By-paths in Hebraic Bookland

We are happily passing out of the critical obsession, under which it was a sign of ignorance to attribute a venerable age to the records of the past. All the old books were written yesterday, or at earliest the day before! Facts, however, are stubborn; and facts, as they come to light, justify and re-affirm our fathers’ faith in the antiquity of the world’s literature. The story of Ahikar is a good illustration.

In the course of the Book of Tobit more than once Achiachar or Ahikar is mentioned. These allusions are verbal only, but in one scene the reference is more precise. The pious Tobit on his death-bed bids his son “consider what Nadab (Nadan) did to Achiachar, who brought him up.”

What did Nadan do, and who was Ahikar? It is only within recent years that a complete answer has become possible to these questions. The older commentators on the Apocrypha were much worried by the allusion, and had to be content with the blindest guesses. Some versions of Tobit had, in place of the words quoted above, the following: “Consider how Aman treated Achiachar, who brought him up.” Hence the suggestion arose that the reference was to Haman and Mordecai. But the Book of Esther does not hint that Mordecai had “brought up” Haman, and was then repaid by the latter’s ingratitude.

But in 1880, G. Hoffmann discovered the clue. He recognized that Tobit’s references were paralleled in a story found in Æsop’s Fables and in the Arabian Nights, but much more fully recorded in the Story of Ahikar preserved in several versions, such as Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian. The story, briefly told in those fuller records, is as follows:

The hero is Ahikar. The name probably means something like My Brother is Precious, or A Brother of Preciousness, or possibly (as Dr. Halper suggests) A Man of Honor. He was grand vizier of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. Noted for wisdom as for statesmanship, he rose to a position of the highest dignity and wealth. But he had no son. He, accordingly, adopted his infant nephew Nadan, and reared him with loving care. He furnished him with eight nurses, fed him on honey, clothed him in fine linen and silk, and made him lie on choice carpets. The boy grew big, and shot up like a cedar; whereupon Ahikar started to teach him book-lore and wisdom. Nadan was introduced to the king, who readily agreed to regard the youth as his minister’s son, and made promise of future favors to one in whom his faithful vizier was so much interested. The narrative then breaks off to give in detail the wise maxims which Ahikar sought to instil into Nadan; maxims which have parallels in many literatures, including the rabbinic. Now, Ahikar was grievously mistaken in the character of his nephew. Nadan seemed to listen to his uncle’s wisdom, but all the while considered his monitor a dotard and a bore. The young man began to reveal his true disposition; his cruelties to man and beast were such that Ahikar protested, and offended Nadan by preferring a brother of the latter. Nadan, in revenge, plotted Ahikar’s downfall. By means of forged letters, the old vizier was condemned for treachery, though the executioner, mindful of a similar act of mercy previously shown to himself, secretly spared Ahikar’s life. Nor was the day distant when Sennacherib bewailed the loss of Ahikar’s services. Menacing messages came from Egypt of a kind which it needed an Ahikar to deal with. To the king’s joy, Ahikar was brought out from his hiding-place; he was again taken to court, and despatched to Egypt.