by
Damien F. Mackey
“Ahikar in the book of Tobit resembles, to a certain degree, Achior in the book
of Judith: both are noble non-Jews turned into Jews”.
Introduction
Achior, a leading player in the
Book of Judith, being, as I argued in the first part of my:
none other than the Ahikar (Vulgate
“Achior”) of the Book of Tobit - the very nephew of Tobit, of the tribe of
Naphtali - was thus a northern Israelite.
He was not, therefore, an actual
citizen of the southern kingdom of Judah (a Jew).
Whilst some scholars (such as
Kraeling) have accepted that the name Achior can be the same as Ahikar, these
tend to be disinclined to identify Achior of Judith with the Ahikar of Tobit.
An exception to this was Henri Cazelles (1951), as I have just learned from B.
Otzen’s book, Tobit and Judith (p.
108), who had accepted both a name and person identification (which Otzen, for
his part, rejects):
A surprising understanding of the figure
of Achior is met with in an article from 1951 by Henri Cazelles. He observes
that the Vulgate of Tob. 11.19
(11.20) has the name Achior for Ahikar,
and he thinks that 'Achior' is
only the Graecized form of
Semitic Ahikar, so that we have Ahikar in both the book of Tobit and the book of Judith. Ahikar is the pagan sage known as an
advisor to the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esar-haddon and as the author of
a widespread wisdom book, thus being an outstanding representative of the international wisdom tradition. In the book of Tobit Ahikar plays a peculiar role as Jewish minister under the Assyrian king (Tob. 1.22). In Chapter 5, 'The Ahikar Motif’, the problems of the figure of Ahikar are dealt with. Ahikar in the book of Tobit resembles,
to a certain degree, Achior in the book of Judith: both are noble non-Jews
turned into Jews. Should we assume that there is only one figure, Ahikar? And does that mean that 'Achior' in the
book of Judith is, as a matter of fact, the wise Ahikar trying to help
the Israelites with his clever
speech representing the divine wisdom (Cazelles 1951)? The idea is accepted above all by German
scholars (Haag 1963: 32-33; Loretz 1967: 300-301; Zenger 1974: 75-76; 1981:
436; Kaiser 1992: 168; Schüngel-Straumann 2000: 61; but cf. Steinmann 1953: 55-56 and Moore 1985: 162- 63). When, in spite of
this strong support for Cazelles, I
still have my doubts about the idea, several reasons can be adduced: the transmission
of personal names
in both books is vacillating (only one example: the name of Ahikar is in Tob.
14.15 mixed up with the name of a Median king). Thus I hardly think the name Achior, occurring once only in the
book of Tobit, can carry the weight of Cazelle’s hypothesis. Decisive is,
however, the different status of the two figures: in the book of Tobit Ahikar
is a Jew by birth, of the tribe of Naphtali, whereas, in the book of
Judith, Achior is a genuine pagan,
who is, eventually, accepted in the Jewish congregation.
[End
of quote]
The Account of Achior in Judith
Let us begin with a brief look at the Book
of Judith, as it appears in the Septuagint, the oldest of the extant Judith
texts. The book opens with the successful campaign waged by Nebuchadnezzar,
king of the Assyrians, against Arphaxad, king of the Medes. Nebuchadnezzar then
sends his chief of staff, Holofernes, on an ambitious and punitive military
campaign directed against those who did not join him in his earlier, successful
war. All nations give way before Holofernes until he approaches the Jews, who
decide to resist. The Jews of Bethulia must block the Assyrians’ path to
Jerusalem and its temple. Holofernes, who is unacquainted with the Jews, learns
something of their history and religious beliefs from his ally, the Ammonite
Achior. Despite Achior’s warning that God may well defend His people,
Holofernes places a siege on Bethulia. When water supplies run low, the people
of the town press their leaders to surrender to the Assyrians and Uzziah, the
chief leader, promises to capitulate if there is no relief within five days. It
is at this point that the pious, beautiful widow, Judith, steps on stage.
Judith, who leads an ascetic and solitary life, summons Uzziah and his fellow
leaders to her home and reprimands them for their lack of faith in God. She
then takes matters into her own hands. Judith prays, bathes, and removes her
widow’s weeds. ”Dressed to kill,” Judith leaves Bethulia for the enemy Assyrian
camp, accompanied only by her faithful maid. The glamorous Judith charms and
deceives Holofernes – as well as his trusty eunuch Bagoas – and promises to
deliver the Jews to the Assyrians with God’s help. In her dealings with
Holofernes, Judith is not only beautiful, but sharp-witted. Her exchanges with
the enemy commander are ironic and two-edged and her subtle, duplicitous words
are one of the chief charms of the apocryphal book.1 Holofernes invites Judith to a party in order to seduce her, but he drinks
a great deal of wine and collapses on his couch. Judith then seizes
Holofernes’s sword and cuts off the head of the sleeping general. She returns
to Bethulia with Holofernes’s head in a bag (and his canopy as well). Achior
the Ammonite converts to Judaism when he learns of Judith’s deed and sees the
actual dead man’s head. The Jews of Bethulia, following Judith’s advice,
subsequently take the offensive, attacking the Assyrian army and defeating
them. Judith, praised by all, sings a victory song and then goes back to her
quiet life at home. She lives until the ripe old age of 105 and is mourned by
all of Israel when she dies.
[End of quote]
Thus Achior of the Book of Judith
has been passed down to us as a gentile, an “Ammonite” prince, who ultimately
converts to Judaïsm.
However, it was forbidden for any
Ammonite to “enter the Assembly of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:3) - this being a key
reason for the exclusion of the Book of Judith from the Jewish canon (or Tanakh).
Surprising though, I think, to find
a pagan Ammonite having such an awareness of Israelite history going back to
Abraham. For this is what he told the Assyrian commander-in-chief, “Holofernes”
(Judith 5:5-21):
Then
Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, answered Holofernes, ‘Sir, if you will
please be so kind as to listen to me, I will tell you the truth about these
people who live in the mountains near your camp. I will not lie to you. These
people are the descendants of some Babylonians who abandoned the ways of their
ancestors in order to worship the God of heaven. Finally, they were driven out
of their land because they refused to worship their ancestors' gods. Then they
fled to Mesopotamia, where they settled and lived for a long time. Afterward,
their god told them to leave Mesopotamia and go to the land of Canaan, where
they settled and became very rich in gold, silver, and livestock. Later, when a
famine struck all the land of Canaan, these Israelites, as they were later
called, went down to Egypt and stayed there as long as there was enough food.
While they were there, they became a large nation with so many people that they
could not be counted. So the king of Egypt turned against them. He took
advantage of them and put them to work making bricks. He oppressed them and
made them slaves. But they prayed to their god, and he sent disasters that left
the Egyptians helpless. When the Egyptians drove them out of the country, their
god dried up the Red Sea in front of them, and then led them along the way to
Sinai and Kadesh Barnea. The Israelites drove out all the people who lived in
the southern part of Canaan, occupied the land of the Amorites, wiped out the
people of Heshbon, crossed the Jordan River, and took possession of the entire
mountain region. They drove out the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites,
the Shechemites, and all the Girgashites. The Israelites have now lived in
these mountains for a long time. Their god hates wickedness, and as long as
they did not sin against him, they prospered. But when they disobeyed him, they
suffered heavy losses in many wars and were finally taken away as captives to a
foreign country. The temple of their god was leveled [better, profaned] and
their cities were occupied by their enemies. But now that they have returned to
their god, they have come back home from the countries where they had been
scattered. They have again taken possession of the city of Jerusalem, where
their temple is, and have resettled in the mountains that had remained
uninhabited. Sir, if these people are now sinning against their
god, even unknowingly, and if we can be sure that they are guilty of some
offense, we can successfully attack them. But if they have not disobeyed the
law of their god, then you should leave them alone, or he will defend them, and
we will be disgraced before the whole world’.
Achior was, according to my
historical reconstructions, Ahikar, a northern Israelite, steeped in the
history of his nation - he being closely related to the righteous Tobit - and a
sage of legendary wisdom and knowledge.
He rose to the vizierate (or high
rank of ummanu) in the neo-Assyrian
kingdom.
Akhiqar was a wise and
virtuous man, Chancellor or Secretary at the court of the Assyrian Kings
Sennacherib (704-681 BC) and Esarhaddon (680-669 BC). The history and wisdom
proverbs of Akhiqar, those that are found, were written in Aramaic, an
alphabetical form of writing and a much simpler system than cuneiform. ….
The material used in writing
Aramaic was on clay, an indestructible material; with ink on potsherds having
some chance of survival; papyrus or parchment having practically no chance of
survival over millennia.
A
considerable number of translations, among them
Assyrian (misnamed
Syriac), Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, old Turkish, Greek and Slavonic, indicate
that the story of Akhiqar was very popular in antiquity.
Akhiqar and his proverbs are
not without historical evidence, in light of the discovery of an Assyrian
tablet at Uruk from the Seleucid era, in which there is reference to Akhiqar.
The tablet relates that "in the time of Esarhaddon, Aba-enlil-dari whom
the Arameans call Ahuqar was ummanu, court scholar. [The text was first
published by J.J. Van Dijk, as reported by J.C. Greenfield in the Journal of
the American Oriental Society 82 (1962) 293].
The story of Akhiqar and his
proverbial wisdom influenced the development of Jewish wisdom literature early
in the Hellenistic period (3rd century BC to 3rd century AD). Similar ethical
doctrines appear in the old Testament books of Psalms and Ecclesiastes and in
the apocryphal books of Tobit and Ecclesiasticus. Traces of the story and the
maxims are also found in other sources such as the Arabic Thousand and One
Nights, the Greek edition of Aesop's Fables, and the Koran.
The story of Akhiqar is
divided into two parts: Akhiqar's life, the adoption of his nephew Nadin and
how he was betrayed; the other contains 142 maxims or sage observations on such
matters as education, obedience, respect, gratitude, and retribution. …
[End of quote]
Nadin’s betrayal of Ahikar -
and its crucial importance in the drama of the Book of Judith - is the subject
of my article:
“Nadin went into everlasting
darkness”
Achior’s meteoric
career
Achior, as Ahikar, was the cousin of Tobias, son of
Tobit.
Introduction
Though Achior/Ahikar and Tobias
were cousins, it would appear that the former was older, considering that he
was already officiating for Assyria whilst Tobias was yet an unmarried youth. For
my account of the life and spectacular career of Tobias - who was Job - see my:
Stellar Life and Career
of the holy Prophet Job
Moreover, given the advanced age to
which Tobias/Job lived, he would almost certainly have outlived his famous
cousin.
According to this reconstruction of
the holy man’s career, Tobias did not blossom as an official until the reign of
Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib, his career really going stellar during the
reign of Esarhaddon’s own son, Ashurbanipal.
Achior, for his part, was already
making a name for himself during the reign of Sennacherib.
And Tobit, the father of Tobias and
the uncle of Achior/Ahikar, had served Assyria even earlier, and at the highest
level, under king Shalmaneser. See my:
Tobit a
High Official in Realm of Assyria. Part One: “King Shalmaneser”
Tobit a
High Official in Realm of Assyria. Part Two: Tobit's Status
As explained in Part Two here, Tobit’s rank of
purveyor, or quartermaster (rab[i] ekalli) under king Shalmaneser was of the very
highest official order.
Achior
Under Sennacherib
Whilst the fortunes of Tobit would
take a steep downturn during the tumultuous reign of Sennacherib, Tobit’s nephew
Achior/Ahikar was, for his part, occupying high courtly office as the Assyrian
king’s Rabshakeh. Yigael Yadin gets
very close to this identification when he, following H. Tadmor, writes (in How Did Rabshakeh Know the Language of
Judah?): https://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Levin-Rabshakeh.pdf
P. 333 ….
Considering all
that we now know about both the deportations and the fate of the deportees,
Tadmor’s suggestion seems more reasonable than ever. Although we will
apparently never have absolute proof, probably the “Rabshakeh” was a low-level Israelite
officer or official who was exiled in 722 or 720 [BC], inducted by force or by
choice into the Assyrian service, advanced in rank and position perhaps because
of his language skills, and 20 years later was Sennacherib’s senior servant—his
rab šaqu. As such, and perhaps precisely because of his knowledge of
Hebrew and Aramaic, he accompanied Sennacherib on his third campaign in 701,
was a member of the delegation
to Jerusalem,
and found himself standing “by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the
highway to the Fuller’s Field,” addressing the people of Judah. ….
And further (p. 334):
Many
commentators have analyzed the speech and its content, and I shall not attempt
to repeat their analyses. 42 In the following section, I show that the speech
attributed to Rabshakeh could very well reflect the views of an Israelite, whose
country had been destroyed and whose people had been exiled by the Assyrians a
few decades previously, and who was now honestly trying to warn his brothers in
Judah of a similar fate.
Not surprising that the Assyrian
king would select an intelligent and competent officer of Israelite origin to
address king Hezekiah’s chief officials in their own language, in Hebrew.
Nor is it surprising - if I am
correct that Achior were Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh
- that a similarity has been detected between Achior’s speech to
“Holofernes”, that we have already encountered in this series, and the Rabshakeh’s speech to Hezekiah’s
officials. And such is what I noted in my university thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
(Volume Two, p. 8):
Most
interestingly, 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 [the Book
of Judith’s] Achior (who I shall actually be identifying with this Rabshakeh
in Chapter 2, e.g. pp. 46-47) to Holofernes (Judith 5:20f.).
….
[End of
quote]
In Volume One, p. 186, I wrote:
According to the
first chapter of [the Book of Tobit]: “Ahikar had been chief cupbearer, keeper
of the signet, administrator and treasurer under Sennacherib” and he was kept
in office after Sennacherib’s death. At some point in time Ahikar seems
to have been promoted to Ummânu, or Vizier, second in power in the mighty
kingdom of Assyria, “Chancellor of the Exchequer for the kingdom and given the
main ordering of affairs” (1:21, 22). Ahikar was Chief Cupbearer, or Rabshakeh
(רַבְשָׁקֵה)
during Sennacherib’s Third Campaign when Jerusalem was besieged (2 Kings
18:17; Isaiah 36:2). His title (Assyrian rab-šakê) means, literally,
‘the great man’. It was a military title, marking its bearer amongst the greatest
of all the officers. Tobit tells us that Ahikar (also given in the
Vulgate version of [the Book of Tobit] as Achior) was the son of his
brother Anael (1:21). Ahikar was therefore Tobit’s nephew, of the tribe
of Naphtali, taken into captivity by ‘Shalmaneser’.
[End of
quote]
‘Who do you think you are, Achior,
you and your Ephraïmite
soldiers ...?’
(Words of Holofernes)
Introduction
We read in Part One (b, i) B. Otzen’s reasons for dismissing Henri Cazelles
view, expressed in 1951, that the names “Achior” and “Ahikar” were connectable,
and that the Achior of Judith and the Ahikar of Tobit were one and the same
person.
Here again is the relevant portion
of Otzen’s statement:
When, in spite of this
strong support for Cazelles, I still
have my doubts about the idea, several
reasons can be adduced: the transmission of personal names in both books is
vacillating (only one example: the name of Ahikar is in Tob. 14.15 mixed up
with the name of a Median king). Thus I
hardly think the name Achior, occurring once only in the book of Tobit,
can carry the weight of Cazelle’s hypothesis. Decisive is, however, the different
status of the two figures: in the book of Tobit Ahikar is a Jew by birth, of
the tribe of Naphtali, whereas, in the book of Judith, Achior is a genuine pagan, who is,
eventually, accepted in the Jewish congregation.
It is true that “names” (but not
just “personal” ones) have been incorrectly transmitted, both in the Book of
Tobit and in the Book of Judith. In Tobit, for instance, we seem to have the
nonsensical geographical situation of the travelling party heading from Nineveh
to Ecbatana in Media, that is, heading eastwards,
yet arriving in the evening at the Tigris river, which is to the west of Nineveh. In my:
A Common Sense Geography of the Book of Tobit
I was able to show that, with some slight
tweaking - but based on some preserved fragments of the Book of Tobit - “Media”
and “Ecbatana” need to be understood as, respectively, Midian and Bathania (or
Bashan). This westwards direction is
strengthened by the inclusion in the Douay version of Tobit of “Charan” (Haran)
en route between Nineveh and
“Ecbatana”.
When the Book of Judith similarly undergoes its
own necessary tweaking, then the drama’s opening in the 12th year of
a king “ruling over the Assyrians from his capital city
of Nineveh” can be historically slotted right into the 12th
year of Sargon II. The historical problem of Judith, along with the previously
mentioned one of the apparent acceptance of a pagan Ammonite, Achior, into “the
Assembly of the Lord”, have been major stumbling blocks disallowing the
inclusion of the Book of Judith in the Jewish canon. In this way, the reality
of one of Israel’s greatest heroines has been seriously diminished.
Confusion over Achior’s Name
A gloss added early to the Book of
Judith (1:6) tells of one “King Arioch of Elam” (variously “Ar′ioch
ruled the Elymae′ans”).
Here, as I have argued in, for example:
Ahikar
Part One: As a Young Officer for Assyria
Achior, as Tobit 2:10’s “Ahikar [who] took care of me [blind
Tobit] for two years, until he left for Elam”, was also this “Arioch who ruled
the Elymaeans”.
And this may now be the key to the Ammonite
problem associated with Achior.
Given the confusion of names here and there, a
tweaking may be needed, as with Tobit’s “Ecbatana” altered to read “Bathania”.
“Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5) may
need to be altered to read - as in accordance the information provided by Tobit
2:10 and Judith 1:6: “Achior, the leader of all the
Elamites”.
Achior/Ahikar had indeed been
commissioned by the king of Assyria to rule Elam. But he was ethnically an
Israelite, or Ephraïmite, as according to the testimony of “Holofernes”: ‘Who do you think you are,
Achior, you and your Ephraïmite soldiers ...?’ (as
quoted on p. 611 of Inclusive
Hebrew Scriptures: The Writings, by Priests for
Equality (Organization)).
Otzen had also noted that: “… the
name of Ahikar is in Tob. 14.15 mixed up with the name of a Median king …”. In
some versions, the king is named Cyaxares,
in accordance with the historical view that it was he who conquered
Nineveh. The Codex Sinaïticus, instead, renders the name as Ahikar.
Though I think that it
is unlikely, might Ahikar still have been ruling Elam (and Media?) at the time
of the destruction of Nineveh, when his long-lived cousin Tobias was yet still
alive? Tobit 14:14-15: “At the ripe old age of 117
Tobias died, having lived long enough to hear about the
destruction of Nineveh and to see King Cyaxares [Ahikar] of Media take the
people away as captives”.
As the verse
continues, we learn that: “Tobias praised God for the way that he had punished
the people of Nineveh and Assyria. As long as he lived he gave thanks for what
God had done to Nineveh”. It was at this stage of his career that he had
morphed into that notable rejoicer over the Fall of Nineveh:
Prophet
Nahum as Tobias-Job Comforted
Conclusion
I do not
believe that, as according to Otzen: “Achior is a genuine pagan, who is, eventually,
accepted in the Jewish congregation”, and so he cannot be Ahikar.
Achior was the same
northern Israelite nephew of Tobit as Ahikar, serving under Sennacherib,
firstly as the king’s Hebrew-speaking Rabshakeh
mouthpiece, and later as his governor (king: the neo-Assyrian kings could
boast of ‘all their governors being kings’) of the important province of Elam.
He, being a close relative of the holy Yahwist Tobit (1:4-6):
Now when I [Tobit] was in my
own country, in the land of Israel, while I was still a young man, the whole
tribe of Naphtali my forefather deserted the house of Jerusalem. This was the
place which had been chosen from among all the tribes of Israel, where all the
tribes should sacrifice and where the temple of the dwelling of the Most High
was consecrated and established for all generations for ever.
All the tribes that joined in
apostasy used to sacrifice to the calf Baal, and so did the house of Naphtali
my forefather.
But I alone went often to
Jerusalem for the feasts, as it is ordained for all Israel by an everlasting
decree. ….
was well versed
in the history of Israel. But apparently he - unlike Tobit, but like the tribe
of Naphtali - had not embraced the House of David, Jerusalem and its feasts.
And so Achior’s conversion following on from Judith’s victory (Judith 14:6-10):
So they
called Achior from Uzziah's house. But when he came and saw the head of
Holofernes in the hands of one of the men, Achior fainted and fell to the
floor. When they had helped him up, Achior bowed at Judith's feet in respect.
‘May
every family in the land of Judah praise you’, he said, ‘and may every nation
tremble with terror when they hear your name. Please tell me how you managed to
do this’. While all the people were gathered around, Judith
told him everything that she had done from the day she left the town until that
moment. When she had finished her story, the people cheered so loudly that the
whole town echoed with sounds of joy. When Achior heard all that the God of
Israel had done, he became a firm believer. He was circumcised and made a
member of the Israelite community, as his descendants are to the present day.
was a
conversion, not from pagan Ammonite-ness (or even Elamite-ness) to Davidic
Yahwism, but from the then current Naphtalian form of religious observance to
Judith’s pure form of Yahwism.
