by
Damien F. Mackey
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.
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, see below).
This Ahikar, it will be found, was a vitally important
eye-witness to some of the most extraordinary events of Old Testament history.
Ahikar was, at the very least, as we shall find:
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 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! http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/1205.htm}
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 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: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000639.php:
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.
As a convert to Yahwism
“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”.
Judith 14:10
Recalling from Part One:
The young and highly talented Ahikar, or Achior, a
product of the northern Israelite tribe of Naphtali that had largely
apostatised from Yahwism (but also a nephew of holy Tobit who had not followed
his tribe in this regard), had risen rapidly – perhaps from being a young
favourite in king Sennacherib’s palace – to the high office in Assyria of Rabshakeh.
As such, Ahikar had become a key player in Sennacherib’s
3rd campaign, to the west, having been the very mouthpiece for the
king of Assyria before the officials of king Hezekiah of Judah – a natural
choice in that situation because of the young man’s ability to speak the Hebrew
language.
I had also proposed tentatively
in Part One that Ahikar, who became a famous sage of Assyria,
and perhaps also of Babylon, may even have served for a time as governor of
Babylon during the reign of king Merodach-baladan (so-called II).
Now, still during the reign of Sennacherib, Ahikar (whom
Tobit would later praise as an almsgiver) had assisted his uncle Tobit for two
years whilst the latter was suffering from blindness, after which time Ahikar
was assigned to the rulership of Elam (Elymaïs). This, I believed, has been
taken up in Judith 1:6 (but presumably with the name later mis-copied) where we
read of “King Arioch of Elam”.
All of this led us to the following key connection
between the books of Judith and Tobit:
“Achior
… Elymeans” [Judith]; “Ahikar (var. Achior) … Elymaïs” [Tobit]
thereby anchoring the highly problematical history of the
Book of Judith to the reign of king Sennacherib of Assyria! And that very
location for the Judith drama, historically, became the subject matter of Volume Two of my post-graduate thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of
Judah
and its Background
Under the influence of uncle Tobit
Undoubtedly the highly zealous and prayerful holy man,
Tobit, would have – in his miserable state of blindness – utilised the two
years of his nephew Ahikar’s attendance upon him to instruct the young,
presumably Baal-worshipping (and whatever Assyrian gods as well), king’s
official (to whatever extent he could) in the history of Israel and in pure
Yahwism. Soon, Ahikar was also to be a witness to the phenomenon of Tobit’s
being cured from his condition of blindness. For, apparently after Ahikar had
gone to Elam, with Tobit still blind, Tobit’s son, Tobias (that is, the prophet
Job) had journeyed to Ecbatana (= Bashan) and had, under the most unusual
circumstances, gained himself a wife, Sarah, and some substantial wealth (Tobit
6-9). Subsequently, old Tobit was miraculously cured of his blindness
(11:11-14), and afterwards he and his wife Anna held an impressive wedding
feast for the young couple. It is at this point that we hear about Ahikar
again, who, with his nephew, Nadin (Nadab), came along “to share in Tobit’s
happiness” (11:18).
Scholars have in fact commented upon the apparent
dependence of the Maxims of Ahikar upon those of Tobit. J. Marshall, for
instance (‘Tobit, Book of’, A Dictionary of the Bible, ed. J.
Hastings, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1902, pp. 789, 2): “There are many
features of resemblance between Ahikar’s moral teaching to Nadan, and Tobit’s
to Tobias”. (Cf. J. Miller and J. Hayes have listed “Parallels Between
Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty and Deuteronomy”, A History of Ancient Israel
and Judah, pp. 395-397).
The influence of Tobit and his family, and the amazing
events of their lives of which Ahikar was so well aware, must have conspired to
prepare the way for Ahikar’s ultimate conversion to Yahwism as Achior in the
Book of Judith, upon learning of Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, and due to Achior’s
own personal viewing of the decapitated head. Judith had called for Achior
specifically for him to identify the head as belonging to Holofernes, whom he
well knew, she demanding (Judith 14:5-10):
… send Achior the Ammonite to me.
I want to see if he recognizes Holofernes, the man who spoke of Israel with
contempt and sent Achior to us, thinking he would be killed along with the rest
of us.
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.
Whoops, did Judith just call Achior an “Ammonite”?
If that is what nationality he actually were, and indeed
he is called that in various places in the Book of Judith as we now have it,
then that would put paid to my claim that Achior was Ahikar, the nephew of
Tobit, and it would also raise a nasty theological problem for the Book of
Judith. I discussed this situation as follows in my thesis (Volume Two, pp.
57-58):
… there now
arises that problem with my actual reconstruction of Achior as an
Israelite
in the
Assyrian army, and it is this verse: “Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites,
said to
[Holofernes] …” (5:5). Achior is said in this verse to have been an
‘Ammonite’; a matter we discussed in some detail (beginning on p. 23), when
considering why [the Book of Judith] was not accepted into the Hebrew canon.
Whilst this does immediately loom as a major problem, there is one factor –
apart from what has already been said about Achior – that makes his
being an Ammonite highly unlikely, and this is that Achior will later,
in [Judith] 14, be converted to Judaïsm and will be circumcised. The author of
[Judith], who is an absolute stickler for the Mosaïc Law, and who writes in
fact like a priest or Levite … would hardly have countenanced so flagrant a
breach of the Law as having an Ammonite received by pious Jews into the
assembly of faith, when this was clearly disallowed by Moses (Deuteronomy 23:3,
4).
Judith
herself, who would so scrupulously observe all of the religious ordinances of
the
Law even
whilst in the camp of the Assyrians [Judith] (… 12), would hardly (if she were
real) have been a party to this forbidden situation.
The final word that we hear about Ahikar in some versions
of the Book of Tobit is that Nadin had set a trap for his mentor, but had
himself fallen into the trap and was subsequently slain (14:13). For a fuller
explanation of this, see my:
"Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the "Holofernes" of Judith
We have found that Ahikar was an important eye-witness,
especially in the east, to so many significant events that occurred during this
most fascinating of historical eras. He, as king Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh
during the Assyrian king’s 3rd campaign, knew also all about the
Great Eastern War of Judith chapter 1, against Arphaxad (= Merodach-baladan,
I believe). Assyria eventually won this hard-fought war, and then determined to
vent her revenge upon the subject nations that had failed to assist her against
Merodach-baladan.
The Eastern War in Judith 1 is but the prelude to the
main incident of the book, the Assyrian invasion of the West, most notably of
Judah. Possibly, Ahikar may also have been a privileged one present at the
victorious Assyrian king’s “secret council” in which “Nebuchadnezzar” (=
Sennacherib) planned his revenge on the west. “So he called unto him all his
officers, and all his nobles, and communicated with them his secret counsel,
and concluded the afflicting of the whole earth out of his own mouth”. [Judith
2:2; SEPT]
Although, if he were then in Elam, he could have learned
all about it from fellow officers. Either way, Ahikar is already the key
witness for such eastern events recorded in the Book of Judith that could not
have been known first-hand either by Judith or by her fellow Israelites, and
the Jews, then living in the west.
Ahikar as ‘Achior’ of Book of Judith
Chapter 2 of the Book of Judith first introduces us to
the historically problematical (like many characters in the book) “Holofernes”.
He, who will serve as the commander-in-chief, may not have been at
Sennacherib’s “secret council” because, as the story is narrated, the king
calls him immediately after it (v. 4): “When the council was over,
Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians sent for Holofernes, general-in-chief of
his armies and subordinate only to himself”.
The Great King of Assyria now gives his subordinate this
terrifying (from the perspective of those who will be the suffering recipients
of it) commission:
He said to him,
‘Thus speaks the Great King, lord
of the whole world, “Go; take men of proven valour, about a hundred and twenty
thousand foot soldiers and a strong company of horse with twelve thousand
cavalrymen; then advance against all the western lands, since these people have
disregarded my call.
Bid them have earth and water
ready, because in my rage I am about to march on them; the feet of my soldiers
will cover the whole face of the earth, and I shall plunder it. Their wounded
will fill the valleys and the torrents, and rivers, blocked with their dead,
will overflow. I shall lead them captive to the ends of the earth”. Now go!
Begin by conquering this whole region for me. If they surrender to you, hold
them for me until the time comes to punish them.
But if they resist, look on no
one with clemency, hand them over to slaughter and plunder throughout the
territory entrusted to you. For by my life and by the living power of my
kingdom I have spoken. All this I shall do by my power.
And you, neglect none of your
master’s commands, act strictly according to my orders without further delay’.
Typical Assyrian war-speak, but it was no mere bravado as
the Assyrian Wehrmacht had the werewithal to carry out all of the
Great King’s dreadful threats.
And Holofernes will be, for a time, totally effective.
Who was he? Who really was the “Holofernes” of the Book of Judith?
I, in my thesis, in which I radically revised
neo-Assyrian history (Volume One, Chapter 6), even to identifying Sargon II –
supposed father of Sennacherib – with Sennacherib himself (more recently in):
had multi-identified Holofernes from several sources.
I have since changed some of this, see my “Nadin” article
(above).
Thus I wrote a bit tortuously (Volume Two, pp. 79-80):
In this verse we learn that a certain Nadab had
set a trap for Ahikar, to kill him, but had fallen into that trap
himself with fatal consequences. The description of this intriguing bouleversement
fits exactly the story of Holofernes and Achior at
Bethulia, thus I think providing a further confirmation of my reconstruction.
In the legends of Ahikar, the betrayer can be called Nadan … instead
of Nadab, and this is important; for commentators can presume that Ahikar’s
betrayer is the same as Ahikar’s very nephew, Nadab. In
[Tobit] we are told that “Ahikar and his nephew Nadab were also present …” at
the celebration of the wedding of the young Tobias and Sarah in Nineveh
(11:18). And, because Tobit will, three chapters later, when recalling Ahikar’s
betrayal, name the betrayer, ‘Nadab’ (14:10), then it is not unreasonably
assumed that Ahikar was betrayed by his very own nephew.
The next part of my thesis can be amended to read as
follows:
Here, then, is my reconstructed version of verse 14:10,
with my name substitutions added in square brackets: ‘See, my son [Tobias],
what Nadab [Nadin] did to Ahikar [Achior] who had reared him.
Was he not, while still alive, brought down into the earth?
For God repaid him to his face for his shameful
treatment. Ahikar came out into the light, but Nadab went into the eternal
darkness, because he tried to kill Ahikar. Because he gave alms, Ahikar escaped
the fatal trap [at Bethulia] that Nadab had set for him, but Nadab
fell into it himself, and was destroyed’.
This verse is quite mystifying in the context of [the Book
of Tobit] alone, which had, until this, told us nothing whatsoever about any
misdeed on the part of Ahikar’s nephew, but only that he, with his
uncle, had been “present [at the celebration] to share Tobit’s joy” (11:18).
Whilst the name Nadab itself, as the betrayer, does
not appear to add any relevance to my reconstruction, the variant form of it, Nadin,
surely does. Nadin can be connected with the Assyrian name,
Ashur-nadin-shumi, the eldest son of Sennacherib. The name connection
can be deduced from the following passage [Interpreter’s Dictionary of the
Bible, ‘Ahikar, Book of’, p. 69].
Some of the
persons mentioned [in the Aramaic book of Ahikar] may even be historical. A
high official named Nabu-sum-iskun is known to have served under Sennacherib.
While the person of Ahikar has not been found as yet [sic], his name is
Assyrian (Ahi-yaqar, “the brother is precious”). The name Nadan (better, Nadin)
is a short form of some name like Adad-nadin-shum.
Chronologically Ashur-nadin-shumi, ruling Babylon for six
years, from the 12th to the 18th year of Sennacherib, and
then mysteriously disappearing, fits perfectly for Holofernes, for it was in
the Great King’s 18th year that he was said to have summoned his
officials to commence the war of revenge (Judith 2:1-2, 4):
In the eighteenth year, on the
twenty-second day of the first month, a rumour ran through the palace that
Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians was to have his revenge on all the
countries, as he had threatened.
Summoning his general staff and
senior officers, he held a secret conference with them, and with his own lips
pronounced utter destruction on the entire area.
….
When the council was over,
Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians sent for Holofernes, general-in-chief of his
armies and subordinate only to himself. ….
If Nadin (my Ashur-nadin-shumi/Holofernes) were a son of
the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, then in what sense could he have been called a
“nephew” of the Israelite Ahikar?
I am not entirely sure at this stage.
According to legend, Nadin was the son of Ahikar’s
sister. Now, the mother of Ashur-nadin-shumi was apparently Tashmetum-Sharrat,
the daughter of Merodach-baladan.
Or was Nadin his “nephew” in a different sense, as being
under the tutelage of the wise Ahikar? I had followed this line in my thesis (ibid.):
We also learn
from the legends that Ahikar had been Nadan’s actual tutor,
taking many
pains with the
latter’s instruction (hence having “reared him”, according to Tobit 14:10
above). It is
quite possible that the wise Ahikar, whose moral maxims seem to have
been lifted straight from the sayings of Tobit … – the latter being well-known
to a succession of Assyrian kings (1:13-19, 21-22) – had been appointed as
steward, or tutor, of Sennacherib’s son, just as the wise Senenmut had been
‘tutor’ or ‘steward’ of Egypt’s
Thutmose
[III], as a child, and of Hatshepsut’s daughter, Neferure. …. [See my “Solomon
and Sheba”: http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba]. In
that sense, could Tobit say that Ahikar “had reared him [Nadin]”.
Holofernes
storms into Israel
Judith 2 narrates the formidable march of Holofernes and
his massive army through northern Syria, then (2:17-18): “… down into the
plains of Damascus in the days of the harvest, [where] … he set all the corn on
fire, and he caused all the trees and vineyards to be cut down. And the fear of
them fell upon all the inhabitants of the land”. Finally, with just Samarian
cities like Judith’s Bethulia (= Shechem) facing Dothan, as well as
Jerusalem, left for the Assyrians to conquer, we encounter Ahikar as the Achior
of the Book of Judith, subordinate to Holofernes, the
commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army that had cut off the water supplies of Bethulia.
Here Achior is called “leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5). But
this, as suggested above, cannot be correct. It must be a copyist’s mistake for
Ephraïmites (northern Israelites), or perhaps Elamites (over whom
Ahikar had ruled) because in 6:2 Holofernes contemptuously refers to Achior as “you
hireling of Ephraïm”.
It is at this crucial stage, with the Bethulians
languishing from lack of water, that Ahikar makes his incredible apologia on
behalf of the Israelites. This came as a total shock to all present. So
insignificant were these mountain people in the eyes of Holofernes that he had
even had to ask the locals who they were. Achior had volunteered the
information, giving the commander a run-down of Israel’s history from Abraham,
through the Exodus, to the present time. (Would an Ammonite have been likely to
have known Israel’s history in detail?). Moreover he added that, whenever their
God favoured this people, they always proved to be unbeatable. Tobit’s
teachings were now setting in. This speech absolutely stunned the soldiery who
were by now all for tearing Achior “limb from limb” (5:22).
Holofernes, for his part, was absolutely furious with
Achior. Having recently succeeded in conquering the entire west, he was hardly
about to suffer hearing that some obscure mountain folk – “this brood of
fugitives from Egypt” as he contemptuously called them in response to
Achior’s speech (cf. 6:6)- might be able to offer him any meaningful
resistance. Holofernes thereupon commanded his orderlies to take the insolent
Achior and bind him beneath the walls of Bethulia, so that he could suffer,
with the people he had just verbally defended, their inevitable fate when the
city fell to the Assyrians.
When the Assyrian brigade had managed to secure Achior at
Bethulia, and had then retreated from the walls under sling-fire from the
townsfolk, the Bethulians went out to fetch him.
As I wrote in my thesis (ibid.):
Aspects of the
legendary story of Ahikar’s condemnation and release can perhaps be
seen as distortions of the original Bethulia incident. For instance,
the tale of the executioner’s sparing Ahikar’s life, and imprisoning
him in a cellar under his house, after which he was eventually released, might
be a distortion of [Holofernes’] deferring the execution of Achior until
the defeat of the Bethulians, and having him bound below (under) the
hill of Bethulia, from which he was liberated. For in [Judith] 6:13 we
read: “So [Holofernes’ slaves] having taken shelter below the hill …”.
Once safely inside the city of Bethulia, Achior told the
citizens his story, and no doubt Judith was there to hear it. Later she would
use bits and pieces of information supplied by Achior for her own confrontation
with Holofernes, to deceive him.
The subsequent defeat and rout of the Assyrian army of
185,000 – so enigmatically treated in Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah – is
narrated in detail in the Book of Judith.
It was not simply an instant blast by God – or a sudden
bubonic plague – that consumed the entire Assyrian army on the spot, as some
like to suggest. It was rather a complete rout, set in motion by the ruse of Judith.
As Isaiah had predicted, the Assyrian would fall “by the sword, not of a
man” (31:8); for it was actually “by the hand of a woman” that
the victory was achieved (Judith 16:7).
Achior’s
Conversion
When Judith returned to her city after having deceived
the Assyrians, her maid carrying in her bag the gory trophy of the head of
Holofernes, the heroine told her fellow-citizens the whole story of what had
taken place in the Assyrian camp. Judith then asked the townspeople to fetch
Achior, who, upon seeing the head of the world-famous Assyrian general,
defeated by this woman, fainted on the spot. Upon recovering, Achior greatly
praised Judith: ‘May you be blessed in all the tents of Judah and in every
nation; at the sound of your name men will be seized with dread’ (14:31).
Afterwards, Achior submitted to the circumcision that he
had apparently neglected as a young Naphtalian, and converted fully to Yahwism
(14:8-10):
Is not the story of Judith, including Holofernes and
Achior, one of the most thrilling stories of the entire Old Testament era!
Reality (true history) can often be more dramatic than
fiction.
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