STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: OLD TESTAMENT COMPARISON
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: OLD TESTAMENT COMPARISON
Let’s also look at things from the perspective of the Old Testament. Sirach and the Book of Wisdom are part of a seven-Book division of the Bible called the Poetic Books, or Sapiential Books, or Wisdom Books (that is, they would be part of the Bible if they were not Apocrypha, of course). Accordingly, we are able to compare them to the most similar Old Testament Books:[1]
| Poetic Book | KJV NT Cross References | Verses | References /100 Verses |
| Wisdom | 40 | 436 | 9.2 |
| Psalms | 188 | 2526 | 7.4 |
| Proverbs | 65 | 915 | 7.1 |
| Sirach | 64 | 1372 | 4.7 |
| Job | 34 | 1068 | 3.2 |
| Ecclesiastes | 7 | 222 | 3.2 |
| Song of Songs | 1 | 117 | 0.9 |
Sirach is respectably in the middle on frequency of KJV references and is very nearly the second most referenced overall (64, vs. Proverbs at 65). It is even referenced much more than the bottom three Poetic Books combined; in fact, it is referenced almost 10 times as much as Ecclesiastes and 64 times as much as the Song of Songs.[2]
But the truly shocking result is that the King James Version cross-references the Book of Wisdom with the New Testament 24% more often (per verse) than any “canonical” Poetic Book—and three times as often as two of the Books, and 10 times as often as one of the Books.
It is one thing for a non-canonical book to be referenced a time or two, but the verses of the Book of Wisdom are cross-referenced considerably more often than any comparable canonical book—and many times more often than some of them, according to the KJV.
So speaketh the King James Version data set.
[1] Citations by size seems to be the main metric that the scholars use. E.g., Kruger: “… the degree to which books were used, and not just how they were cited, reveals even more about their standing in early Christian communities. When it comes to how often books were cited, proportional to their size, it quickly becomes clear that …” p. 224-225. John Barton in his book The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon also uses the same methodology and further cites to the same methodology in a German language book (by Franz Stuhlhofer) that has not been translated into English. Barton also notes that such surveys must focus on the type of book, notably “the historical books, for example, never seem to have been in the least controversial, yet neither Jews nor Christians ever used them much in their writings … in much the same position as Acts for early Christian writers: undoubtedly authoritative, scarcely ever used…” p. 23-24. (We will have reason to remember that historical Books are cited so much less when we discuss the Apocrypha that are historical Books: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees).
[2] Song of Songs 4:7 (“Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee”) is cross-referenced to Ephesians 5:27 (“That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish”). It is not the strongest reference, and that is all the KJV considered noteworthy for the entire canonical Book.
