The Influence of the Proverb on Arab and Hebrew Culture

The proverb is a literary form whose origins are lost in the mists of time, and which, according to most scholars, preceded the invention of writing. It is also prevalent among peoples who are illiterate. Existing from the dawn of humanity and not confined to any specific country, proverbs transcend all frontiers. Known to the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians and the Persians, they are also found in the Grco-Roman civilization and they left a particular imprint on the Arab and Hebrew cultures. They might be described as oral literature, the progenitor of written cultural traditions. Before man was able to express himself in writing, he was able to encapsulate the essence of his wisdom in elliptical form. The proverb, handed down from father to son, spread regardless of borders and ethnic groups. Scholars are agreed that many proverbs found among one people can be traced in others.

In his monumental collection of proverbs, Ze leumat ze ("That Against the Other"), published in 1954, Israel Cohen postulated that all men are formed from the same clay, are created by one God and share in his wisdom. Human nature is universal. Orientals and occidentals, whites and peoples of a different colour skin are all essentially the same. Love, hunger and existential fear motivate all human beings created in the image of God. The natural or cultural environment undoubtedly adds a new dimension to these elements, but no civilization is capable of uprooting or concealing mans basic instincts. Consequently, specialists in proverbs have reached the conclusion that there is a great similarity among these sayings. Aphorisms offering good counsel are to be found in identical or similar form among ethnic groups very distant one from the another.

Everywhere, love and distress are dominant: one consoles the afflicted, comforts the bereaved, guides the perplexed, enlivens the taciturn and cheers the melancholy. Everywhere, one seeks to draw a lesson from experience and to pass it on to others and to future generations. It is thus quite natural that the same motifs should recur in the proverbs of the majority of peoples, sometimes with the same formulation of the moral to be drawn. The sayings embrace all spheres of life and deal with every aspect of mans natural experience.

Nili Shupak, a lecturer in anthropology at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, who has made a comparative study of literature relating to wisdom in ancient Egyptian civilization and in Hebrew culture, has demonstrated the great influence of the former on the sacred scriptures of Judaism. An example is I Samuel, chapter 24, verse 13: "As saith the proverb of the ancients, wickedness proceedeth from the wicked." Who were these ancients who invented proverbs? Until an attribution is made, a whole treasury of maxims and proverbs in the Hebrew writings will be unaccounted for, from the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job and the Psalms to the Ethics of the Fathers. In the oldest parts of the Bible (the five books of the Pentateuch and the Prophets), one finds a great many verses generally regarded as proverbs. The teachings of Moses have much to say on law and justice in the form of aphorisms which have become familiar to all mankind.

Nearly all the verses in the Book of Proverbs are aphorisms. In each generation, the literary structure of this compilation has been the subject of commentary and research. It is full of expressions of wisdom, of understanding, of knowledge, of ethical instruction and of admonition. It covers all themes: life and death, livelihood, landscape, the status of women, attitudes to sickness, conduct towards the simple-minded and sages, love, jealousy, and so on. Thanks to Christianity, the Bible has been translated into a myriad of languages and disseminated throughout the world. It is the most frequently used source for quotations, and all religions and human societies have been influenced by it. It is clearly not for nothing that it is called the "Book of Books." We have mentioned the antiquity of the proverb and the ease with which it crosses frontiers, and the best proof of this is that the Bible with its verses, reflections and legends belongs to the whole of humanity.

Our forefathers attached enormous importance to the proverb as a vehicle for the divine message and for homilies inculcating justice, love of ones neighbour, mutual aid, compassion for widows and orphans and avoidance of moral transgression. It is not without reason that a midrash (exegetical commentary) on the Song of Songs declares: "Do not regard the parable as a thing of no value, for it is by means of it that man learns Torah." The highly elliptical structure of aphorisms and proverbs often consists of only a small number of words, sometimes no more than a couple, easy to remember and repeat. Even when proverbs are more extended, their construction, based on rhyme, parallelism, antithesis and compression generally enables them to be easily remembered and quoted.

Islam, too, has attached the greatest importance to the proverb as a vehicle for concepts, ethical teachings, wisdom, preaching and meditation. One can say with near certainty that no society has such a wealth of proverbs as possessed by Arab and Islamic society, but only Judaism approaches it in this sphere. We have already touched on the sources of these sayings, parables and proverbs in Hebrew: there is a similar abundance in Arab culture. Islam, like Judaism, gives immense weight to the proverb, as indicated in the Koran: watilka al-amssalu nidribuha lilnnassi wama yakiluha illa al-alimoun ("Sura of the Spider," No. 43, verse 64,) ("We shall speak these parables to men, but only the learned will understand"); or watilka al-amssallu lilnnassi laalahum yattafakarun ("Sura of the Reunion," No. 59, verse 21,) ("We shall speak these parables to men so that they may reflect on them").

As in Judaism, proverbs in Islam were used to strengthen faith and to inculcate virtue. Just as every rabbi quotes the Bible, exegetical, mishnaic and talmudic texts and various commentators, so every imam and sheikh embellishes his speeches and sermons with suras from the Koran and sayings of the prophet Mohammed and the first caliphs. Some Moslem sages quoted stanzas of poetry which had become familiar proverbial sayings, or maxims from ancient collections of traditional Arab and Islamic literature. In both cultures, the proverb was and remains at the heart of religious, social, ethical, folkloric and artistic expression, more than in the case of any other pair of neighbouring cultures. Apart from direct quotations from canonical writings, one can perceive reciprocal influences in the sayings, parables and proverbs of the two cultures. Everyone knows the verse from Leviticus: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (19:18), which owing to its ethical and human connotations has become a universal formula. Parallel with this, one finds the famous Arabic phrase lo yumin akhadukum hatta yukhiba liakhyhy mayukhibbu linafssyi ("None of you will be considered believers if you do not love your neighbour as yourself"), attributed to the prophet Mohammed in the work Ryad al-Falahin ("The Gardens of the Righteous") by Al-Nawawi.

Professor Rudolf Zellheim, a noted German orientalist, wrote in his "Classical Arab Proverbs" (ed. Dar el-Amara, Beirut, 1971), translated into Arabic by Dr. Ramadan Abdu al-Tawab, a lecturer at Ein Shams University: "The maxims of the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet were undoubtedly employed by the populace in daily life, and they were popular aphorisms in the same way as were biblical sayings."

In the Middle Ages many Arab proverbs were translated into Hebrew: for example, the well-known aphorism inda fi al-imtikhan yuramu al-maru awu yuhan, translated by Ibn Gabirol in his Tackhemoni as: "It is in the time of testing that a man becomes an object of derision or respect." who does not know the famous maxim, "The dogs bark, and the caravan passes," which comes from the classic Arab proverb, al-kilabu tanbakhu wal-kafila tasir ? Or, "There is no point in running: one should leave on time," derived from the Arab aphorism, man taanna adraka ma tamanna?

One also finds sayings which are not literal translations but are stated in a slightly different manner, like "the stone which the builders rejected has become the headstone of the corner" (Psalms 118:22), which in Arabic becomes tsarat al-bieru al-muattala katzran machidan or "the waters wear away the stones" (Job 14:19), which becomes al dawam yaktau al-rukham, or "he who sows doubt may eat, or he may not" which becomes ruba zarin linafsii hatsidun siwau or ruba sayn likayidin. The sentence, "He that loveth silver is never satisfied with silver; he that loves luxury will gain no profit from it. This is also vanity!" (Ecclesiastes 5:10) has its parallel in one of the sayings of the Prophet: lahu anna libun wadyan min dahabin akhaba an yakuna lahu wadyaan. There are many other examples, such as, "the rich man hath many friends" (Proverbs 14:20), and its Arabic equivalent: inna al-habiba illa al-ykhuwan du al-mali or, again, "to follow a multitude" (Exodus 23:2), which becomes khachrun maa al-nassi ydun (a saying ascribed to the Prophet), and, finally, "Who is mighty? He who overcomes his impulse" (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1), which is similar to an aphorism of the Prophet, layssa al-chadidu bil-tsarat innama al-chadidu aladi yamliku nafsuhu inda al-addabi: "The strong man is not he who overcomes others, but he who overcomes his own anger."

As we have seen, the use of proverbs goes back to antiquity in the Hebrew language. Some were written down as is evident from the Book of Ecclesiastes and other parts of the Scriptures, and from other works like Ben Sira. In this respect, the Hebrew proverb fits into the cultural pattern of ancient south-west Asia (cf. J.M. Thompson, "The Form of Proverbs in Ancient Israel," The Hague, 1974). However, in the post-biblical period, the Hebrew proverb became less common than other forms of expression. There seem to be two main reasons for this: on the one hand, the inherently non-religious character of the proverb at a time when the thoughts and expressions of the people were focused on religious themes, and, on the other, the fact that, after the Second Temple, the Jews spoke languages other than Hebrew. These circumstances prevented a flowering of the proverb as a form of oral expression and may have resulted in a considerable number of aphorisms being forgotten. Others have undergone such a metamorphosis as to be scarcely recognizable (cf. Dov Sadan, "The Art of Word-play, Verbal Witticisms and Proverbs," Hebrew, Tel-Aviv, 1964). However, in Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino, the proverb developed in a spectacular manner. It also flourished among the Jews of Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen, under the influence of biblical and Arabic aphorisms, being enriched in the course of development by new sayings coined by the Jews to describe their conditions of life and social situation.

With the revival of Hebrew as a living language, the proverb regained its popularity. In this context, it must be pointed out that contrary to the view popularly held, the use of Hebrew as both a written and a spoken language never entirely stopped. Particularly, the use of Hebrew as a written tongue certainly never ceased, especially in rabbinic literature. There were collections of Hebrew and Aramaic proverbs: one need only mention that of Dukas, who in his anthology of 1844 amassed 865 examples from the Bible, the Talmud and other Jewish sources. One should also mention the existence in Hebrew of works which are not collections of proverbs as such, but which contain a plethora of proverbs and sayings. We should note particularly the Sefer Haagada ("The Book of Legends"), a collection in Hebrew of Talmudic and homiletical legends compiled by H.N. Bialik and Y.N. Ravnitsky. At the end of this major work, several hundred proverbs are listed in alphabetical order, with an explanation of difficult terms - especially those in Aramaic. In another area, Otsar Ha-Milim ("Vocabulary"), a monumental two-volume work of 1,272 pages by T. Radai, also deserves attention. This work has 300,000 entries, including thousands of sayings and proverbs, although their sources are not always given.

The history of the Arabic proverb is no less long or rich than that of the Hebrew aphorism. As we have pointed out, proverbs, parables, instructional poetry and sayings abounded previous to the Hejira, (Mohammeds flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE) and, to an even greater extent, after the birth of Islam. The proverbs of the Arabian desert reflected the local environment and for example, the specific life and beliefs of its inhabitants, and were remarkable for their abundance of metaphors, use of internal rhymes and resonant scansion. Many stanzas by celebrated Arab poets of the pre-Islamic and classical periods became proverbs and were recited and quoted by the public, and writers embellished their prose and poetry with them. When Islam appeared, this corpus was enriched with proverbs of an ethical nature, many of which formed part of the heritage of Jewish and Christian sayings. In the period of Islamic expansion, proverbs from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the cultures prevailing in the conquered territories, sometimes decked out in Christian or Persian finery, were incorporated into the Arabic language. The cultural conservatism of the Arabs, and their wish to preserve ancient materials imbued with the aura of sanctity, were the reasons archaic material survived and was added to the store of more recent proverbs from the conquered populations. Many anthologies of classical proverbs were compiled, but a large part of these collections required detailed explanations, either because their exact meaning was no longer understood at that time, or because there were differences of interpretation. It is therefore in no way surprising that the Koranic proverbs and sayings were the subject of innumerable commentaries in a direct line from the exegetical tradition of the Koran. The Arabs of the period highly valued the proverb, which they regarded as one of the greatest Arab creations. In his seminal work, Tsubkhu al-acha fi tsinaati al-inssa ("The Morning of the Night-Blind in the Art of Composition"), Al-Kalchandi stated that "proverbs, more immediately than poetry, have greater weight than speech. Nothing is more familiar or more widely known than are they; so much so that one says that something has become proverbial... "

In the 20th century, and especially since the 1950s, collections of proverbs have been published in many Arab countries. Each nation has wanted to draw attention to its sayings, both in the local language and in the various dialects existing on its soil. Generally, this labour of research and testimony has been undertaken by isolated scholars, who, captivated by the splendour of these aphorisms, collected them, adding explanations about the type of situation in which they were produced and the circumstances in which they could be used. Some of these anthologies are arranged in alphabetical form, and others according to themes. The cultural authorities in the Arab countries, wishing to preserve the tradition and to save this material from oblivion, have encouraged the phenomenon. We have no room here to list these anthologies, and several are still in progress. Many of these collections are of value to experts in folklore and oral language as well as to sociologists, who attempt, through the study of these aphorisms, to gain knowledge of a particular people, its hierarchical structures and social relationships.

The proverb has thus become a major branch of the linguistic and literary study of Hebrew and Arabic. Some scholars attempt to translate the sayings from one language to another, comparing them with parallel proverbs taken from linguistic sources, canonical writings, classical anthologies or the spoken language. Hebrew and Arabic readers thus become aware of the existence of a new means to mutual understanding, a welcome effort deserving every encouragement.