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"Listen, master, to what I am saying. Rest yourself from starting quarrels with your neighbors, and if you see something evil about your friend, do not produce their slander on you...
"Acquire for yourself gold coins, and all money, but do not tell your wife where the money is, even if she is good." And with that, the alphabetical proverbs of the Alphabet of Ben...
Ben Sira's teacher is freaking out. The boy has just rattled off proverbs for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet with the confidence of a seasoned sage, and his educator can only ...
According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, the child prodigy Ben Sira mastered the entirety of human and divine knowledge in just seve...
Ben Sira's reputation for impossible feats of knowledge -- like counting every grain of wheat in a bushel at a glance -- eventually reached the court of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Bab...
Nebuchadnezzar's first question to Ben Sira is bizarre. "How does the rabbit shave her head?" The answer Ben Sira gives connects this strange question to one of the most famous enc...
Nebuchadnezzar's second challenge to Ben Sira is deceptively simple. "Count the trees in my garden." The seven-year-old doesn't even need to look. "Thirty types of trees are in you...
Nebuchadnezzar doesn't believe Ben Sira actually knows what's in his garden. So the king proposes a test. He'll blindfold the boy, march his army past in separate battalions, and B...
Nebuchadnezzar wants to kill Ben Sira. He's just not very subtle about it. "I have a friend I hate," the king says, barely disguising his intentions, "and I want to kill him with f...
