Various Attempts at Producing a Ben Sira Polyglo

After a clarification of terminology, this article offers a brief history of how multilingual texts have been presented, and introduces some famous polyglots dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The book of Ben Sira had been included in these polyglots, but the Hebrew text first became available through the discovery of the Genizah manuscripts in Cairo in 1896. Cowley - Neubauer (1897) and Vattioni (1968) initiated work on a polyglot presentation. Within Friedrich Reiterer’s FWF research project at Salzburg, the preparation of a Ben Sira polyglot was undertaken as part of the production of a synoptic presentation of verse numbers for multiple Ben Sira editions (Zählsynopse). This polyglot, including the new discoveries of Hebrew Ben Sira manuscripts, is now being completed by Egger-Wenzel and will be published in due course.