Tabitha (Tabitha)

TABITHA (Ταβιδά). – Christian woman (μαθήτρια “disciple”) of the primitive Church of Ioppe, raised from the dead by St. Peter (Act. 9:36–42).

With her means she helped the needy and was “rich in good works.” She may have belonged to the group of the “widows” (the Cod. Sessoriano 82 calls her a “widow”), already organized from the time of the ordination of the seven Deacons (Act. 6:1), although perhaps not yet in the form in which it appears in I Tim. 5:9 ff. Having died while St. Peter was at Lidda, three hours from Ioppe, she was raised by him in circumstances that partly recall the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mc. 5:35–43), which St. Peter had in fact witnessed and which St. Luke could also have known from the Gospel of St. Mark. The non-Catholic scholars Baur, Holtzmann, Pfleiderer, and Knopf are wrong to regard this miracle as a “duplicate” in order to deny its historicity.

T. is a transcription of the Aramaic ρῥῖτι (Hebrew ʾebhijjāh, Greek δαραάς), “gazelle” (regarded by the Semites and the Bible as a type of beauty; cf. the Hebrew ʾebhī, “ornament”); it was widely used as a woman’s name, like other names of animals (Rachele, Debora, Iemina).

ARCHAEOLOGY. — On a fragment of a sarcophagus from Arles, the scene of the miracle of T.’s resurrection is represented, according to the account in Acts 9:36–42: the Apostle approaches the bed on which the deceased T. has been laid, takes her by the arm, and she rises; in the foreground are two veiled widows, and before the Apostle two other female figures kneel. The same subject was identified by G. Wilpert on a sarcophagus at St-Maximin; it is also reproduced on an ivory in the British Museum.

ENFICO JOSI