Ben Sira - His Name

His Name

The author's name may have been Shimon (Simon), son of Yeshua (Jesus/Joshua), son of Eleazar, son of Sira.

In the Greek text, the author is called "Jesus the son of Sirach of Jerusalem." (50.27) "Jesus" is the Anglicized form of the Greek name Ἰησοῦς, the equivalent of the Aramaic Yeshua, derived from the older Masoretic Hebrew Yehoshua`.

The copy owned by Saadia Gaon, the prominent rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and exegete of the 10th Century CE, had the reading "Shim`on, son of Yeshua`, son of El`azar ben Sira"; and a similar reading occurs in the Hebrew manuscript B. M.Z. Segal, in his commentary on Ben Sira, concluded that long form with Shim`on should be accepted as original and suggested that the common naming of the book "Ben Sira" is because so many people were named Shim`on at the end of the Second Temple, people often used the 'family' name without Shim`on.

The surname Sira may mean 'thorn', 'white of the eye' (Mishnaic Hebrew), or 'boat' . Sira could also be an Aramaicized form of a family name ha-qots "the thorn" (Ezra 2:51). The Greek form, Sirach, adds the letter chi similar to Hakel-dama-ch in Acts 1:19.