Book excerpt: The apocryphal/deuterocanonical Wisdom of Ben Sira, written towards the beginning of the second century BCE, speaks more about friendship than any other book of the Hebrew Bible. Revising his 1996 doctoral dissertation for the Catholic University of America, Corley describes the seven major pericopes in which the sage, probably Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, treats friendship. He also places the treatise in the historical and political context of second-temple Israel. Distributed by the Society of Biblical Literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR