JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Judah (II Kings 14:9; II Chron. 25:18). One interpretation of
I Kings 5:13 (where Solomon is said to have spoken of trees
and animals) is that it refers to Solomon’s writing of fables, a
field in which the Semitic wise man (e.g., *Ahikar) characteristically
engaged.
In the Talmud and Midrash
A much richer source of fables is the talmudic-midrashic literature,
which mentions several outstanding fabulists, notably
*Hillel (Sof. 16:7), and his pupil, *Johanan b. Zakkai (Suk. 28a;
BB 134a; Sof. 16:6). Johanan mastered three genres: fox tales,
palm tales (lit., “the talk of palm trees”), and washerman tales.
(The last, mishlei kovesim, has been interpreted by Landsberger
(see bibl.) as referring to the first century C.E. Libyan fabulist,
Kybisses, a view rejected by D. Noy (see bibl. Maḥanayim, 91),
and others.) According to the Talmud, the most prolific of the
fabulists was R. *Meir, a tanna in the last generation (Sanh.
38b–39b); he was reputed to have known 300 fables, but only
three were transmitted to his students. (The numbers are formulistic
and perhaps exaggerated.) It is even said that when
he died “the composers of fables ceased” (Sot. 49a). J.L. *Gordon
argues that R. Meir’s fables were Aesopian and that he had
heard them from his teacher, *Elisha b. Avuyah, who was acquainted
with Greek culture. *Bar Kappara, in the following
generation, is said to have known as many fables as R. Meir
(Eccles. R. 1:3). It is interesting to note that the fox, the hero
of a great number of European fables, is a central figure in the
talmudic tradition of animal fables. In the Midrash, the fox
himself is depicted as a teller of fables (Gen. R. 78:7).
The same period reflects an increased affinity with the
Aesopian tradition and the Indian animal tales (as they are
known from the Jatakas and the Panchatantra). According to
Jacobs, of 30 talmudic fables only six lack Greek or Indian parallels;
many show both. I. *Ziegler maintains that the fables as
taught by the rabbis were adapted to their audience more than
their Greek counterparts: the insistence on moral and theological
teaching is stronger with the rabbis, as seen in the following
comparison of epimythia (i.e., the proverb-like statements
concluding the narrative). In the fable of the fox who ate too
many grapes and was required to fast before he was able to
leave the vineyard, the Aesopian version concludes that time
takes care of everything, whereas Ecclesiastes Rabbah brings
a moralizing quotation from Ecclesiastes (5:14): “As he came
forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return.”
In the Middle Ages
THE ALPHABET OF *BEN SIRA. Among the stories in this
work are the fable of Leviathan and the fox, an etiological fable
about the enmity between cat and mouse; and other stories
containing motifs from international folklore and possibly
based on folktales. The 1698 Amsterdam edition was printed
with “Musar al-pi ha-Ḥidah,” a fragment of a collection of fables,
printed in the early 16th century under the name Ḥidot
Isopeto. (“The Riddles of Isopet”). The name Isopeto, for Aesop,
appears in other Jewish writings, and parallels the name
Ysopet in the Romance languages.
fable
ḥIBBUR YAFEH MIN HA-YESHU’AH (“The Book of Redemption”).
In the 11th century Rabbenu Nissim, from Kairouan
(see *Nissim b. Jacob b. Nissim ibn Shahin), wrote this book
of tales, which also includes two fables. The work, originally
written in Arabic, was discovered in 1896; prior to that, only
the Hebrew translation (Ma’asiyyot she-ba-Talmud, Constantinople,
1519) was known.
KALILA AND DIMNA. Translated into Latin as Directorium
Vitae by the apostate *John of Capua, this composition was
of great importance to European fable literature; it became
the basis of all translations. According to A.S. Rappoport, the
Greek translation of Kalila and Dimna (ed. by J. Derenbourg,
1881) was also made by a Jew, Simeon, in 1080. The original is
to be traced back through the eighth-century Arabic translation
to an origin in the Indian Panchatantra. This line of influence
from India nourished the prose fiction of the Jews of
Muslim and later of Christian Spain and of Provence.
SEFER SHA’ASHU’IM (“Book of Delights”). Written at the end
of the 12th century by Joseph b. Meir *Ibn Zabara – whose
cultural environment was clearly Muslim – this work bears
some relation to the Taḥkemoni of Judah *Al-Ḥarizi, and to
the maqamat of the Arabic poet Al-Ḥariri. It contains a fable
which deals with a conflict between the strong leopard and
the sly fox and which in turn forms the framework for another
fable and for four other stories, describing faithless women
(one of them the widow of Ephesus, which also appears in
Petronius’ Satyricon). One of the stories is a version of the
fable of the fox in the vineyard, completely devoid, however,
of the homiletic bent of the Midrash. The book shows traces
of Arabic, Greek, and Indian culture, and has parallels in collections
of medieval exempla literature. It was translated into
English by M. Hadas as The Book of Delight (1960).
BEN HA-MELEKH VE-HA-NAZIR (“The Prince and the Hermit”).
Translated into Hebrew by Abraham ibn Ḥisdai in
Spain at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century
(first printed edition, Constantinople, 1518), this work was
discovered by Steinschneider to be a translation and adaptation
of the Greek “Barlaam and Joasaph.” Indian in origin
(c. eighth century), it is a typical example of lndian wisdom
literature, in which the stories are told by a wise man as he
tutors a young prince.
MISHLEI SHU’ALIM (“Fox Fables”). This work was written by
R. *Berechiah b. Natronai ha-Nakdan who lived during the
creative period of Jewish fable literature (end of the 12th and
beginning of the 13th century), and was printed in Mantua in
1557. The use of the name Mishlei Shu’alim, identical with a
genre of fables mentioned in the Talmud (Suk. 28a; Sanh. 38b),
is explained on the title page by the statement that the fox is
the most cunning of animals, and therefore the cleverest. The
number of fables included in this collection varies between 107
and 115 with the different manuscripts. They are written in the
form of maqamat, in a clear, lively style; structurally each has
an epimythium, the first two lines of which comprise the pro-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 667