Additional Questions

The so-called Additional Questions (She’elot nosafot), part of the early medieval corpus of Ben Sira literature, tells of a series of twenty-two satirical (and heretical) questions that Ben Sira supposedly posed to Nebuchadnezzar. Scholars debate whether the author of the Ben Sira narrative presented in The Tale of Ben Sira (Toledot Ben Sira) composed this text as well. These twenty-two questions correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The unknown author of this entertaining text was clearly well educated in biblical and rabbinic traditions and often plays on these texts in mocking and subversive tones.