Fairy Tale Spotlight: Ecclesiasticus [Book Review]

"Ecclesiasticus" is a book found within the "Douay-Rheims Bible," which is one of the Catholic Bibles. It was written by a man named Jesus who was the son of a man named Sirach. This is not to be confused with Jesus Christ of the New Testament. The names are simply the same, but the men are different.

Right off the bat, this book was a weird one. It had a prologue that was not broken down onto chapter and verse. The prologue was about its translation, and I did not find it particularly interesting. It made some remark about it not sounding as good as if it was in the Hebrew tongue. Whatever.

So... this is a long book. Very long. It took me about 4 hours to read, but because of my Bible reading schedule, it killed the better part of a month. After going from one end to the other, I rather feel that the book is a bit redundant to be included in the Bible at all. That is not to say that it is missing good material, but that much of the material can already be found in many other places in the Bible, namely Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and much of the epistles of the New Testament.

"Ecclesiasticus" is a big, fat book with advice. It covers almost every topic. It's all there, but like I said, this is all stuff that is found in many other places. But there are a few interesting bits and pieces I should mention. The author, Jesus, really likes wine. Like, it brings him a lot of happiness. Now, he isn't getting drunk off of it, for that would be a bad thing. But he pretty much heavily encourages you to drink it to bring you some kind of joy. To be honest, I've drunk wine before, and it didn't bring me anything of the sort. Even though the talk against gluttony is here, I still think this is more of this man's opinion on wine than anything else.

The book does seem to include a small prophecy of Jesus Christ in one of the chapters. It's probably the most original part of the whole book. The rest of it is simple advice and concludes with praises for various saints that have lived up to that point. I rather liked the latter selections. And also, where he gave much praise to Solomon for his wisdom, he still rebukes the man for falling into the very behaviors he spoke against. Good stuff.

All said, I'm not sure I needed four hours of this. It was boring, not because it wasn't interesting, but because I had gone over this stuff several times before. It was like back when I had to read the dimensions of the temple over and over again. It's redundant and therefore boring.

I wouldn't call the book bad. If its the only thing you read, then you're getting a lot of good advice, but do be clear that I think some of it is tainted with personal opinion. I would not at all say that this was inspired by the Holy Spirit, canon or not. I think this man is simply a good follower of God, and he wanted to preach about it. And he did. And it was good. But I have no reason to ever come back to this one again.

Read "Ecclesiasticus" only if you are a completionist like me. If you just want to know the material, the rest of the Bible will serve you just as well. Aside from that, I don't really recommend going through the trouble.

This blog was written on April 27, 2022.

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