Ahiqar or Ahikar was an Assyrian sage known in the ancient Near East for his outstanding wisdom.The Story of Ahikar, also known as the Words of Ahikar, has been found in an Aramaic papyrus of 500 BC among the ruins of Elephantine. The narrative of the initial part of the story is expanded greatly by the presence of a large number of wise sayings and proverbs that Ahikar is portrayed as speaking to his nephew.
The Words of Ahikar is the oldest surviving Israelite story, with known copies in Aramaic dating back to the 5ᵗʰ century BC, making it a couple of centuries older than the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While the story is set during the Assyrian Captivity of the Samaritans during the 7ᵗʰ century BC, it is generally accepted by scholars that the book was written in its current form in the 6ᵗʰ century BC, during the Babylonian Captivity of the Judahites. It does not appear to have been considered a religious book by Judahites under Greek rule, or later when Judea became independent, and was not included in either the Septuagint or the Masoretic Text. Nevertheless, the author of the Book of Tobit, which is in the Septuagint, clearly viewed the Words of Ahikar as authentic, as his protagonist Tobit claimed that he was Ahikar's uncle, and both Ahikar and his nephew Nadan make a brief appearance in the book of Tobit at Tobit’s son Tobiah’s marriage feast in Nineveh. The Book of Tobit was likely written in the Median Empire, and carried into Judea by the priest Tobiah, who was listed as one of the leaders of the Israelites that returned to Judea after Cyrus II (the Great) released the Judahites when he conquered Babylon. The version of the book of Tobit found in the Codex Vaticanus and most surviving copies of the Septuagint, was translated into Greek from Aramaic and added to the Septuagint, likely before 200 BC when the Judean Revolt against the Ptolemys rule, resulted in most Jews and Samaritans fleeing from Egypt, either east into Judea, or south into Nubia. There is another version of the Book of Tobit found in the Codex Sinaiticus, which appears to be older than the version in the other codices, and not translated in the Ptolemy’s Egypt, but somewhere in the Seleucid’s Empire. The Book of Tobit is generally viewed as fiction by most scholars for a variety of reasons. One major reason it is viewed as fiction is the presence of Tobit’s cousin Ahikar, in both versions of the book, who is the protagonist of the Words of Ahikar, a book set in the same era, which is also considered fiction. It is quite clear from the text of Tobit, that it is the same Ahikar, and not just someone with the same name, as Ahikar’s betrayal by his nephew is mentioned, which is part of the early section of Ahikar. Nevertheless, both books, Tobit and Ahikar survive in various forms, meaning that they were edited multiple times before the versions that survive to the present were transcribed. The surviving copies of the Septuagint include two versions of the Book of Tobit, the more common form, found in the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and most other surviving copies of the Septuagint, and the less common version found in the Codex Sinaiticus. Additionally, fragments of Tobit found among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri don’t match either the Vaticanus or Sinaiticus version of Tobit. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a collection of ancient texts found in southern Egypt dating to the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine eras of Egyptian history, approximately 300 BC to 640 AD. Among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, two fragments of Tobit have been found, Papyrus 1594, dated to circa 275 AD, and Papyrus 1076, dated to circa 550 AD. Unfortunately, these fragments are extremely short, with only a few lines surviving from chapters 12 and 2 respectively. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri fragments of Tobit are in Greek but do not match surviving versions found in the Septuagint codices, meaning there were no less than three Greek versions of Tobit in circulation by 350 AD, when the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are dated to.
The World of the Aramaeans is a three-volume collection of definitive essays about the Aramaeans and the biblical world of which they were a part. Areas of interest include the language, epigraphy and history of the Aramaeans of Syria as well of their neighbours, the Israelites, Phoenicians, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. The third volume, on language and literature, includes essays by Michael Weigl, William Marrow, Grant Frame, James M. Lindenberger, Pierre Bordreuil, Amir Harrak, Theodore Lutz, Josef Tropper, Dennis Pardee and Clemens Leonhard.
The differences between the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus versions of Tobit are too extensive to treat the books as the same book, however, their story is essentially the same. The two books must have had a common source, however, the Sinaiticus's version is over 20% longer than the Vaticanus's version, and appears to be an older version of Tobit. One of the reasons that the Book of Tobit is interpreted as fiction, is the existence of historical errors and anachronisms found in the Vaticanus version, which includes the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Persian king Ahasuerus jointly destroying Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was sacked by Babylonian King Nabopolassar in 612 BC, along with Median and Persian allies, led by the Median King Cyaxares, who then integrated the city into his Median Empire. Nabopolassar's son Nebuchadnezzar, who assumed the throne in 605 BC, finally conquered the remnants of the Assyrian forces in Syria at the Battle of Carchemish that same year, however, he did not attack or destroy Nineveh. Meanwhile, the name Ahasuerus was the Aramaic name of Xerxes, the Persian king who ruled between 486 and 465 BC. These anachronisms are not found in the Codex Sinaiticus' version, which does not mention either king, but gives credit to King Achiacharos of Media, which is likely an attempt to transliterate the Median name of King Cyaxares into Aramaic. Cyaxares's Median name was Uvaxshtra, however, it was transliterated several ways into the languages and scripts of the day, including the Assyrian and Babylonian Umakishtar, and the Phrygian Ksuwaksaros, and the Greek Cyaxares from which the modern English name is derived. The Sinaiticus version of Tobit describes King Achiacharos as conquering Nineveh and integrating it into his Median Kingdom, which, was done by King Cyaxares according to the Median, Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek records from the era, and so, even if the origin of the name is disputed, the person described in King Cyaxares. There are several differences between the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus versions that point to the Sinaiticus version being older, and that point to the Vaticanus version being a later translation created in Alexandria, likely from an Aramaic early-Jewish redaction of the original Aramaic version.
The Aramaic papyri found on the island of Elephantine, Egypt (ancient Yeb, opposite Syene) come from the fifth century BC. They include letters, personal archives, public archives, the 'Words of Ahikar,' the Behistun inscription, accounts, and lists. Cowley provides here the Aramaic transcriptions and English translations for all the texts available to him. In this edition, an updated bibliography is provided.
The volume publishes papers read at the tenth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2013. The authors explore various aspects of this literature, with pre-eminent emphasis on their relation to diverse early Jewish texts and traditions; their reactions on Hellenism; and the way they treated as a canonical collection within their history of interpretation.
In this groundbreaking study, John Kloppenborg traces the literary evolution of Q as a document of primitive Christianity by considering it within the context of ancient literary genres. He argues that Q is composed of three compositional layers, or strata, each of which reflects certain stages of development in the Q community. The earliest formative layer reflects the influence of ancient sapiential sayings: the second layer suggests the influence of the prophetic literature of judgment and contains prophetic oracles and many Son-of-Man sayings. The third layer contains a temptation story, moving the document from a chriae collection in the direction of a biography.
