Problems of textual criticism and interpretation in the “Hymn of the fathers” based on the example of the image of king David (Sir. 47:1-13)

The article is devoted to the image of King David in the book of the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach (47: 1-13). This passage contains many theological and textological problems that have been little studied in Russian scholarship. The article examines the composition of the passage and its comparison with parallel passages from the books of Kings and Chronicles. The article shows the substantive originality of the studied text, the intentions of the author of the book and his understanding of the image of David. Text critical difficulties are investigated on the material of the main ancient versions, the reasons for textual discrepancies due to the difference in languages and different translation strategies are shown. Due to the fact that the Hebrew text of the book and, in particular, this passage has come down to us in a damaged form, not all problems of the text can be solved unequivocally, but the article offers hypotheses for its reconstruction. The author also shows the literary originality of the passage, in which poetic parallelism plays an important role. Much attention is paid to the analysis of composition at the micro level: which expressions and images were directly or partially borrowed from the Bible, and which belong directly to the author of the book of Sirach. Theological topics are also discussed, such as the sins of David (which ones were important for the authors of Sirach and parallel passages), and whether there are eschatological and messianic themes in this passage. As a result, the text under study can be called unique and of great interest for modern biblical studies both in theological and philological terms.