, which it ends with a yod; and מעשיכים at 51:30, which it prints without the second yod. And at 50:8, 50:10, 51:19 and 51:20 the transcription marks letters as lost that the 1899 printing reads. None of the six is in a line this page prints a run for (a whole-range count could move by one), but it is the measure of what a single transcription is: two careful readings of one manuscript, six differing words in about fifty lines, found by eye — and an eye can miss a letter. The rest of MS B in this range (44:1–49:11, 50:11–51:11) was not compared with anything.
• 11QPsa was spot-checked against a second transcription (Abegg’s, from the ETCBC Dead Sea Scrolls dataset, held on this disk for measurement only under a non-commercial licence and therefore not printed). The two differ in a few letters at 51:17–20 and agree on every initial letter this page’s alphabet table uses; the binding check re-reads it.
• Six Greek rows have no Hebrew row under the same number (46:18, 47:16, 47:25, 48:23, 49:11, 50:15). Two have their words under the neighbouring number (46:18 inside MS B 46:17; 47:25 inside 47:24, which the transcriber notes is numbered 47:25 in the Ma’agarim database). At 49:11–12 the transcriber writes הקלף כאן נקרע ואבד, ‘the parchment here is torn and lost’ (our literal gloss) — so Zerubbabel and Jeshua are not in the Hebrew held here. The other three are empty labels with no note.
• The numbering is not CATSS’s. It is checked by content above (Versification) and below (the seams).

• Any manuscript itself. No photograph is used; every Hebrew letter on the page is a transcriber’s.
• The longer Greek text-form. The KJV carries words the CATSS row lacks — among them a whole sentence at 50:29 and a clause at 47:9, 49:10 and 49:13 (the list is not exhaustive) — and the page does not trace where they come from; no file of the longer Greek is held.
• The Syriac, the Old Latin as such, and the rabbinic quotations of Ben Sira. Not held.
• Who wrote 51:13–30. The poem closes the book in the Greek, in MS B, in the KJV and in the Latin, and stands among psalms in 11QPsa. The page does not decide whether Ben Sira composed it.
• Whether the manuscripts’ absences are omissions or damage. The Masada blank space and MS B’s torn leaf are reported as the transcriber reports them. Which form of the list is older is not decided here.
• The identification of Simon, the dates of the manuscripts, and the date of the book. Reported from the commentaries; nothing on this page depends on them.
• Allusion. Every screen finds verbatim contact. A list of the fathers in Hebrews 11 that shares three small words with Ben Sira’s is not shown by that number to be unrelated, any more than a run of eight shows dependence.

• The alphabet rests on line divisions a transcriber drew. For MS B the page takes the transcription’s own dividers (a line ends at a colon; the backslash divides a line in two). For 11QPsa, which the file prints as running rows, it takes the first word of each row and, for the three letters inside rows, the one word in that row with that initial — so the two manuscripts are read by different rules. A different division would move the counts, and the tables print every word so that anyone can check. MS B’s line-heads were checked by eye against the 1899 edition and agree; the scroll’s eleven letter-words were checked by the binding check against a second transcription: ten of them are the same word there, and the ז-word at 51:18 (זמותו) is spelled differently in the second one; every initial letter agrees. The lamed is the weakest point: whether a line once began at MS B’s undivided last row before 51:21 cannot be read from either source held here.
• The roll-call map compares two unequal things. The Hebrew is fragmentary and the Greek is not; the Hebrew screen counts no single words and the Greek one does; and ‘the book that tells the story’ is the page’s own assignment. The contrast is printed with its tables, not as a conclusion.
• Recension twins in the Greek screen. The 30,348 units include two Greek texts of Joshua, Judges, Daniel, Tobit, Susanna and Bel, so a contact with one of them can be counted twice in a band. 61 of the 194 Greek rows here have a band that counts at least one verse in both texts — among them 45:23 (band 7: Judges 20:28 in both), 47:12 (band 3: Daniel 8:11 in both), 51:25 (band 2: Daniel 10:16 in both). (46:12’s two partners, Joshua B 8:18 and 8:19, are neighbouring verses of one text, not twins.) Counting each twin once would move no line into the roll-call map.
• The divine name. MS B abbreviates it; for the Hebrew screen the page reads the abbreviation as the name and prints the strict count beside it.
• The English column is quotation, not a measured parallel, and it follows its own verse divisions; the table below gives every place in these chapters where they differ from the Greek file’s.

• Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible 39).
• Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew — the edition this page would check its transcription against if it held it.
• Yadin, The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada; Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11.
• Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic — on the Praise of the Fathers as a form.
• Mulder, Simon the High Priest in Sirach 50.
• Ziegler, Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach (Göttingen) — the numbering the Hebrew file uses.
• NETS, “Sirach” — a modern English from the Greek. Not the edition quoted on this page; named as the obvious next step for a reader.

• Some things are visible only across copies. The whole alphabet of Sirach 51 cannot be seen in any one manuscript held here. When someone tells you what an ancient text says, it is fair to ask which copy, and what the other copies show.
• The witnesses disagree at the edges. The first figure of the Greek list is not in the Masada scroll; the author’s name and the high priest’s father are given differently in Greek and Hebrew; a whole litany stands in one Hebrew manuscript (MS B) and in none of the Greek, KJV or Latin held here. Not one of these differences touches the canon, and all of it is worth knowing before citing the book.
• The links measured here are small. Elijah’s return and Luke 1:17 never share two words in a row; the yoke and Matthew 11 share two; Hebrews 11 and Ben Sira’s list, three small ones. Measure before you repeat.
• A list is a way of remembering. Ben Sira begins with those who have no memorial (44:9) and then names 44 people. One concrete response: write down the names of the people who taught you the faith, and thank God for them by name this week.