Ecclesiasticus

Like the rest of the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus stands between the Old and New Testaments. Like the whole of the Books of Wisdom, it is intermediate between sacred and secular literature. In common with two other of these wisdom books, it mediates between purely Jewish thought and the spirit of the external world that gradually leavened that thought; in the case of Ecclesiasticus, what there is of external influence is, on the explicit authority of the preface, to be put down to that Alexandrian literary circle that was the great link between oriental and Western, between ancient and modern. In a yet more important sense, the book has application: so far as biblical philosophy can be presented as a thing of development, Ecclesiasticus holds in that development a middle place. Richard G. Moulton provides an English translation of Ecclesiasticus, plus an extensive introduction to the book and a valuable commentary.