by
Damien F. Mackey
Part One:
Refreshing our minds about
Ahikar
Tobit
tells us that this Ahikar was the son of his brother Anael (Tobit 1:21, 22,
CEB).
First of all, who was Ahikar?
Previously I have written
about this fascinating character of Bible and legend:
Ahikar’s Importance
Biblical
scholars could well benefit from knowing more about AHIKAR (or Ahiqar/Akhikar),
the Rabshakeh of Sennacherib, Great King of Assyria (c. 700 BC,
conventional dating), and who was retained in power by Esarhaddon (Gk. Sacherdonos)
(Tobit 1:22).
This Ahikar … was
a vitally important eye-witness to some of the most extraordinary events of Old
Testament history.
Ahikar was, at
the very least …:
1. a key link between the Book of Judith and those other books, Kings,
Chronicles and Isaiah [KCI] that describe Sennacherib’s rise to prominence and
highly successful first major invasion of Israel (historically his 3rd
campaign), and then
2. Sennacherib’s second major invasion of Israel and subsequent
disastrous defeat there; and he was
3. an eyewitness in the east, as Tobit’s own nephew, to neo-Assyrian events as
narrated in the Book of Tobit.
May I, then (based
on my research into historical revision), sketch Ahikar’s astounding
life by knitting together the various threads about him that one may glean from
KCI, Tobit, Judith, secular history and legends. I shall be using for him the
better known name of Ahikar, even though I find him named in the Book
of Judith (and also in the Vulgate version of Tobit) as Achior,
presumably, “son of light” (and as Achiacharus in the Septuagint).
Here is
Ahikar:
His
Israelite Beginnings
Tobit tells us
that this Ahikar was the son of his brother Anael (Tobit 1:21, 22, CEB):
Within forty days Sennacherib was
killed by two of his sons, who escaped to the mountains of Ararat. His son
Esarhaddon became king in his place. He hired Ahikar, my brother Hanael’s son,
to be in charge of all the financial accounts of his kingdom and all the king’s
treasury records.
Ahikar petitioned the king on my
behalf, and I returned to Nineveh. Ahikar had been the chief officer, the
keeper of the ring with the royal seal, the auditor of accounts, and the keeper
of financial records under Assyria’s King Sennacherib. And Esarhaddon promoted
him to be second in charge after himself. Ahikar was my nephew and one of my
family.
Ahikar, nephew
of Tobit, was therefore the cousin of the latter’s son, Tobias, whom I have
identified, in his mature age, as the holy Job. See my article:
Presumably
then Ahikar had, just like Tobit and his son, Tobias, belonged to the tribe of
Naphthali (cf. Tobit 1:1); though he was possibly, unlike the Tobiads, amongst
the majority of his clan who had gone over to Baal worship.
Ahikar may thus
initially have been a scoffer (1:4) and a blasphemer.
Tobit tells us
about his tribe’s apostasy (1:4-5):
When I was young, I lived in
northern Israel. All the tribes in Israel were supposed to offer sacrifices in
Jerusalem. It was the one city that God had chosen from among all the Israelite
cities as the place where his Temple was to be built for his holy and eternal
home. But my entire tribe of Naphtali rejected the city of Jerusalem and the
kings descended from David. Like everyone else in this tribe, my own family
used to go to the city of Dan in the mountains of northern Galilee to offer
sacrifices to the gold bull-calf which King Jeroboam of Israel had set up
there.
This was still
the unfortunate situation during the early reign of the great king Hezekiah of
Judah (2 Chronicles 30: 1, 10): “And Hezekiah sent letters to all Israel and
Judah … to come to Jerusalem … and keep the Passover …. So the posts passed
from city to city through the country of Ephraim … but they laughed them to
scorn …”.
Whilst Tobit
and his family, and Ahikar’s presumably also, were taken into captivity during
the reign of “King Shalmaneser” [V] (Tobit 1:2), the northern kingdom of
Samaria went later. Samaria, due to her apostasy, was taken captive in 722 BC
(conventional dating) by Sargon II of Assyria, whom I have actually equated
with Sennacherib:
As
Sennacherib’s Cupbearer-in-Chief (Rabshakeh)
Ahikar’s rapid
rise to high office in the kingdom of Assyria may have been due in part to the
prestige that his uncle had enjoyed there; because Tobit tells us that he
himself was, for the duration of the reign of “Shalmaneser … the king’s
purveyor”, even entrusted with large sums of money (1:14): “And I [Tobit] went
into Media, and left in trust with Gabael, the brother of Gabrias, at Rages a
city of Media ten talents of silver”. …. This is apparently something like $1.2
million dollars!
….
Sennacherib’s
description of his official, Bel-ibni, who he said had “grown up in my palace
like a young puppy” [as quoted by G. Roux, Iraq, p. 321], may have been
equally applicable to Ahikar. The highly talented Ahikar, rising quickly
through the ranks, attained to Rabshakeh (thought
[by some] to equate to Cup-bearer or Vizier).
Whatever the
exact circumstances of Ahikar’s worldly success, the young man seems to have
enjoyed a rise to power quite as speedy as that later on experienced by the
prophet Daniel in Babylon; the latter trusting wholeheartedly in his God,
whereas Ahikar may possibly have, at first, depended upon his own powers.
{Though Tobit put in a good word for his nephew when he recalled that “Ahikar
gave alms” (14:10), that being his salvation}.
A Possible Babylonian Connection
It may even be
that the youthful Ahikar was appointed for a time as the governor of Babylon
whilst Merodach-baladan II was ruling there contemporaneously with Sennacherib
at Nineveh. For indeed a governor there at the time had a name that may, as it
seems to me, incorporate the name Achior.
Thus I wrote
in a post-graduate thesis on this period:
A Revised History of the
Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
(Vol. I, p.
187):
Perhaps even
the name Achior – whether or not the very same person – can be found in Bel-akhi-erba
(i.e. Bel-AKHI-ERba = AKHIOR), the governor of Babylon during the reign of
Merodach-baladan II. A relief on the Merodach-baladan Stone depicts the latter
making a grant
of land to this Bel-akhi-erba, governor of Babylon.
Whatever about
that, according to the historical reconstruction of this post-graduate thesis,
the very same Merodach-baladan, the wily survivor during the first half of
Sennacherib’s reign, was the latter’s foe, Arphaxad, of the Book of
Judith, defeated by Sennacherib (there called Nebuchadnezzar) - this
incident occurring next, as I have argued, after Sennacherib’s successful 3rdcampaign,
the one involving king Hezekiah of Judah.
Thus we read
in Judith 1:1, 5-6:
While King Nebuchadnezzar was
ruling over the Assyrians from his capital city of Nineveh, King Arphaxad ruled
over the Medes [sic] ….
In the twelfth year of his reign
King Nebuchadnezzar went to war against King Arphaxad in the large plain around
the city of Rages. Many nations joined forces with King Arphaxad—all the people
who lived in the mountains, those who lived along the Tigris, Euphrates, and
Hydaspes rivers, as well as those who lived in the plain ruled by King Arioch
of Elam. Many nations joined this Chelodite [Chaldean] alliance.
Whilst “King
Arioch” mentioned here will be discussed later, I have explained the use of the
name ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ for Sennacherib in the Book of Judith in my article:
Book of
Judith: confusion of names
Sennacherib’s Third campaign
Biblically, we
get our first glimpse of Ahikar in action, I believe, as the very vocal Rabshakeh
of KCI, the mouthpiece of Sennacherib himself when the Assyrian army mounted
its first major assault upon the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 18:13): “In the
fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against
all the fortified cities of Judah and took them”.
Now, it would make
perfect sense that the king of Assyria would have chosen from amongst his elite
officials, to address the Jews, one of Israelite tongue (vv. 17-18):
And the king of Assyria sent the
Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King
Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they
arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the
highway to the Fuller’s Field. And when they called for the king, there came
out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah
the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
And these are
the bold words that Rabshakeh had apparently been ordered to say to
the Jews (vv. 19-25):
And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say
to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you
rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy and power
for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? Behold,
you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce
the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who
trust in him. But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not
he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to
Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem”? Come now, make a
wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses,
if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a
single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you trust in Egypt
for chariots and for horsemen? Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have
come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against
this land, and destroy it’. ….
King
Hezekiah’s officials, however, who did not want the people on the walls to hear
these disheartening words, pleaded with Rabshakeh as follows (v. 26):
“Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh,
‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak
to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the
wall’.”
Could the fact
that the Jewish officials knew that Sennacherib’s officer was conversant with
the Aramaïc language indicate that Ahikar, of whom they must have known, was of
northern – and perhaps Transjordanian (like Tobit and Tobias) – origin?
Now Ahikar,
who as said above is named ‘Achior’ in the Vulgate version of Tobit, I have
identified as the important Achior of the Book of Judith in Volume Two of my
post-graduate thesis. So it was rather intriguing to discover, in regard to the
Rabshakeh’s famous speech, that B. Childs (Isaiah and the Assyrian
Crisis) had discerned some similarity between it and the speech of Achior
in the Book of Judith. I wrote on this in my thesis (Vol. 2, p. 8):
… Childs - who has subjected the
Rabshakeh’s speech to a searching form-critical analysis, also identifying its
true Near Eastern genre - has considered it as well in relation to an aspect of
the speech of … Achior [to be identified with] this Rabshakeh in Chapter 2,
e.g. pp. 46-47) to Holofernes (Judith 5:20f.). ….
A legend had
been born, Ahikar the Rabshakeh!
The Israelite
captive had proven himself to have been a most loyal servant of Sennacherib’s
during the latter’s highly successful 3rd campaign, playing his
assigned rôle to perfection.
Sennacherib,
upon his return to the east, quickly turned his sights upon the troublesome
Merodach-baladan.
And it is at
this point in history that the Book of Judith opens.
After the
defeat of Merodach-baladan, the aforementioned ‘young puppy’, Bel-ibni, was
made sub-king of Babylon in his stead.
Now, in Chapter
7 of my thesis (Volume I) I had introduced what I considered to be a necessary
folding of Middle Assyro-Babylonian history, leading to my conclusion that
Sennacherib was the same as Nebuchednezzar I. And that, then, had been my
explanation for why the Assyrian Great King in the Book of Judith had the name,
“Nebuchadnezzar”. My preference now, though, would be the explanation that I
have given in “Book of Judith: confusion of names”.
Nebuchednezzar
I, I had argued, was Sennacherib as a mighty ruler of Babylon, a scenario that
also enabled me to merge Merodach-Baladan I and II additionally with
Adad-apla-iddina.
Now, I
believed that this restructuring may also have provided further possible
ramifications for Ahikar the sage.
The Vizier (Ummânu)
One indication
that I may be on the right track in attempting to merge the C12th BC king of
Babylon, Nebuchednezzar I, with the C8th BC king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is
that one finds during the reign of ‘each’ a vizier of such fame that he was to
be remembered for centuries to come. It is now reasonable to assume that this
is one and the same vizier. I refer, in the case of Nebuchednezzar I, to the
following celebrated vizier [the following taken from J. Brinkman’s A
Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia. 1158-722 B.C. Roma
(Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1968, pp. 114-115]:
… during these years in Babylonia
a notable literary revival took place …. It is likely that this burst of
creative activity sprang from the desire to glorify fittingly the spectacular
achievements of Nebuchednezzar I and to enshrine his memorable deeds in lasting
words. These same deeds were also to provide inspiration for later poets who
sang the glories of the era …. The scribes of Nebuchednezzar’s day, reasonably
competent in both Akkadian and Sumerian…, produced works of an astonishing
vigor, even though these may have lacked the polish of a more sophisticated
society. The name Esagil-kini-ubba, ummânu or “royal secretary” during the
reign of Nebuchednezzar I, was preserved in Babylonian memory for almost one
thousand years – as late as the year 147 of the Seleucid Era (= 165 B.C.)….
To which
Brinkman adds the footnote [n. 641]: “Note … that Esagil-kini-ubba served as
ummânu also under Adad-apla-iddina and, therefore, his career extended over at
least thirty-five years”.
So perhaps we
can consider that our wise sage was, for a time, shared by both Assyria and
Babylon.
Whilst we have
proposed a variety of possible names for Ahikar, not all being entirely
harmonious, the names Merodach-baladan and Adad-apla-iddina merge most
satisfactorily; whilst Nebuchednezzar can be regarded as Sennacherib’s
Babylonian name. But, most stunningly of all I find, as laid out in Table
I of my thesis (Vol. I, p. 180), “the names of three of [the Elamite
Shutrukid] kings [of the C12th BC contemporaneous with Merodach-baldan I] are identical
to those of Sargon II’s/Sennacherib’s Elamite foes, supposedly about four
centuries later”.
Those seeking
the historical Ahikar tend to come up with one Aba-enlil-dari, this description
of him taken from:
The story of Ahiqar is set into
the court of seventh century Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. The
hero has the Akkadian name Ahī-(w)aqar “My brother is dear”, but it is not
clear if the story has any historical foundation. The latest entry in a
Seleucid list of Seven Sages says: “In the days of Esarhaddon the sage was
Aba-enlil-dari, whom the Aramaeans call Ahu-uqar” which at least indicates that
the story of Ahiqar was well known in the Seleucid Babylonia.
Seleucid
Babylonia is, of course, much later removed in time from our sources for
Ahikar. And, as famous as may have been the scribe Esagil-kini-ubba – whether
or not he were also Ahikar – even better known is this Ahikar (at least by that
name), a character of both legend and of (as I believe) real history.
Regarding
Ahikar’s tremendous popularity even down through the centuries, we read [The
Jerome Biblical Commentary, New Jersey (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968),
28:28]:
The story of Ahikar is one of the
most phenomenal in the ancient world in that it has become part of many
different literatures and has been preserved in several different languages:
Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Slavonic, and Old Turkish. The most ancient
recension is the Aramaic, found amongst the famous 5th-cent. BC papyri that
were discovered at the beginning of the 20th cent. on Elephantine Island in the
Nile. The story worked its way into the Arabian nights and the Koran; it
influenced Aesop, the Church Fathers as well as Greek philosophers, and the Old
Testament itself.
Whilst
Ahikar’s wisdom and fame has spread far and wide, the orginal Ahikar, whom I am
trying to uncover in this article, has been elusive for some. Thus J.
Greenfield has written (http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511520662&cid=CBO9780511520662A012):
The figure of Ahiqar has remained
a source of interest to scholars in a variety of fields. The search for the
real Ahiqar, the acclaimed wise scribe who served as chief counsellor to
Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, was a scholarly preoccupation for many years. He
had a sort of independent existence since he was known from a series of texts –
the earliest being the Aramaic text from Elephantine, followed by the book of
Tobit, known from the Apocrypha, and the later Syriac, Armenian and Arabic
texts of Ahiqar. An actual royal counsellor and high court official who had
been removed from his position and later returned to it remains unknown. E.
Reiner found the theme of the ‘disgrace and rehabilitation of a minister’
combined with that of the ‘ungrateful nephew’ in the ‘Bilingual Proverbs’, and
saw this as a sort of parallel to the Ahiqar story. She also emphasized that in
Mesopotamia the ummânu was not only a learned man or craftsman but was also a
high official. At the time that Reiner noted the existence of this theme in
Babylonian wisdom literature, Ahiqar achieved a degree of reality with the
discovery in Uruk, in the excavations of winter 1959/60, of a Late Babylonian
tablet (W20030,7) dated to the 147th year of the Seleucid era (= 165 BCE). This
tablet contains a list of antediluvian kings and their sages (apkallû) and
postdiluvian kings and their scholars (ummânu). The postdiluvian kings run from
Gilgamesh to Esarhaddon.
As
a Ruling ‘King’ (or Governor)
The Elamite Connection
Chapter 1 of
the Book of Tobit appears to be a general summary of Tobit’s experiences during
the reigns of a succession of Assyrian kings: Shalmaneser, Sennacherib and
Esarhaddon.
I, in my
thesis and subsequent writings, may have misread some of the chronology of the
life of Tobit, whose blindness, as recorded in Chapter 2, I had presumed to
have occurred after the murder of Sennacherib.
I now think
that it occurred well before that.
Ahikar will
assist Tobit in his miserable state (“Ahikar gave alms”, 14:10), for two years,
before his appointment as ruler of Elam. Here is Tobit’s account of it
(2:10-11):
For four years I could see
nothing. My relatives were deeply concerned about my condition, and Ahikar
supported me for two years before he went to the land of Elam. After Ahikar
left, my wife Anna had to go to work, so she took up weaving, like many other
women.
Another thing
that probably needs to be re-considered now, in light of my revised view of the
chronology of Tobit, concerns the previously mentioned “King Arioch” as
referred to in Judith 1:6: “Many nations joined forces with King Arphaxad … as
well as those who lived in the plain ruled by King Arioch of Elam”. Arioch in
Elam I had (rightly I think) identified in my thesis, again, as Achior (Ahikar)
who went to Elam. But, due to my then mis-reading of Tobit, I had had to
consider the mention of Arioch in Judith 1:6 as a post-Sennacherib gloss, added
later as a geographical pointer, thinking that our hero had gone to Elam only
after Sennacherib’s death. And so I wrote in my thesis (Vol. II, pp. 46-47):
I disagree with Charles [The
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament] that: “The name Arioch
is borrowed from Gen. xiv. i, in accordance with the author’s love of
archaism”. This piece of information, I am going to argue here, is actually a
later gloss to the original text. And I hope to give a specific identification
to this king, since, according to Leahy [‘Judith’]: “The identity of Arioch (Vg
Erioch) has not been established …”.
What I am
going to propose is that Arioch was not actually one of those who had rallied to
the cause of Arphaxad in Year 12 of Nebuchadnezzar, as a superficial reading of
[Book of Judith] might suggest, but that this was a later addition to the text
for the purpose of making more precise for the reader the geographical region
from whence came Arphaxad’s allies, specifically the Elamite troops.
In other
words, this was the very same region as that which Arioch had ruled; though at
a later time, as I am going to explain.
Commentators express puzzlement about him. Who was this
Arioch?
And if he were such an unknown, then what was the value
of this gloss for the early readers?
Arioch was, I
believe, the very Achior who figures so prominently in the story of Judith.
He was also
the legendary Ahikar, a most famous character as we have already read.
Therefore he
was entirely familiar to the Jews, who would have known that he had eventually
governed the Assyrian province of Elam.
Some later
editor/translator presumably, apparently failing to realise that the person
named in this gloss was the very same as the Achior who figures so prominently
throughout the main story of [Judith], has confused matters by calling him by
the different name of Arioch. He should have written: “Achior ruled the
Elymeans”.
From there it
is an easy matter to make this comparison:
“Achior … Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) …
Elymaïs” [Tobit].
Suffice it to
say here that this ubiquitous personage, Ahikar/Achior, would have been the
eyewitness extraordinaire to the detailed plans and preparations regarding the
eastern war between the Assyrians and the Chaldean coalition as described in Judith
1.
Part Two:
Merging Judith’s ‘Arioch’
with Daniel’s ‘Arioch’
Some later editor/translator … apparently failing to
realise that the person [“Arioch”] named in this gloss [Judith 1:6] was the
very same as the Achior who figures so prominently throughout the main story of
[Judith], has confused matters by calling him by the different name of Arioch.
He should have written: “Achior ruled the Elymeans”.
With my revised shunting of
the neo-Assyrian era into the neo-Babylonian one, and with an important
official, “Arioch”, emerging early in the Book of Daniel, early in the reign of
“Nebuchednezzar”, then the possibility arises that he is the same as the
“Arioch” of Judith 1:6.
In Part One:
I multi-identified the famous
Ahikar (var. Achior), nephew of Tobit, a Naphtalian Israelite, with
Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh; with the Achior of the Book of Judith; and with a few
other suggestions thrown in.
Finally, my identification of
Ahikar (Achior) also with the governor (for Assyria) of the land of Elam, named
as “Arioch” in Judith 1:6, enabled me to write this very neat equation:
“Achior … Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) …
Elymaïs” [Tobit].
Arioch in Daniel
Arioch is met
in Daniel 2, in the highly dramatic context of king Nebuchednezzar’s Dream, in
which Arioch is a high official serving the king. The erratic king has firmly
determined to get rid of all of his wise men (2:13): “So the decree was issued to put the
wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put
them to death”.
And the king has entrusted the task
to this Arioch, variously entitled “marshal”; “provost-marshal”; “captain of
the king’s guard”; “chief of the king’s executioners” (2:14): When Arioch, the commander of the
king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel
spoke to him with wisdom and tact”.
This is the customary way that the wise and prudent
Daniel will operate.
At a later stage, he, as Nehemiah, will pray for the
ability to be able to persuade the king himself, as “Artaxerxes” (Nehemiah
1:11): ‘Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this
your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your
name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of
this man [Artaxerxes]’.
On this, see my series:
Governor Nehemiah's
master "Artaxerxes king of Babylon".
especially:
Part Two:
“Artaxerxes” as king Nebuchednezzar
Daniel
2 continues (v. 15): “[Daniel] asked the king’s officer [Arioch], ‘Why did the
king issue such a harsh decree?’ Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel”.
Our
young Daniel does not lack a certain degree of “chutzpah”, firstly boldly approaching the king’s high official (the fact that
Arioch does not arrest Daniel on the spot may be testimony to both the young
man’s presence and also Arioch’s favouring the Jews since the Judith incident),
and then (even though he was now
aware of the dire decree) marching off to confront the terrible king (v. 16): “At
this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret
the dream for him”.
Later, Daniel, having had revealed to him the details
and interpretation of the king’s Dream, will re-acquaint himself with Arioch
(v. 24): “Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute
the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, ‘Do not execute the wise men of
Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him’.”
Naturally, Arioch was quick to respond - no doubt to
appease the enraged king, but perhaps also for the sake of Daniel and the wise
men (v. 25): “Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, ‘I have found a man among the exiles from Judah
who can tell the king what his dream means’.”
Part Three:
Ahikar and Daniel
Comparisons
“There are also some curious linguistic parallels
between Ahikar and Daniel”
Books and articles abound
comparing Ahikar and Daniel.
For instance, there is George
A. Barton’s “The Story of Aḥiḳar and the Book of
Daniel” (The
American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol.
16, No. 4, 1900, pp 242-247):
Aḥiḳar, a vizier of Sennacherib, was
possessed of wealth, wisdom, popularity, and ....
Lastly the description of Aḥiḳar with his
nails grown like eagles’ talons
and his hair matted like a wild beast … not only reminds one strongly of
the of the description of the hair and nails of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 4.30), but
appears, as Harris has shown … in a more original form [sic] than in the book
of Daniel. He further points out that the fact that in Aḥiḳar’s description of the wise men “Chaldeans” had not yet become
a technical term for a sage, as it has in Daniel, is a further argument for the
priority of Aḥiḳar.
All these points the acute critic of Aḥiḳar has admirably taken; but one wonders why he did not go on
a step farther; for when we come to the more fundamental parallels between
plots and methods of treatment, the story of Aḥiḳar becomes even more vitally interesting to the student of
Daniel than before.
The first of these points to be noted is that Daniel was a wise man, like Aḥiḳar, excelling all others in wisdom, and, like him, vizier to
his sovereign, whoever that sovereign might be. Granting the priority of Aḥiḳar, is there not a sign of dependence here?
The story of Aḥiḳar’s fall from the pinnacle of power, his unjust incarceration
in a pit … his deliverance, and the imprisonment of his accuser in the same
pit, is exactly the same as Daniel’s fall from like power, his imprisonment in
the lions’ den, his deliverance, and the casting of his accusers to the lions
….
[End of quote]
F. C. Conybeare et al.
provide more such comparisons in “The Story of Ahikar”:
We turn now to a book which appears to belong to
the same time and to the same region as Ahikar, in search of more exact
coincidences.
We refer to the book of Daniel.
First of all there are a good many expressions
describing Assyrian life, which appear also in Daniel and may be a part of the
stock-in-trade of an Eastern story-teller in ancient times. I mean such
expressions as, '0 king, live for ever! 5 'I clad him in byssus and purple \
and a gold collar did I bind around his neck/ (Armenian, p. 25, cf. Dan. v.
16.)
More exact likeness of speech will be found in the
following sentence from the Arabic version, in which Ahikar is warned by the '
magicians, astrologers and sooth-sayers ' that he will have no child. Something
of the same kind occurs in the Arabic text, when the king of Egypt sends his
threatening letter to the king of Assyria, and the latter gathers together his
' nobles, philosophers, and wise men, and astrologers/
The Slavonic drops all this and says, 'It was
revealed to me by God, no child will be born of thee/ ' He caused all the wise
men to be gathered together/ In the Armenian it is, 'there was a voice from the
gods 5 ; ' he sent and mustered the satraps/ The language, however, in the
Arabic recalls certain expressions in Daniel : e.g.
Dan. ii. 2. c The king sent to call the magicians,
the astrologers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans/
So in Dan. ii. 27 : in Dan. v. 7, ( astrologers,
Chaldeans, and soothsayers/ &c.
It will be seen that the expressions in Daniel are
closely parallel to those in the Arabic Ahikar.
Again, when the king of Assyria is in perplexity as
to what he shall answer to the king of Egypt, he demands advice from Nadan who
has succeeded to his uncle's place in the kingdom.
Nadan ridicules the demands of the Pharaoh. 'Build
a castle in the air ! The gods themselves cannot do this, let alone men!'
We naturally compare the reply of the consulted
Chaldeans in Daniel ii. 11, 'There is no one who can answer the matter before
the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh/
When Ahikar is brought out of his hiding-place and
presented to the king, we are told that his hair had grown very long and
reached his shoulders, while his beard had grown to his breast.
'My nails/ he says, 'were like the claws of eagles
and my body had become withered and shapeless/
We compare the account of Nebuchadnezzar, after he
had been driven from amongst men (see iv. 30); 1 until his hairs were grown
like eagles' [feathers] and his nails like birds' [claws].'
The parallelism between these passages is tolerably
certain; and the text in Ahikar is better [sic] than that of Daniel. The growth
of the nails must be expressed in terms of eagles' talons, and not of the claws
of little birds: and the hair ought to be compared with wild beasts, as is the
case in some of the Ahikar versions.
There are also some curious linguistic parallels
between Ahikar and Daniel ….
It seems, then, to be highly probable that one of
the writers in question was acquainted with the other; for it is out of the
question to refer all these coincidences to a later perturbation in the text of
Ahikar from the influence of the Bible. Some, at least, of them must be
primitive coincidences. But in referring such coincidences to the first form of
Ahikar, we have lighted upon a pretty problem. For one of the formulae in
question, that namely which describes the collective wisdom of the Babylonians,
is held by modern critics to be one of the proofs of late date in the book of
Daniel:
Accordingly Sayce says 1 , 'Besides the proper
names [in Daniel] there is another note of late date. "The Chaldeans"
are coupled with the "magicians/ 7 the "astrologers'' and the
"sorcerers/* just as they are in Horace or other classical writers of a
similar age. The Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of the Greek or Latin
"Chaldeans" is Kasdim (Kasdayin), a name the origin of which is still
uncertain.
But its application in the earlier books of the
Bible is well known.
It denoted the Semitic Babylonians.... After the
fall of the Baby-lonian empire the word Chaldean gradually assumed a new
meaning . . .it became the equivalent of " sorcerer " and magician..
. . In the eyes of the Assyriologist the use of the word Kasdim in the book of
Daniel would alone be sufficient to indicate the date of the work with unerring
certainty.'
Now it is certainly an interesting fact that in the
story of Ahikar the perplexing Chaldeans are absent from the enumeration.
This confirms us in a suspicion that Ahikar has not
been borrow-ing from Daniel, either in the first form of the legend or in later
versions. For if he had been copying into his text a passage from Daniel to
heighten the narrative, why should he omit the Chaldeans? The author had not,
certainly, been reading Prof.
Sayce's proof that they were an anachronism. The
hypothesis is, therefore, invited that in Ahikar we have a prior document to
Daniel: but we will not press the argument unduly, because we are not quite certain as
to the text of the primitive Ahikar … .
No comments:
Post a Comment