יש בשת ויש בשת: הבושה הדו-ערכית בבן סירא (ד:21, מא:14-מב:8) משמעות הרעיון ורקעו ההלניסטי

The Book of Sirach includes two passages that deal with the ambivalent nature of shame: 4:21–24 and 41:14–42:8. In both, Ben Sira stresses that there are instances in which shame is good and desirable for a person, whereas there are instances in which shame is negative and deleterious to the one who experiences it. While the negative sense of shame is the common meaning in biblical Hebrew, the root of the positive sense may be traced, as this paper suggests, to the Hellenistic period. In order to understand the development that the concept of shame had undergone from the Hellenistic period onwards, this paper draws attention to the analogous ambivalent nature of shame in Greek literature. The data presented may contribute to the expanding discussion of Jewish wisdom literature from the Hellenistic period, against the background of its time and place.