{"id":3343,"date":"2019-05-20T16:06:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T16:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3343"},"modified":"2019-05-20T16:07:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T16:07:59","slug":"sirach-speak-old-man-but-dont-interrupt-the-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2019\/05\/20\/sirach-speak-old-man-but-dont-interrupt-the-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Sirach: Speak, Old Man, But Don’t Interrupt the Music!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The Symposium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In recent months I’ve assigned myself a project of reading through the \u201cApocrypha.\u201d\u00a0 These are texts included in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) or Vulgate (Latin) Bibles but not in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament.\u00a0 These books are not considered part of the Biblical canon by Protestants, but some of them are considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church or by different parts of the Orthodox churches, and portions of some of the Apocryphal texts are used in the Anglican lectionary.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are all sorts of interesting and contentious historical, theological, and polemical reasons why different parts of the church have included or excluded the Apocryphal books from the canon.\u00a0 (One relates to Purgatory \u2013 the Reformers didn\u2019t like that 2 Maccabees 12:43-46<\/a> supports the idea of Purgatory, so they removed it from the canon!) What\u2019s interesting me in my study, however, is the light these books shed on Jewish life, wisdom, and practices during the \u201cSecond Temple\u201d period \u2013 that is, after the reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Jewish Exiles following the destruction of the First Temple (Solomon\u2019s Temple) during the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE.\u00a0 The New Testament Gospels are set in the Second Temple period after Herod the Great had substantially expanded this reconstruction in about 20 CE.\u00a0 To understand Jesus the Jewish prophet, it\u2019s important to understand something about the social, theological, and political hothouse of the Second Temple period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently I was particularly captivated by a slice of life in the book of Sirach, which was probably composed as a teaching manual by a Jewish sage who ran a school in Palestine in the early second century BCE, that is, about two hundred years before Jesus began his ministry.\u00a0 Sirach 31-32<\/a> gives instructions for how to behave at a banquet \u2013 probably a kind of literary feast modeled after the Greek Symposium, in which the guests were expected to offer learned opinions on questions of the day, as informed by liberal quantities of wine.\u00a0 Younger men (Sirach\u2019s society was patriarchal), Sirach said, should speak cautiously and respectfully \u2013 not bad advice in any age.\u00a0 But Sirach\u2019s advice for older men is particularly amusing:\u00a0 “Speak old man, you’ve earned the right — but speak truthfully, and don’t interrupt the music!” Sirach 32:3<\/a> (my loose translation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of me knows that Jesus-as-fiery-prophet disapproved of the Hellenistic syncretism between Jewish and Epicurean philosophies represented in Sirach\u2019s easy approval of the Symposium.\u00a0 \u201cEat, drink, and be merry\u201d as a complete philosophy of life, after all, was something Jesus called foolish.\u00a0 (Luke 12:13-21<\/a>).\u00a0 But Jesus the holy fool also confounded the self-righteousness of the Pharisees \u2013 a strict party that developed in response to the more liberal Hellenistic groups \u2013 and used his Divine power to make sure the good wine didn\u2019t run out at a wedding (John 2:1-11). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I like to think Jesus would have approved of Sirach\u2019s\nadvice to those of us who have earned some right to speak through age and\nexperience.  Our favored place at the\ntable is deserved, and we have something important to say (Millennials, are you\nlistening?!  Bueller?  Anyone?). \nBut no one must listen unless we speak truth born of that hard-won\nwisdom.  And, no one should interrupt the\nmusic, not even us!  The music, after\nall, is something we all enjoy together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\nImage: By Nikias Painter – Marie-Lan Nguyen<\/a> (User:Jastrow), 2008-05-02, CC BY 2.5\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent months I’ve assigned myself a project of reading through the \u201cApocrypha.\u201d\u00a0 These are texts included in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) or Vulgate (Latin) Bibles but not in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament.\u00a0 These books are not considered part of the Biblical canon by Protestants, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-RV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3346,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions\/3346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}