Tobit

Place in Scripture and Contents

Tobit is the name of a book found in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles but absent from the Protestant Bible; it is also the name of the book's main character. Protestants classify the book among the Apocrypha (books outside the canon), while Catholics call it deuterocanonical (meaning a book that entered the list of canonical books at a second stage). It is not included in the New Korean Revised Version. It appears under the title "Tobit" in the Common Translation and as "The Book of Tobit" in the Korean Catholic Bible (2005). The book has fourteen chapters, and the spelling of personal names varies slightly among translations.

The plot of the story is as follows:

• Tobit, a man of the northern Israelite tribe of Naphtali, is carried captive to Assyria and lives in Nineveh. He keeps the Law, devotes himself to almsgiving, and buries the abandoned bodies of his fellow Israelites. Then sparrow droppings fall into his eyes, and he goes blind (chapters 1–2).
• At about the same time, Sarah, the daughter of Raguel of Ecbatana in Media, has been married seven times, but she is in anguish because the evil spirit Asmodeus kills each bridegroom on the wedding night. The prayers offered separately by Tobit and Sarah reach God together, and God sends the angel Raphael (chapter 3).
• Tobit sends his son Tobias to Media to retrieve money he had left in trust there. Raphael takes on human form and accompanies Tobias (chapters 4–5).
• Tobias burns the heart and liver of a fish caught in the Tigris River to drive away the evil spirit, and he marries Sarah (chapters 6–8). After returning home, he heals his father's eyes with the fish's gall (chapter 11).
• Raphael reveals that he is one of the seven angels who stand before the glory of the Lord, and then departs (Tobit 12:15). Chapter 13 is Tobit's hymn of praise, and chapter 14 contains his final testament.

Background

The story is set in the reigns of the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. The book was long transmitted in Greek manuscripts, which preserve two textual traditions of differing length, so chapter and verse divisions may vary among translations. Because Aramaic and Hebrew fragments were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, the book is thought likely to have been composed originally in a Semitic language (Aramaic or Hebrew). Many scholars date its composition to around the third or second century BC, though this cannot be determined with certainty.

The text also contains statements that do not agree with other historical records; for example, it describes Sennacherib as the son of Shalmaneser. For this reason, many scholars read the book as a story conveying lessons of faith rather than as a historical record. The son's name, Tobias, is understood to be a Hebrew name meaning "the Lord is good."

Significance within the Bible as a Whole

The New Testament nowhere quotes Tobit directly. Scholars do, however, point out several similarities:

• The story of a woman who lost seven husbands resembles in subject matter the question the Sadducees posed about the resurrection (Matthew 22:23–33; Matthew 22:30).
• Tobit's counsel to his son, "Do that to no man which thou hatest" (4:15), resembles the Golden Rule stated in negative form.
• The expression "seven angels" standing before God also appears in Revelation 8:2.

Whether the New Testament writers drew directly on this book is unknown.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

Canonicity. The Catholic Church definitively affirmed the book as canonical at the Council of Trent (1546), and the Eastern Orthodox Church also includes it in its Bible. When Martin Luther published his German Bible, he gathered the apocryphal books into a separate section, regarding them as not equal to the canonical Scriptures but profitable to read. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England state that the Apocrypha are read for example of life but are not used to establish doctrine. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.3), followed by Presbyterians, holds that the Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, have no authority in the church.

Doctrinal issues. Some Protestants have criticized the verse stating in effect that "alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin" (12:9) as inconsistent with the doctrine of justification by faith. The Catholic Church explains the verse as teaching about good works performed within God's grace. The passage in which Raphael brings people's prayers before God (12:12) is sometimes cited in support of angelic mediation, an interpretation Protestants generally reject.

The text and later traditions. The title "archangel" applied to Raphael derives from later tradition; the text of Tobit says only that he is one of the seven angels. The only angels named in the Protestant canon are Gabriel and Michael.

In the Korean Church

The book is rarely addressed from Protestant pulpits. Because it is included in the Common Translation, published in 1977, it is relatively familiar to Catholics and to members of the Anglican Church of Korea, which has used that translation.