Tobias
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We shall first enumerate the various Biblical
persons and then treat the book of this name.
Persons
Tobias (2 Chronicles 17:8)
Hebrew tobyyahu "Yahweh is
good";
Septuagint Tobias — one of the
Levites whom
Josaphat sent to teach in the cities of
Juda. The name is omitted in the
Vatican and
Alexandrian codices, but given in the other important Greek
manuscripts and the
Vulgate.
Tobias (Zechariah 6:10)
Hebrew tobyyahu,
qeri tobyyah which is the reading also of
verse 14;
Septuagint chresimon (
verse 10),
tois chresimois autes (
verse 14), which infers the reading
tobeha; Vulgate Tobia — one of the party of
Jews who came from Babylon to Jerusalem, in the
time of Zorobabel, with silver and gold wherewith to make a crown for the head of Jesus, son of Josedec.
Tobia (Ezra 2:60)
Hebrew tobyyah, "Jah is my
good";
Septuagint Tobeia (
Vatican),
Tobias (
Alexandrian), the same name occurring in
Nehemiah 7:62, as
Tobia and in the
apocryphal III Esdras 5:37 as
baenan (
Vatican) or
ban (
Alexandrian) — one of the
families that, on their return from
exile, could show no written
proof of their
genealogy.
Tobias (Nehemiah 2:10)
An
Ammonite who together with Sanaballat the Horonite opposed the fortification of
Jerusalem by Nehemias (
Nehemiah 2:19;
4:3;
6:17;
13:4, 8). He is called "the servant"; we can only conjecture what that means. Cheyne (Encyclopedia Biblica, s.v.) thinks that
haebed, servant, is a mistake for
ha arbi, the
Arab.
Tobias (2 Maccabees 3:11)
The father of Hircanus.
Tobias (Tobit 1:29, and passim)
The son of the following.
Tobias the Elder
The chief character in the book that bears his name.
Book of Tobias
A canonical book of the
Old Testament.
Name
In
Codex Alexandrinus,
biblos logon Tobit; in
Vaticanus,
Tobeit; in
Sinaiticus,
Tobeith; in Latin
manuscripts Liber Tobiae, Liber Tobit et Tobiae, Liber utriusque Tobiae. In the
Vulgate and Hebrew Fagii both father and son have the same name, Tobias,
tobyyah. In other texts and
versions, the name of the father varies:
tobi, "my good" is Jahweh; in Hebrew Munster;
Tobit or
Tobeit in the Septuagint;
Tobis, or
Tobit, standing for
tobith "goodness" of Jahweh, in the Old Latin.
Text and versions
The original text, supposed to have been Hebrew, is lost; the reasons assigned for an Aramaic original warrant only a probable opinion that an Aramaic translation influenced our present Greek versions.
(1) Vulgate Versions
St. Jerome had not yet learned Aramaic, when, with the aid of a
rabbi who
knew both Aramaic and Hebrew, he made the
Vulgate version. The
rabbi expressed in Hebrew the thought of the Aramaic
manuscripts and
St. Jerome straightway put the same into Latin. It was the work of only a day (cf. Praef. in Tobiam). The Old Latin certainly influenced this hurried version. The
Vulgate recension of the Aramaic version tells the story in the third person throughout, as do the Aramaic of Neubauer and the two Hebrew texts of Gaster (HL and HG), whereas all the other texts make Tobias speak in the first person up to
3:15. The following passages occur in the
Vulgate alone: the wagging of the dog's tail (
11:9); the comparison of the coating on Tobias's eye to the membrane of an egg (
11:14); the wit of half an hour while the gall of the fish effected its cure (
11:14); Tobias closing of the eyes of Raguel and Edna in death; also
2:12,
2:18,
3:19,
3:24,
6:16-18,
6:20-21,
8:4-5,
9:12b. Some parts of the
Vulgate, such as the
continence of Tobias (
6:18;
7:4), were looked upon at times as
Christian interpolations of Jerome until they were found in one of Gaster's Hebrew texts (HL). Lastly, the
Vulgate and HL omit all mention of Ahikhar; Achior of
Vulgate 11:20, is probably an addition to the text.
(2) Aramaic Versions
Besides the Aramaic version used by Jerome and now lost, there is the extant Aramaic text recently found in an Aramaic commentary on
Genesis, "Midrash Bereshit Rabba". The writing of this
midrash is fifteenth-century work; it contains the Book of Tobias as a
haggada on the promise
Jacob makes to give
tithes to
God (
Genesis 28:22). Neubauer edited the text, "The Book of Tobit, a Chaldee Text from a unique manuscript in the Bodleian Library" (Oxford, 1878). He thinks that it is a briefer form of Jerome's Aramaic text. This is not likely. The language is at times a transliteration of Greek and gives evidence of being a transliteration of one or other of the Greek texts. It agrees with the
Vulgate in that from the outset the tale of Tobias is told in the third person; otherwise it is closer to
Codex Vaticanus and closer still to
Codex Sinaiticus.
(3) Greek versions
There are three Greek recensions of Tobias. We shall refer to them by the numbers given to the
Vatican and
Sinaitic codices in Vigouroux, "La sainte bible polyglote", III (Paris, 1902).
(a) AB, the text of the Alexandrian (fifth century) and
Vatican (fourth century)
codices. This recension is found in many other
codices of the Greek text, has been used for centuries by the
Greek Church, is incorporated into the Sixtine edition of the
Septuagint, and has been translated into
Armenian as the
authentic text of that
rite. AB is preferred to the Sinaitic recension by Nöldeke, Grumm, and others, and yet rated by Nestle, Ewald, and Haris as a compendium rather than as a version of the entire original text. It condenses Edna's Prayer (x, 13), omits the
blessing of Gabael (
9:6), and has three or four unique readings (
3:16;
14:8-10;
11:8).
(b)
Aleph, the text of the Sinaitic (fourth-century) Codex. Its style is very much more diffuse than that of AB, which seems to have omitted of set purpose many
stichoi of
Aleph -- cf.
2:12, "on the seventh of Dustros she cut the web";
5:3, the incident of the bond divided into two parts, one for Tobias and the other for Raguel;
5:5, the long conversation between
Raphael and young Tobias;
6:8;
10:10;
12:8, etc.
Aleph omits
4:7-19, and
13:6b-9, of AB.
(c) The text of
Codices 44, 106, 107 for
6:9-
13:8.—The first portion (
1:1-
6:8) and the last (
13:9 to end) are identical with AB; the remainder seems to be an attempt at a better version of the original text. Independent work is shown by
6:9 to
7:17;
8:1 to
12:6, is very close to the
Syriac and nearer to
Aleph than to AB;
12:7-13:8 resembles each text in various small details. Distinctive readings of these cursives are Edna's
Gnostic prayer, "Let all the
Æons praise thee" (
8:15); and the fact that Anna saw the dog running before Tobias (
11:5).
(d) What seems to be a third recension of the
second chapter is presented in Grenfell and Hunt, "Oxyrhyneus Papyri" (Oxford, 1911), part viii. The text differs from both AB and
Aleph and consequently the Greek cursives.
(4) Old Latin Versions
Previous to the
Latin Vulgate translation of the Aramaic recension (see above) there existed at least three Old Latin versions of a Greek text which was substantially
Aleph; (a) the recension of Codex Regius Parisiensis 3654 and Codex 4 of the
Library of St-Germain; (b) the recension of Cod. Vat. 7, containing
1-
6:12; (c) the recension of the "Speculum" of St. Augustine.
(5) Syriac Version
Down to
7:9, it is a translation of AB; thereafter, it agrees with the Greek cursive text, save that
13:9-18, is omitted. This second part is clearly a second recension; its proper names are not spelled as in the first part. Ahikhar (
14:10) is Achior (
2:10); 'Edna (
7:14) is 'Edna (
7:2) 'Arag (
9:2) is Raga (
4:1,
4:20).
(6) Hebrew Versions
There are four Hebrew versions of this deuterocanonical story:
(a) HL, Hebrew Londinii, a thirteenth-century
manuscript, found by Gaster in the British Museum, and translated by him in the "Proceedings of the Soc. of the Bibl. Archaeology" (xvii and xx). Besides a cento of
Scriptural exhortations, this
manuscript contains the narrative portion of Tobias, translated, Gaster thinks, from a text that stood in closest relation to the Aramaic used by
St. Jerome. It is just possible, though not in the least probable, that the thirteenth-century Jewish author of HL made use of the
Vulgate.
(c) HG, Hebrew Gasteri, a text copied by Gaster from a
midrash on the
Pentateuch and published in the "Proc. of the Soc. of Bib. Arch." (xix). This
manuscript, now lost, agreed with the Aramaic of Neubauer and was in a compact style like that of the
Vulgate recension.
(c) HF, Hebrew Fagii, a very free translation of AB, done in the twelfth century by a Jewish scholar: it is found in Walton's "Polyglot".
(d) HM, Hebrew Munsteri, published by Munster in Basle A.D. 1542, found in Walton's "Polyglot". This text agrees as a rule with Neubauer's Aramaic, even when the latter is at variance with AB. It is, according to Ginsburg, of fifth-century origin. The Hebrew versions together with the Aramaic omit reference to the dog, which plays a prominent part in the other versions.
The foregoing review of the various and diverse recensions of the Book of Tobias shows how hard it would be to reconstruct the original text and how easily textual
errors may have crept into our
Vulgate or the Aramaic on which it depends.
Contents
Unless otherwise stated, these references are to the
Vulgate recension, whereof the
Douay is a translation. The story naturally divides itself into two parts:
(1) The fidelity of Tobias the elder and of Sara to the
Lord (
1:1-
3:25)
- The fidelity of Tobias (1:1-3:6) shown by his acts of mercy to fellow captives (1:11-17) and especially to the dead (1:18-25), acts that resulted in his blindness (2:1-18), the taunts of his wife (2:19-23), and the recourse of Tobias to God in prayer (3:1-6).
- The fidelity of Sara, daughter of Raguel and Edna (3:7-23). The very day that Tobias in Ninive was taunted by his wife and turned to God, Sara in Ecbatana was taunted by her maid as the murderess of seven husbands (3:7-10), and turned to God in prayer (3:11-23). The prayers of both were heard (3:24-25).
(2) The fidelity of the
Lord to Tobias and to Sara through the ministrations of the
angel Raphael (
4:1-
12:22).
- Raphael cares for the young Tobias on his journey to Gabael in Rages of Media to obtain the ten talents of silver left in bond by his father (4:1-9:12). The young man set out, after long instruction by his father (4:1-23); Raphael joins him as guide (5:1-28); Tobias while bathing in the Tigris is attacked by a large fish, catches it, and, at the advice of Raphael, keeps its heart, liver, and gall (6:1-22); they pass through Ecbatana, stop at Raguel's; Tobias asks Sara for wife and receives her (7:1-20); by continence and exorcism and the odor of the burning liver of the fish and the aid of Raphael, he conquers the devil who had slain the seven previous husbands of Sara (8:1-24); Raphael gets the money of Gabael in Rages, and brings him to Ecbatana to the marriage celebration of young Tobias (9:1-23).
- Raphael cures the blindness of the elder Tobias, on the return of his son, and manifests the truth that he is an angel (10:2-12:31). Conclusion: the hymn of thanksgiving of Tobias the elder, and the subsequent history of both father and son (13:1-14:7).
Purpose
To show that
God is faithful to those that are faithful to Him is evidently the chief purpose of the book, Neubauer (op. cit., p. xvi) makes out the burial of the dead to be the chief lesson; but the lesson of
almsgiving is more prominent. Ewald, "Gesch. des Volkes Israel", IV, 233, sets fidelity to the
Mosaic code as the main drift of the author, who writes for
Jews of the
Dispersion; but the book is meant for all
Jews, and clearly inculcates for them many secondary lessons and one that is fundamental to the rest --
God is true to those who are true to Him.
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