From: 

Rabbinic Fantasies.  By: David Stern & Mark Jay Mirsky.

The Alphabet of Ben Sira Introduction

"The Alphabet of Ben Sira," an anonymous medieval work, has been preserved in several versions, which differ in both major and minor details.  A composite text, its core is a series of twenty-two aphorisms arranged in alphabetical order and organized into a rough narrative.  In most versions the alphabet is preceded by the fantastic and provocative story of the conception and birth of Ben Sira and his early education.  The final section of the work deals with Ben Sira in the court of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and consists of another series of twenty-two episodes.  These comprise the various ordeals that Nebuchadnezzar sets for Ben Sira and the stories, many of them fables, that Ben Sira tells Nebuchadnezzar in answer to various questions posed by the king. 

Based on internal evidence, "The Alphabet" was composed in one of the Muslim countries sometime during the geonic period, possibly as early as the eighth century.  The fact that this work originated in a non-Christian country strongly militates against the theory that the account of the miraculous birth and prodigious childhood of Ben Sira was intended as a parody on the life and childhood of Jesus as found in the Infancy Gospels or as found in their Jewish version, Toledot Yeshu.  The Jews of a non-Christian country had neither the need of nor the interest in such an enterprise.  So we must look for its source elsewhere. 

"The Alphabet" is composed in the style of an aggadic midrash and treats various biblical characters and rabbinic motifs irreverently, at times almost to the point of inanity.  This fact has led some scholars to conclude that the work was composed as an antirabbinic tract intended to disparage the genre of aggadah.  In fact, parts of "The Alphabet" clearly parody not merely the genre of aggadah but specific passages in the Talmud and midrash.  Indeed, "The Alphabet" may be one of the earliest literary parodies in Hebrew literature, a kind of academic burlesque - perhaps even entertainment for rabbinic scholars themselves - that included vulgarities, absurdities, and the irreverent treatment of acknowledged sancta.

"The Alphabet" was read as popular entertainment in most rabbinic communities throughout the Middle Ages.  In some quarters, however, it enjoyed an unusual respectability.  The famous thirteenth-century tosafist Rabbi Peretz of Corbeil, France, used the account of Ben Sira's conception as a source to demonstrate the halakhic permissibility of artificially inseminating a woman with her father's sperm (as cited by the Taz in the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 195:7).  Admittedly, this case was exceptional.  As a rule, the work was treated in high rabbinic circles with deprecatory neglect - even while some scholars had no objections to savoring its contents.

The present translation is based upon the version first published by M. Steinschneider and reprinted in Eisenstein's Otsar Midrashim (1915; reprint, Israel: no publisher, 1969), 1:43-50.

The Alphabet of Ben Sira excerpt

WR's Note:  I have only included the passage specific to Lilith. The book contains the entire work.