Monday, May 2, 2016

“Ahasuerus” in Book of Tobit




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by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

But before [Tobias] died, he heard of the destruction of Nineveh, which was taken by Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus; and before his death he rejoiced over Nineveh.

 

(Tobit 14:15)

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Tobias, often confused with his similarly-named father, Tobit, identifies extremely well with the prophet Job. See my:

 


 


 

And Job-Tobias, in his expectation from his prophetic father, Tobit, of the Fall of Nineveh (Tobit 14:4):

 

‘My son … I believe that God's judgment which his prophet Jonah announced against Nineveh is about to take place. Everything that God's prophets told Israel about Nineveh and Assyria will happen. It will all come true, every word of it, when the right time comes. I am absolutely convinced that everything God has said is sure to come true’.

 

and 14:10: Tobias, my son, leave Nineveh now. Do not stay here. As soon as you bury your mother beside me, leave; do not stay another night within the city limits. It is a wicked city and full of immorality; the people here have no sense of shame’, may quite plausibly be:

 


 


 

- Nahum being, of course, the prophet who would exult over the Fall of Nineveh.

Conventionally, this latter incident is said to have occurred in 612 BC. Now, the Book of Tobit also variously names the victors over Nineveh, including the name “Ahasuerus”. Thus we read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus#Book_of_Tobit):

 

In some versions of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, Ahasuerus is given as the name of an associate of Nebuchadnezzar, who together with him, destroyed Nineveh just before Tobit's death.[12] A traditional Catholic view is that he is identical to the Ahasuerus of Daniel 9:1[13] In the Codex Sinaiticus Greek (LXX) edition, the two names in this verse appear instead as one name, Ahikar (also the name of another character in the story of Tobit). Other Septuagint texts have the name Achiachar. Western scholars have proposed that Achiachar is a variant form of the name "Cyaxares I of Media", who historically did destroy Nineveh, in 612 BC.

[End of quote]

 

Probably the last view at least is correct, that Cyaxares is meant. And this king may also be the one intended by “the Ahasuerus of Daniel 9:1”.

But more work needs to be done to clarify the Medo-Persian succession.

So far I have advanced these considerations:

“Darius the Mede” is King Cyrus:

 


 


 

and is, as well, the “Ahasuerus” of both Ezra and Esther:

 


 




 

Part Two:

The Name “Ahasuerus”

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The name, “Ahasuerus”, is thought to equate very well with the name, “Xerxes”.

 

 

Herb Storck has this to say about these Medo-Persian names in his valiant attempt to sort out History and Prophecy: A Study in the Post-Exilic Period (House of Nabu, 1989), pp. 65-66:

 

It is the overwhelming consensus that Ahasuerus is linguistically identical with Xerxes. ….

The best that one could say [sic] is that this [Daniel 1:9’s father of “Darius the Mede”] Ahasuerus was the name or title of some Median king of whom the author of Daniel had heard. That name or title may have been Cyaxares. The Ahasuerus of Tobit 14:15 was almost certainly Cyaxares.

Cyaxares is a Greek form of the old Iranian Hu ʼwakhshtra, “having good growth”, or Hu w ʼakhshtra, “having good oversight” ….

This same name appears in Akkadian as u-wa6 -kish-tar or u-wa6-ku-ish-tar. ….

However, in later Greek forms we have the Cyaxares as noted but also Oxyartes which Nagel also explains as going back to ʼHwakhshtra …. This points to a bifurcation in the later pronunciation of the original. The name Cyaxares appears at least once as Cyares, an apparent contraction of Cyaxares or perhaps Cyrus. …. Finally, the form Asyeros is attested in the Book of Tobit, in a connection that requires its identification with Cyaxares.

… Ahasuerus may have been a title at least among the Jews and Greeks, and may have referred to more than one Medo-Persian monarch.

[End of quote]

 

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