H. Tadmor and Y. Levin come close to identifying Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh

by Damien F. Mackey “Both Tadmor and Cogan mention Ahiqar, the Aramean adviser who served in the court of Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son. …. Machinist, in his article on Rabshakeh, writes of “Hayim Tadmor’s now celebrated view,” … and they all cite the Babylonian Talmud tractate b. Sanh. 60a, which suggests that “Rabshakeh was an apostate Israelite”.” Yigal Levin Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh, who verbally taunted king Hezekiah’s chief officials and those Jews manning the walls of Jerusalem during Assyria’s invasion of Judah, was indeed the historical and biblical Ahiqar (Ahikar). And, at that particular point in time, Ahiqar was apparently also, as according to the Babylonian Talmud, “an apostate Israelite”: Achior the Ephraïmite (DOC) Achior the Ephraïmite | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu For this Ahiqar was the nephew of a northern Israelite, the pious Tobit, who, unlike his Naphtalian brethren, had remained faithful to Yahwism. Sennacherib may well have chosen Ahiqar for his western (Judah) campaign because of the fact that the latter, as an Israelite, spoke, not only Aramaïc, but also Yehudit, which was akin to Hebrew, the spoken language of the Jews in Jerusalem. The high officials, led by Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who had now replaced Shebna as high priest (“over the Tabernacle”), also - unlike the mass of people - spoke Aramaïc, which Ahiqar, as an exile in Nineveh, obviously knew. King Hezekiah’s officials almost certainly knew of the Rabshakeh and knew that he spoke a form of Hebrew. Yigal Levin has discussed the various view about Rabshakeh in his useful article (2015): How Did Rabshakeh Know the Language of Judah? (PDF) How did Rabshakeh Know the Language of Judah? | Yigal Levin - Academia.edu