Fables in the Hebrew Bible and in Rabbinic Literature

This chapter discusses the literary tradition of the fable in the Hebrew Bible that may be said to go back almost to the beginning of the created world, indeed to the Garden of Eden. It describes the surprising relative scarcity of biblical fables given the ubiquity and frequency with which animal and plant fables are found in the Ancient Near Eastern literary traditions out of which the Bible itself emerged. The scarcity of fables marking the biblical tradition continues into the early postbiblical tradition as there are no actual fables to be found in either the Apocrypha or the Pseudepigrapha. The chapter highlights fables in the rabbinic literature that are connected to biblical interpretation and preserved in exegetical contexts. It considers the fable recorded in Bereshit Rabbah 64:29 as one of the most famous fables preserved in narrative contexts.