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Proverb in Sumerian and Talmud (1)

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Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list) Proverb collections 04 Religious and philosophical literature and poetry 04.03 Wisdom literature 04.03.06 Proverb collections	Keywords sayings
Period 4th century CE Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian Empires	Channel Jewish philosophers and scholars Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian texts

Text
In Shabbat 76b the Talmudic scholar Abaye (fl. 280-339 CE) quotes a Hebrew proverb which resembles a Sumerian one.

Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 76b:
A poor man eats bread of course flour.

Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.55:
Let the poor man die, let him not live. When he finds bread, he finds no salt. When he finds salt, he finds no bread.

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 76b
Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.55

Bibliography

Alster 1997, I 16	Alster, Bendt. Proverbs of Ancient Sumer. The World's Earliest Proverb Collections. 2 Vols. Bethesda: CDL Press 1997.
Geller 2004, 18	Geller, Mark J. Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud. Preprint 259. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 2004. [PDF]

Amar Annus

URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000929.php

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