01_Biblica_1_F_Gregory_Layout 1 13/11/12 11:28 Pagina 338 338 BRADLEY C. GREGORY sically harmless “Freudian slips” 39. In each case where Ben Sira speaks of a slip of the tongue he is speaking of something said coher- ently and intelligibly that results in significant social damage. In terms of Ben Sira’s description of some speech errors as “slips of the tongue”, he appears to extrapolate from more general imagery found in Psalms and Proverbs in conformity to conceptions found in con- temporary Hellenistic and Egyptian Demotic texts (similarly, 1QS). In synthesizing Ben Sira’s teaching on slips of the tongue it is important to recognize that its absence from earlier books like Proverbs is surely not indicative of experience, as though the sages responsible for Proverbs were unaware of the kinds of situations that Ben Sira has labeled “slips” of the tongue. It is safe to presume that this phenomenon is common to human experience (which Ben Sira himself acknowledges as universal in 19,16). What has likely changed, therefore, is not the reality of the phenomenon, but the conceptualization of it. Proverbs speaks of rash speech and mis- takes than ensnare someone, but these are coordinated with fool- ishness and wickedness. Whether such mistakes are unintentional or accidental is evidently not germane to their characterization, since the more fundamental issue is a lack of discipline. On one level this remains unchanged in Ben Sira since he con- sistently views discipline or the lack thereof as the key factor in committing a slip of the tongue. In 20,18 it is the wicked who slip with their tongues, and in 23,14 the slip occurs from habituation in sinful speech. However, a more nuanced picture emerges when 19,16 and 28,26 are considered. In the former the unintentional na- ture of the speech error appears to mitigate its culpability. Ben Sira appeals to the universality of slips of the tongue as the ground for treating such speech errors with more compassion than brazen speech sins. In 28,26 it is possible that some slips are not necessar- ily culpable at all, though they can still be quite dangerous in the hands of an enemy. Ben Sira’s own experience alerted him to the need for extra vigilance to avoid slips in speaking, irrespective of the moral quality of a slip’s content. For those in the aristocracy, such as Ben Sira, the social and political consequences of speech errors and the recognized universality of slips of the tongue present a potent threat and necessitated a strong emphasis on the need to 39 An engaging historical study of these kinds of slips is M. ERARD, Um ... : Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean (New York 2007).