Ἰσοδυναμέω and Translation into Greek in Sirach

The meaning of the verb ἰσοδυναμέω in the prologue to the translation of Ben Sira has often been thought to concern semantic transfer. That is, words translated into Greek do not mean the same as their Hebrew counterparts. In an earlier article, I made some suggestions about how to read the prologue as a whole. In an article that partially responded to my earlier publication, Dries De Crom examined the root ἰσοδυναμ* in texts from the fourth century BCE to the second century CE, and demonstrated that this verb does not refer to semantic adequacy. In this article I examine some of the texts discussed by De Crom in greater detail in an attempt to bring additional specificity to the meaning of this verb in Sirach, concluding that in using the verb in a context of interlinguistic exchange, the translator created a new meaning, to have an equal rhetorical/aesthetic effect.