I, 1-2), to the Septuagint version of the book (produced between 260 and 130 B.C.), in which the disputed prophecies are already found, and to the Greek translation of the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, which distinctly refers to Isaiah as the comforter of those that mourned in Zion (Eccles.
The Proverbs of Jesus, the son of Sirach (c. 200 B.C.), which form now the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, were translated into Greek by the grandson of the author at about 130 B.C.; and in the preface prefixed by him to his translation he speaks of " the law, and the prophets, and the other books of our fathers," and again of " the law, and the prophets, and the rest of the books," expressions which point naturally to the same threefold division which was afterwards universally recognized by the Jews.
That the interval which elapsed before the Prophets and the Hagiographa were also translated was no great one is shown by the prologue to Sirach which speaks of " the Law, the Prophets and the rest of the books," as already current in a translation by 132 B.C. The date at which the various books were combined into a single work is not known, but the existence of the Septuagint as a whole may be assumed for the 1st century A.D., at which period the Greek version was universally accepted by the Jews of the Dispersion as Scripture, and from them passed on to the Christian Church.
The hypothesis (Schlatter, Das neugefundene hebrdische Stuck des Sirach) that it was from Aristobulus that the philosophy of Ecclesiasticus was derived is not generally accepted.
The Latin word ecclesiasticus is, properly speaking, not a name, but an epithet meaning "churchly," so that it would serve as a designation of any book which was read in church or received ecclesiastical sanction, but in practice Ecclesiasticus has become a by-name for the Wisdom of Sirach.