Tobias

TOBIAS. - A pious Jew who gives his name to the deuterocanonical book of the Old Testament that narrates his story. In the Vulgate the title is Liber Tobiae, in the ancient Greek manuscripts Τοβίτ (or Τωβίτ) and in the more recent ones Βίβλος λόγων Τωβίτ, with the genealogy, the homeland and the deportation of T. In the Vulgate the father and the son are called Tobias; in Greek, on the other hand, Τωβίας is only the son, while the father is called Tobit, a form derived from a Hebrew name whose abbreviated form must have been Τόβιτ and whose full form Τόβιβήλ (Ecd. 3, 60) or Τόβιβήλ (II Par. 17, 8) = "Yahweh is good." Tob. narrates the trial of the righteous man, whom God providentially raises up and consoles. It unfolds in three parts coordinated into a harmonious whole.

1. Virtue and afflictions (1:1-3:17 [S]; 1:1-3:23 [Vulg.]). Tobit is an Israelite of the tribe of Naphtali, deported under Shalmaneser to Nineveh, where he is constant in the practice of the Law, as in his homeland. He marries Anna and has a son named T.; he does business, protected by the Assyrian king (1:9-15). Faithful to God and to his countrymen even under the persecution that the new king Sennacherib unleashes against the Israelites, Tobit buries their corpses (1:16-19); for this he is sought for death and stripped of everything. When the tyrant is killed by his own sons, Tobit returns to his house and takes up his possessions again (1:20-23). Having returned tired from burying the abandoned corpses, while he sleeps at the foot of the wall of his house, dung from a nest of birds falls into his eyes; poorly treated by the physicians, Tobit becomes blind. Afflicted by the mockery of his friends and of his wife, as though his works of piety were useless (2:1-14), he addresses a heartfelt prayer to God (3:1-6). At the same time, also Sara, daughter of Raguel, at Ecbatana in Media, seven times married and as many times left a widow by the death of her husbands, on the very day of the wedding, and afflicted by the insolence of one of her maidservants, turns to God (3:7-15). God hears their prayers (3:15 ff.).

2. Providential intervention of God, who sends the angel Raphael (v. RAFFAELE) to their aid (4:1-12:22 [S]; 3:24-12:22 [Vulg.]). Tobit sends T. his son to Media to collect a sum from Gabael (v. GABELO) his relative (4:1-5:3). To T. there offers himself, as travel companion and guide, the angel Raphael in the appearance of a man, concealing his true personality, and with him he sets out (5:4-22). On the evening of the 1st day they reach the Tigris; T. approaches the water to wash his feet and is threatened by a large fish; by order of the Angel he seizes it, guts it to preserve the heart, the liver and the gall to be used as possible medicines (6:1-9). At Ecbatana, the Angel induces T. to lodge with Raguel, his relative, and to ask for Sara in marriage; he teaches him to drive away Asmodeus (v.), who had killed the first seven husbands of Sara: to burn the heart and the liver of the fish, and before consummating the marriage the spouses are to keep vigil and pray (6:10-7:8). To everyone's satisfaction, the marriage is concluded (7:9-8:19): T. remains two weeks with his father-in-law, while Raphael goes to collect the sum from Gabael (8:20-9:6). Tobit and his wife await the return of their son with impatience (10:1-7); T., having taken leave of his father-in-law, returns to Nineveh with his spouse; he precedes the others and runs to embrace his father, spreads the gall of the fish on his eyes and restores his sight, to the great joy of all (10:8-11:17). Raphael reveals his true being and disappears (ch. 12). Tobit bursts forth in a hymn of thanksgiving (ch. 13).

3. Epilogue. Near to death, Tobit gives his final recommendations to his son T. and expires. When his mother also dies, T. emigrates to Media to his father-in-law and dies in late old age, after having heard the announcement of the fall of Nineveh (ch. 14).

The original of Tob. (in Hebrew or in Aramaic) has been lost. The translation of St. Jerome, from an Aramaic text (or version) (PL 29, 33), is part of the Vulgate (v.). The Greek version has been preserved in three forms or recensions. The 1st is in the codices Vaticanus (B) and Alexandrinus (A), in most of the minuscules and in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1594 (3rd century); it was the text in use in the Greek Church; from it derive the Syriac (in 1:1-7:5), Ethiopic, and Coptic versions. The 2nd is in the codex Sinaiticus (S), with two lacunae (4:7-19; 13:8-11); from it depends the Old Latin, which is a precious element for its critical reconstruction; from it also derive the Aramaic and Arabic versions. The recension of S is more expansive in the narrative, of a more vulgar diction, of a more Semitic coloring; that of BA is more concise and of better Greek. Rahlfs, Septuaginta, I (Stuttgart 1935), on the same page places the form BA at the top and S at the bottom. Which of the two stands closer to the original is a matter of great disagreement among critics. Of the more recent Catholic exegetes, Galdos ([v. bibl.] p. 40) prefers B; Miller ([v. bibl.] p. 21 f.) and Vaccari (who gives its translation in fine Italian dress) prefer S; the latter is the prevailing tendency. In the Vulgate the whole narrative from the beginning is in the 3rd person, whereas in the Greek the preamble

(1:1-2:6) is in the 1st person; in the Vulgate the parenetic element is more abundant, in the Greek the biographical. Although the Vulgate in Tob. has particular value, it transmits the original source less purely than the Greek (Vaccari; A. Clamer [v. bibl.], p. 397 ff.). The 3rd recension, consisting of a few minuscule manuscripts (44, 106, 107), is secondary and incomplete; in it, the beginning (1:1-6:6) belongs to the 2nd form as in the Syriac version (Pēlīṭā), which only from 7:13 onward gives a text almost identical to that of the 3rd. The Hebrew texts now known are translations of late date (from the 5th to the 12th century).

The loss of the original and the textual divergences often do not permit firm positions in exegesis and in the definition of the literary genre.

Tob. is an edifying story, written to inculcate religious-moral lessons that flow from the events recounted. Tobit reveals himself as a living example of integral fidelity to the prescriptions of the Law; his vicissitudes demonstrate divine providence and justice, which do not leave piety without recompense, and especially mercy toward one's fellow Israelite. The value of almsgiving and piety toward the dead, gratitude for divine benefits, the duties of parents toward children and reciprocally, the right intention with which one must enter marriage are insistently taught. Strictly religious doctrines inculcated by Tob. are: the existence and ministry of angels among men, the baleful influence of evil spirits, the covenant of Sinai restricted after the schism to the Kingdom of Judah alone (the schism was an apostasy: 1:5 BA) and to the many Israelites who persevere in Yahwism, spiritually united to Jerusalem, the city chosen by God (1:4 BA), and to the house of David (1:4 S). Tobit went to Jerusalem for worship, according to the divine prescription (1:6). Yahweh is called "our God," "our father forever" (13:4), "king of Israel" (14:9, according to the Old Latin); he punished Israel for its iniquities; but the punishment, temporary and medicinal, was meant to convert and purify his people (13:3, 5 ff.). The community that rises again in Judah, on the land of Abraham (14:5, 7 S), centered in the Temple (14:5b), will no longer fail, according to the prophecies of the prophets; it will be holy (14:7 S) and will realize the relationship begun at Sinai:

"His people will bless the Lord, and the Lord will exalt his people" (14:7 BA). The risen Israel is the last step toward the kingdom of the Messiah; then all the nations will flock to the new Jerusalem of sapphires and emeralds, with walls of precious stones, resounding with praises to the Most High (13:13-23; cf. 14:6).

The didactic character of Tob. is undeniable. Modern exegetes, in defining its literary genre, agree more and more in recognizing in it a narrative with a historical background or core, freely elaborated with accessory embellishments whose principal and direct purpose is the teaching of the truths mentioned above. Such a position of balance takes into account the arguments of the supporters of the two extreme tendencies: of complete historicity, of a merely fictional character; and particularly the multiple relations of Tob. with the story of Ahlqār (v.), to which there is a clear allusion (14:10 f.; Ahlqār a relative of Tobit: 1:21; cf. 2:10; 11:19). Both books mix the narrative element with the didactic, with a prevalence of the former in Tob., of the latter in Ahlqār. This would lead to placing the two books in the same literary genre: the moral tale with a historical background. But to be able to give an absolute and definitive judgment, the unshaken basis of the original text of Tob. is lacking (Vaccari).

In such a literary genre, what interests us is not so much the narrative particulars as the teaching inculcated. Thus the angel who assists in the form of a man, his medicines represent the divine intervention: the flight of the demon Asmodeus (local popular coloring) is connected with moral motives (6:16 f.); the death of Sara's seven previous husbands was caused by the no thought they gave to God and to the holy purposes of marriage.

The unknown Jewish author of Tob. wrote after the exile (4th-3rd century B.C.). The destruction of Nineveh (612 B.C.) is far off (14:6, 16); chapters 13-14 presuppose the destruction of Judah, the exile, the repatriation with the restoration.

The book of T. is not included in the Jewish canon; Protestants relegate it among the "apocrypha." But the Catholic Church, both Latin and Eastern, always venerated it from the beginning as inspired (Polycarp, Ad Phil., 10:2 cites Tob. 4:10; 12:9; Hermas, Pastor, mand. V, 11:3, and sim. I, 1:6 cites Tob. 4:19; 5:17; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, 21, cites Tob. 4:19 etc.; likewise Origen, Cyprian) and placed it in the first lists or canons of the sacred books (Councils of Hippo [393] and of Carthage [397 and 419], Innocent I [405], Council of Florence [1441], up to the definition of the Council of Trent (1546), repeated by the Vatican Council (1870). The doubts of some Fathers (localized in time, 4th-5th centuries, and in space, Churches in contact with the Jews) were caused by the lack of an authentic, officially defined list, and by the influence of the Jews who excluded Tob. from their biblical canon.

"With Tob. the Church offers us for our instruction a delightful model of narrative prose, full of religious and moral teachings (St. Bede)... Similar to the book of Ruth for the sweetness of its domestic scenes, Tob. surpasses it in variety and interweaving of events and in abundance of moral teachings. It also transports us to a far broader stage, unfolding the scene among several families of Israelites deported by the Assyrian conqueror to the eastern provinces of his vast empire (cf. II Kings 17:6)" (A. Vaccari).

sur Raphaël (5, 22; 3, 16 sg.; 12, 12-5), in Rech. de sc. relig., 39 (1951), pp. 115-24; J. Hennig, The book T. in liturgy, in The Irish theolog. quart., 19 (1952), pp. 84-90.

Francesco Spadafora

ARCHAEOLOGY

The scene of T., saved by the archangel Raphael while he was in danger of being devoured by a fish, was admitted into the repertoire of Christian iconography rather late, and only a few times. The three elements of the episode — T., the fish and the angel — represent the soul of the deceased on its journey toward eternity, beset by the devil and saved in time, thanks to divine intervention through his messenger. Another meaning the entrails of the fish are meant to express, when they are depicted: the healing of the old T. (his father) takes on the symbol of sanctifying Grace. Note that, while the most ancient sources are silent, testimonies of more recent writers are not lacking to corroborate this interpretation, such as Optatus of Milevis, who recognizes Christ in the fish (De schismate donatistarum, 3, 2; PL 11, 991).

Wilpert (Pitture, p. 50) has the merit of having identified the scene. When in cubiculum III of Domitilla the painter depicted for the first time, in a lunette of the ceiling, T. naked with the fish in his right hand and the pedum in the other (the figure was removed, but copies exist; cf. Wilpert, op. cit., p. 355), the artist must have realized that he had created a figuration easily confused with the other, very well-known one of the Good Shepherd. And indeed in the 4th century, while on the vault of an arcosolium of Traso (Wilpert, op. cit., pl. 164, 2) the artist, portraying T., found a way to distinguish him by representing a fish hanging from a branch, in another representation, the last one known, in the catacomb beneath the vigna Massimo (Wilpert, op. cit., pl. 212) one encounters T. girded only with the ventral band, with a branch on his shoulder, the fish in his right hand and the angel in tunic and pallium, distinguished by a swastika (image of Christ).

A greater scarcity of examples — and always late ones — exists in the field of plastic figurations; but, as often happens, these are more complete and closer to the episode they illustrate. In the only sarcophagus known to Wilpert (Sarcofagi, pl. 65, 5), that of Mas-d'Aire, the details of the scene (T. extracting from the fish the heart, the liver and the gall, which will free Sara and heal his father's blindness) express exactly the determining elements of the narrative in a happy synthesis. A second sarcophagus with this scene came to light in 1939 in a "forma", discovered in the left nave of St. Sebastian's (L. De Bruyne, Sarcofago cristiano con nuovi temi iconografici scoperto a S. Sebastiano sulla Via Appia, in Riv. di archeol. crist., 16 [1939], pp. 262-63, fig. 7): the angel in tunic and pallium significantly points to the eyes of the youth who holds the fish just caught. The scene on the sarcophagus of Verona published by Maffei (Verona illustrata, part 3, Verona 1732, cols. 53-54; cf. Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 150, 2), about which it is still doubted whether or not it is meant to represent T., is to be assigned to the cycle of the prophets. Two lamps are also known, one published by De Rossi (in Bull. d'archeol. crist., 4th series, 3 [1884], p. 127), the other pointed out by E. De Blant (Les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule, Paris 1886, p. 99, n. 7) but which has remained unpublished; various bottoms of glass cups (R. Garrucci, Vetri ornati con figure in oro, 3rd ed., Rome 1874, pl. 3, nn. 4-5-6; pl. 6, n. 10) and a bronze patera shown by Fr. Marchi to Martigny, but not published. For later depictions of T. v. entry: RAFFAELE. - See pl. XX.

Pasquale Testini