Acknowledgments
The studies collected in the present volume are varied in origin and hence also their structure is different. The introduction, the conclusion, Appendix 2 and the first and second chapters of the first part are unpublished, while the third chapter of the same part appeared with the same title in Sef 67/1 (2007), 5–36.
The second part of the book re-proposes part of an essay previously printed by Paideia Publishing House under the title La sofferenza del giusto. Giobbe e Tobia a confronto (StBib 159), Brescia 2009, 13–71.
The three chapters of the third part appeared in the following order: the first, “Aḥiqar nel libro di Tobia,” and the second, “Aḥiqar archetipo di Tobia? Sull’intertestualità biblica di una tradizione assiro-aramaica,” in AION 71 (2011), 87–114 and 73 (2013), 107–133 respectively; the third in Sef 73/1 (2013), 7–30, with the title “Aḥiqar tra leggenda e rielaborazione letteraria. Una tradizione e i suoi riflessi.”
The texts are republished with an essential updating of the bibliography and with some additions, removals, and various editorial modifications necessitated by their new placement. I apologize in advance for some repetitions and overlaps: in several instances this is due to the kind of unavoidable inconsistencies that are wont to arise when it is decided to only formally review previously published material.
I want to thank Dr Ramón B. Rodríguez, the editorial director of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas of Madrid; Dr Marco Scarpat, manager of the Paideia editorial brand of the Claudiana Publishing House; and Prof. Elda Morlicchio, President of the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” for permission to reissue and translate into English my aforementioned contributions, which previously appeared in Italian in the publishing houses of these institutions.
I am particularly indebted to Prof. René Bloch and Prof. Karina Martin Hogan for having accepted my work for inclusion in their prestigious collection of the Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series.
Apart from the publisher, the publication of this volume was also made possible by funding provided by the European Secretariate for Scientific Publications and by a grant from the Department of Historical and Philological Studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, which I am very grateful for.