ECCLESIASTICUS OR THE WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH With and Introduction by C. Lewis Hind, Illustrated by Violet Brunton.

First Edition. Printed in handsome type with large decorated tailpieces in black and 16 full-page tissue guarded colourplates all by Violet Brunton. The tissue guards are all captioned. Royal 8vo, very handsomely bound in the white cloth, gilt lettered and decorated on the spine, the upper cover pictorially decorated and lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, the others untrimmed. xviii, [2], 165 pp. A pleasing and handsome copy, very well preserved, the binding tight and strong with just minimal evidence of age or use, the gilt bright and the white cloth in very pleasant condition. IMPORTANT AND BEAUTIFUL FIRST EDITION FROM JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD AND THE PRESS AT OXFORD. Beautifully printed and bound, with John Johnson's fine press work. The Book of Sirach, also known as The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus son of Eleazar, or Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish literary work originally written in Biblical Hebrew. The longest extant wisdom book from antiquity, it consists of ethical teachings, written by Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira (Ben Sira), a Hellenistic Jewish scribe of the Second Temple period.[ The text was written sometime between 196 and 175 BCE, and Ben Sira's grandson translated the text into Koine Greek and added a prologue sometime around 117 BCE. The prologue is generally considered to be the earliest witness to a tripartite canon of the books of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the text and its prologue can be so precisely dated has profound implications for the development of the Hebrew Bible canon. Although the Book of Sirach is not included in the Hebrew Bible, and therefore not considered scripture in Judaism, it is included in the Septuagint and the Old Testament of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In the Protestant traditions, historically, and still in continuation today in Lutheranism and Anglicanism, the Book of Sirach is an intertestamental text found in the Apocrypha, though it is regarded as noncanonical. This John Lane Bodley Head edition is very readable, decorated beautifully and presented handsomely. Violet Ella Evelyn Brunton (October 1878 – 1951), also known as Victor du Lac, was an English sculptor, painter, and illustrator. She was educated at the the Royal College of Art in London. During the 1920s, Brunton contributed illustrations to a number of books, including two volumes of fairy tales, edited by Romer Wilson, the Ecclesiasticus as presented here, and a number of other works. In her oil paintings, she tended towards classical and mythological subjects. She exhibited work at the Royal Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute, the Royal Society of Miniature Painters (to which she was elected in 1925), and elsewhere. Charles Lewis Hind (1862–1927) was a British journalist, writer, editor, art critic and art historian. He served as the deputy editor of The Art Journal (1887–92) and the Pall Mall Budget. In 1893, he co-founded The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art. Three years later, Hind became the editor of The Academy and, after it merged with Literature, he continued with the editorship of The Academy and Literature, retiring in 1903.…