Wisdom of Ahikar

The oldest text in this collection. The Aramaic version was found among the papyri of the Jewish colony at Elephantine in Egypt and dates from the 5th century BC, which means the story was already circulating before that. It did not begin as Jewish literature: it is Near Eastern wisdom writing, adopted and recopied by Jews, Syrians, Arabs, Armenians and Ethiopians for more than two thousand years.

It was never a candidate for any canon, since it is not an Israelite religious book — Ahiqar serves the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, and the setting is a pagan court. Even so it entered the Bible through a side door: the book of Tobit names Ahiqar as Tobit's relative, a sign of how well known the story was.

• The second half is a collection of proverbs — on the tongue, on children, on money and on kings — with direct parallels in the book of Proverbs.
• Nadan, the adopted nephew, forges letters of treason to destroy the man who raised him. It is one of literature's earliest plots built on forged documents.
• Ahiqar is saved because an executioner remembers being spared by him once, and kills another man in his place.
• The ending resolves an impossible diplomatic riddle set by Pharaoh: build a castle between heaven and earth.

Was Ahiqar a real person?

There is a trace of one. A cuneiform list of sages from Uruk mentions an Aba-Enlil-dari, called Ahuqar by the Arameans, connected to the reign of Esarhaddon. The story as we read it, however, is literature rather than chronicle.

Why is the Story of Ahiqar included with biblical texts?

Because the book of Tobit, canonical for Catholics and Orthodox, names Ahiqar, and because the oldest Aramaic version was preserved by a Jewish community in Egypt. It is one of the bridges between Near Eastern and biblical wisdom.