Some Tales of Ancient Israel, Their Originals and Parallels

Summary

This engaging essay juxtaposes a cluster of moral tales from disparate cultural traditions that share a common narrative pattern of exaggerated or whimsical judgements. The first part recounts a Jewish story in which a drunken soldier unintentionally causes the deaths of several people, including a man he crushes when falling through a roof. When the victims bring him before a wise judge, the judge imposes poetic justice: the soldier must give a pound of flesh to the Jew without shedding blood—a judgement reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice; he must live with the pregnant woman until she bears another child; the horse he damaged must be halved and shared; and he must be killed by falling off a roof in the same way he killed the child. The story’s absurdity is mirrored in Indian literature by a tale from the Kathāsaritsāgara in which a washerman’s donkey eats a woman’s vegetables, causing her miscarriage; the judge orders the Brahman to carry the donkey’s load until its hoof heals and to impregnate the woman again. Russian folklore preserves a similar narrative in the Shemyakin Sud, where a poor man accidentally kills oxen, a child and an old man and, fearing the judge’s wrath, threatens to stone the judge; the frightened judge decides the cases in his favour. A Tibetan version also features a Brahman who loses borrowed oxen and is punished with an absurd sentence. By comparing these stories, the author argues that the Jewish tale probably derived from Indian sources and travelled westward through Buddhist collections into Arabic and European literature. The article analyses thematic parallels, such as the misfortunes caused by careless actions, the trickster’s appeal to the judge and the ironic reversal of judgement, and notes distinctive features in each variant. It concludes that these tales demonstrate the fluidity of folklore across cultures and the enduring appeal of narratives that mock judicial processes.