What was the original of this story? Nothing in the romance of its incidents, or in the marvel of the spread of it and its maxims and its incorporated fables throughout the folk-lore of humanity, exceeds the dramatic fact that a large fragment of the tale, in Aramaic, has been found in Egypt among other Jewish papyri of the fifth century before the Christian era! The discovery proves many things, among them two being most significant. First, the Ahikar story is far older than people used to think, and thus the theory that the story of Ahikar was invented to _explain_ the reference in Tobit is once for all disproved. Second, it is at least tenable that the original language was Aramaic and the story Jewish. Here, at all events, we have unquestionable evidence that there must have been among the Jews, nearly 2,400 years ago, an impulse towards that species of popular tale which so deeply affected the literature and poetry of the world. Ahikar, it has even been suggested, is the ultimate source of at least one of the New Testament parables. But, more generally, now that we know that the story of Ahikar was at so early a date current among Jews, we shall be more plausibly able to justify the belief, long ago held by some, that Aesop and other similar collections of fables do truly come from Jewish originals. At any rate, ancient Jewish parallels must have been in circulation. So much for the main results of the discovery. Small details of interest abound. Tobit bade his son: “Pour out thy bread and thy wine on the graves of the righteous (4. 17).” All sorts of changes have been suggested in the text. But the saying is found in the versions of Ahikar, and may be accepted as genuine. It is not necessarily a pagan rite; it has analogy with the funeral meal which long prevailed (and still prevails) as a Jewish custom. Even more interesting seems another detail (of the Syriac Version), which the writers on the books of Ahikar and Tobit have overlooked. When Tobit’s son starts on his quest, his dog goes with him. This is a remarkable touch. Nowhere else in ancient Jewish literature does the dog appear as man’s companion. Nowhere else? Yes, in one other place--in the story of Ahikar. “My son,” says the vizier to Nadan, “strike with stones the dog that has left his own master and followed after thee.” Here we see the dog regarded as a comrade, to be forcibly discouraged if he show signs of infidelity. There must have been a period, therefore, when the olden Jews considered the dog in a light quite other than that which afterwards became usual. PHILO ON THE “CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE”