Das Verständnis des Todes bei Ben Sira1

On the background and within the framework of the traditional Israelite-Jewish anthropology Ben Sira advises his pupils and readers to accept death as a fate and to draw the consequences of the fact that human beings have no other life than the present one. [...]we may understand Ben Sira as a representative of Judaism as a religion of reason in a transitional age, even if we would credit to his unnamed opponents that they had some idea about the transcendent mystery of life. A Tradition Historical Enquiry into the Relation of Law, Wisdom, and Ethics, WUNT Il/16, Tübingen 1985, 69-92; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament. A Comparative Literary and Conceptional Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and Judgment, SBL Early Judaism and Its Literature 8, Atlanta/Georgia 1995 vorgelegt.