© JAMES K. AITKEN, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15685330-12341402 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. Vetus Testamentum 70 (2020) 521–552 brill.com/vt Vetus Testamentum Homeric Rewriting in Greek Sirach James K. Aitken Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge jka12@cam.ac.uk Abstract It has been recognized in recent scholarship that the Greek translation of Sirach is subtle in its use of word-play and inner-Greek allusion. One such case, the story of the wandering man in Sir (31)34:9–13, can be shown to be a narration of two types of person, the one who wanders for positive learning and the one who errs and is in danger of death. It is thus not the personal experience of the author who has the free- dom to travel in the new Hellenistic empires, but a moral tale modelled upon the two types of Odysseus that developed in the Greek tradition. This demonstrates the craft- ing of the source by the translator on the discourse level and hints at his educational background. It also has consequences for the larger structure of the unit in Sirach and further undermines the idea of a personal biography of Ben Sira. Keywords Sirach – Septuagint – Homer – Odysseus – travel 1 Introduction Greek Sirach has been poorly served by its interpreters. Its consistent transla- tion technique has led to its being largely ignored for the contribution it can make to translation studies and for the important place it occupies in the histo- ry of Septuagint studies. Thackeray set the agenda by classifying the translation as “indifferent Greek,”1 conflating translation technique with Greek register. 1  Henry St.-J. Thackeray, Introduction, Orthography and Accidence. Vol. 1 of A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), § 2. Downloaded from Brill.com02/15/2022 07:31:40PM via free access