[160]. In the Talmudic treatise Soferim xvi. 9, a list of Hillel’s acquirements is given, including the conversations of the mountains, the trees, the animals, the demons, &c. On the Jewish fable literature, the wealth of which seems unparalleled, see Back, Die Fabel in Talmud und Midrash, in Gratz’s Monatsschrift, 1875-1884. Curiously enough the two oldest Jewish fables are similar in character to those of the Old Test.
[161]. Comp. Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 75, 76, 100-103; Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Ancient History, pp. 273-291; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 91; Records of the Past, viii. 157-160.
[162]. Comp. Weber, Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 227.
[163]. See Scarborough, Collection of Chinese Proverbs (1875). The Chinese proverbs have no known authors.
[164]. On the riddles referred to, see Wünsche, Die Räthselweisheit bei den Hebräern (1883). Comp. them with the later Arabic proverbs (see Hariri, and comp. Freytag, Proverbia arabica).
[165]. Dr. Grätz is of opinion that Solomon was a fabulist like Jotham; in the text I have followed Josephus (Ant. vii. 2, 5). Legend related how the wise king, like the early men in African folk-lore (Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 116), talked with (not merely of) beasts, birds, and fishes, but delighted most in the birds.
[166]. This was also the opinion of Ewald (History, iii. 281). It might now be urged in its favour that Assurbanipal’s library contained bilingual lists of animals, vegetables, and minerals. But remember that the Assyrians were incomparably more civilised than the Israelites, and had both a lexicographical and a scientific interest in making these lists, and above all that Solomon is not stated to have written, but only to have spoken.
[167]. See the Tosefoth to the Talmudic treatise Baba bathra, 14b, where the name is given both to Proverbs and to Ecclesiastes. It is however more commonly found in Christian than in Jewish literature, often under the fuller form ἡ πανάρετος σοφία (see especially Eusebius, H. E., iv. 22).
[168]. The second line however seems to have intruded from ver. 11, and thus to have supplanted the original.
[169]. Here again the second line is evidently an intruder (from ver. 8). We should doubtless read with Sept., ‘but he that reproves produces welfare.’