TOBIADI. – A powerful family of Ammon (v. AMMONITI). Numerous documents concerning it exist for the 3rd–2nd centuries B.C., but in all probability its existence goes back already to the 5th century, when a powerful Tobia, an Ammonite, obstructed in every way Nehemiah’s work of reconstruction in Jerusalem (Nch. 3, 19; 4, 3-7 sgg.; 6, 1 sgg.; 13, 4-9).
From the famous Zenon papyri (cf. C. C. Edgar, Zenon papyri, Cairo 1925, nos. 59003, 59005, 59075, 59076; V, there
1940, no. 59802) it emerges that in the 3rd century B.C. a personage of the same name, whom everything suggests to have been the successor of the first, occupied a position of the highest importance in Palestine. He dealt confidentially with Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in whose name, but with a certain freedom for individual initiatives, he commanded the frontier cavalry and exercised effective control over Palestine, while also engaging in a lucrative commercial activity. His headquarters was the celebrated Birtà (“Fortress” in Aramaic), identified by excavations at ‘Arāq el-Emir in Transjordan, east of Jericho, where the foundations of the castle and also a double inscription in Aramaic letters bearing the simple name Tobia (Tōbīyāh = “Good is Jahweh”) have been found. Birtà was already described by Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Ind., XII, 230 sgg.), who attributes it to t. Hyrcanus. In all probability this was only a restoration, since the fortress already existed in the time of Tobia, his grandfather.
Hyrcanus, son of Joseph, about whom the Jewish historian relates many things, not always reliable (Antiq. Ind., XII, 160 sgg.), is also mentioned in the books of the Maccabees. In close relationship with the priestly class of Jerusalem (Il Mach. 3, 11; 4, 26; 5, 7), after Palestine passed from dependence on the Lagids to that of the Seleucids, he remained faithful to the Egyptians, while his half-brothers adhered to the new rulers. They attempted to maintain supremacy in Jerusalem, arrogating to themselves the task of intermediaries between the court of Antioch and the new subjects. In the political uncertainty following the battle of Magnesia, their position became critical. On Hyrcanus’s initiative, they were expelled by the high priest Onias (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Ind., I, 31), but the triumph of their enemy was short-lived. In all probability Antiochus IV, who in his centralizing policy tolerated neither independent potentates nor useless intermediaries between himself and his subjects, defeated Hyrcanus at that time (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Ind., XII, 236), who appears as the last of the T.