disavow an old friend." "Thou mayest have sixty counselors, but do not give up thy own opinion" "He that was first satisfied and then hungry will offer thee his hand; but not he that was first hungry and then satisfied." The second Alphabet The 22 Hebrew proverbs are quite different in character from the Aramaic ones, and much more recent. Half of the proverbs are borrowed from the Talmud, and are only a pretext for the presentation of a number of legends surrounding Ben Sira. Ben Sira is presented as the son of Jeremiah, born to the prophet's own daughter who dipped in a mikveh into which Jeremiah was previously forced to lay seed. Ben Sira's fame reached Nebuchadnezzar II, who called him to his court. Nebuchadnezzar sets forth various ordeals for Ben Sira, who responds with 22 stories. Editions Salonica, 1514, two known surviving copies Constantinople, 1519, one known complete copy in the British Library, a defective one at the Bodleian, and another defective one in Basel. Venice, 1544, reprinted by Steinschneider, 1854; most later editions are based on this one. References Sources Eisenstein, J.D., Alpha Beta Ben Sira, in: Otsar Midrashim vol. 1 (1915). Steinschneider, Moritz Alphabeticum Syracidis, Berlin (1854). Steinschneider, Moritz Alphabeticum Syracidis utrumque, cum expositione antiqua (narrationes et fabulas continente), Berlin (1858). David Stern, Mark Jay Mirsky (eds.), Rabbinic Fantasies : Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature, Yale Judaica Series (1998). Taylor, C., The Alphabet of Ben Sira, in: JQR 17 (1904/05) 238-239. Taylor, C., The Alphabet of Ben Sira, in: Journal of Philology 30 (1907) 95-132. Tobias Lachs, Samuel, The Alphabet of Ben Sira, Gratz College Annual of Jewish Studies 11 (1973), 9-28. External links 1st-millennium books Alphabet of Ben-Sira, The Occult texts Lilith