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).
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}.
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 3rd campaign, 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.
The Vizier (Ummânu)
With
what I think is a necessary merging of the C12th BC king of Babylon,
Nebuchednezzar I, with the potent king of neo-Assyria, Esarhaddon (or Nebuchednezzar
‘the Great’), we encounter 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.
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 original 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.
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 … .
