Ahiqar and Rabbinic Literature

This paper argues that remarkably close parallels exist between the Book of Ahiqar and a lengthy story in Bavli Bekhorot depicting interaction between R. Joshua ben Hananyah and the Athenian Elders. It is not necessary to say that the Bavli used as its source the actual Book of Ahiqar, although that possibility cannot be excluded. It is enough to say that the two compilations drew upon a shared storehouse of ancient near Eastern folk motifs available in the eastern Roman provinces and east of Byzantium. According to the latter understanding, we are justified in viewing the Babylonian rabbis, in common with the authors, translators, and transmitters of Ahiqar, as partaking of a vast shared cultural heritage, which in subsequent centuries travelled further east and became known to the people of Persia and India as well.

This conclusion supports my claim in earlier research that Jewish Babylonia, to a greater degree than earlier scholars imagined, was part of the Mediterranean world, and/or was part of the emerging but never fully realized elite culture, a refinement of a previously existing non-elite culture, forming between Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Armenia and the Arabian Peninsula on the other.