The Jewish sage and author Jesus ben Sira (born ca. 170 BC), or Sirach, is the reputed author of the wisdom book commonly called Ecclesiasticus.

According to the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, the author's full name was Simeon ben Jeshua ben Elazar ben Sira. The Greek text, however, and most of the Christian sources refer to him as Jesus, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Joshua. In the prologue to his Greek version, Jesus Ben Sira's grandson dates his translation from the Hebrew into Greek at a time calculated to be 132-131 B.C. From this it is surmised that the original Hebrew text was written about 4 decades earlier, making it the oldest book of the Apocrypha. In Hebrew the volume was called Hokhmat Ben Sira (The Wisdom of Ben Sira). In Greek the work is known as Ecclesiasticus (The Preacher). It is similar in form and content to...