Date of composition

• c. 130 BC. Written in Greek by the grandson of the author of Ecclesiasticus above.

Type of books

• Deuterocanonical (means "secondary or less sacred scripture") for Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and some Anglican and Lutheran churches.
• Apocrypha for most Protestant churches.

Length

• 1 1/2 double-spaced pages.

Summary

• The grandson of the author of Ecclesiasticus/Sirach wrote a foreword describing Sirach's/Ecclesiaticus's author and other valuable information.

Noteworthy from the book

• The first sentence starts this way: "The wisdom of many great things has been revealed to us through the law, and the prophets, and the other writings." This is an early mention of the later threefold division of the Hebrew Bible.
• He writes that his grandfather wanted to write a book about wisdom, which led to Ecclesiasticus.
• The author mentioned the difficulty in adequately translating from one language to another. He states this as his reason for wanting to translate his grandfather's book into Greek, that it would be correctly translated.