Friendship in Ben Sira

Configurations of friendship in the second century BCE wisdom book Ben Sira are considered and compared to the representation of friendship in earlier biblical texts. In addition, the possibility of Greek influence on Ben Sira’s ideas about friendship is explored.

Friendship in Narrative

This chapter considers the representation of a number of friendships in biblical narrative, including those of Ruth and Naomi, Jonathan and David, Job and his three comforters, Jephthah’s daughter and her companions, and Amnon and Jonadab.

Conclusion

I begin my concluding remarks with a comparison of the representation of friendship in a number of distinct biblical literary types. Friendship is portrayed in the Psalms, particularly those of individual complaint; in legal materials such as Deut 13:7; in non-psalmic poetic texts such as “David’s Lament over Saul and Jonathan” (2 Sam 1:26); in prophetic passages such as Jer 9:3 and Mic 7:5–6; in prose narratives such as the stories of David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Job and his three comforters, Amnon, Absalom, and Jonadab, and Jephthah’s daughter and her companions; in pre-Hellenistic wisdom collections—both traditional and skeptical—such as Proverbs and the poetic sections of the book of Job; and in the Hellenistic wisdom collection Ben Sira. Friendship is represented both in biblical poetry and in prose narrative. Some of the texts of interest to us may be dated with confidence (e.g., Ben Sira, to the second century BCE), but most are difficult if not impossible to date. Ben Sira is not infrequently dependent on earlier biblical texts (both wisdom—traditional and skeptical—and nonwisdom); other texts in our purview display little or no evidence of dependence on earlier materials. Our texts sometimes share vocabulary, idioms, and ideas; sometimes they do not. The friends portrayed range from flat, one-dimensional types without any individuality to complex, strikingly singular people who may be conflicted and whose behavior is not necessarily consistent or predictable. We can chart the characteristics of friendship shared in common across literary types and bring the differences among those types into relief. In order to get a sense of the configurations of vocabulary, idioms, ideas, and portrayals pertaining to friendship across our sources, I focus my discussion on several important ideas about friends, with reference...

Failed Friendship

This chapter explores how failed friendship is portrayed in biblical sources. It includes an examination of the topos of the disloyal friend in the psalms of individual complaint and explores the causes of failed friendship.

Introduction

What is friendship? At first blush, the answer seems obvious: Friendship is a voluntary association between people who enjoy one another’s company and care, at least to some degree, about one another’s welfare. But this definition, which would probably elicit few objections from most present-day Europeans and North Americans, does not address a number of contested issues in contemporary Western friendship. For example, is it possible for men and women to be friends? Must friends be peers in every respect, or is there room for age differences, or inequality of income, social status, or power? Can parents and children be friends? Might sexual relations play a role in friendship? Does friendship necessarily involve emotional intimacy? Are there contrasting male and female, gay and straight, working-class and middle-class friendship patterns? Each of these questions would very likely stimulate debate among the people I know, and the answers would probably depend on some combination of the generation, gender, sexual orientation, class, and cultural background of the respondent. Apart from agreeing that friends associate voluntarily, like one another, and take an interest in one another’s well-being, there might not be much consensus among my friends, neighbors, colleagues, students, and family members about the contested aspects of friendship that I have mentioned. Were we to go beyond speculation about the views of the people I encounter in my life, and conduct research on the beliefs about friendship held by a larger population of contemporary North Americans or other Westerners, I would expect to find even less agreement about what constitutes friendship. In short, friendship as we know it in contemporary Europe and North America is shaped by a variety of socio-cultural influences and ...

Friends and Family

This chapter explores the relationship between friends and family members, including shared expectations, common obligations of kin and friends, and differing expectations and responsibilities. It considers the evidence for gradations of friendship. The friend emerges as a distinct social actor through comparison with family members.