Book of Tobit

The Book of Tobit (/ˈtoʊbɪt/), a work of Second Temple Jewish literature, is one of the deuterocanonical (or apocryphal) books of the Bible. It dates to the 3rd or early 2nd century BC. It emphasizes God’s testing of the faithful, His response to prayer, and His protection of the covenant people, the Israelites. The narrative follows two Israelite families: the blind Tobit in Nineveh and Sarah, abandoned in Ecbatana. Tobit’s son Tobias is sent to recover ten silver talents once deposited in Rhages in Media, and on his journey—guided by the angel Raphael—he meets Sarah. Sarah is afflicted by the demon Asmodeus, who slays her prospective husbands, but with Raphael’s help the demon is exorcised and she marries Tobias. They return together to Nineveh, where Tobit’s sight is miraculously restored.

Since the 20th century, scholarly consensus has held that Tobit was originally composed in a Semitic language. Five Aramaic and Hebrew fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to the 1st or 2nd century BC. The book influenced the authors of the Testament of Job, the Testament of Solomon, and possibly (depending on dating) Sirach, Jubilees, and the Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children. It was included in both the Jewish-originated Septuagint and the Old Latin Bible, which preserves textual traditions of Hebrew or Jewish vorlage. It is extant in major Christian codices such as Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Basiliano-Venetus. Multiple ancient recensions are preserved in Greek and Latin, along with translations into Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Syriac.

In the New Testament period, Tobit was cited or echoed by Jewish Christians including Matthew, Luke, John, and the Didache. Early patristic use appears in 2 Clement, Polycarp, and Origen, who after visiting 3rd-century Alexandria, Rome, Caesarea, and Athens, remarked that "the churches use Tobit". Irenaeus further noted that the 2nd-century Gnostic Ophites included Tobit among the biblical prophets

By contrast, explicit canonical rejection of Tobit by Rabbinic Judaism is recorded from the 2nd century onward. Rabbi Akiva declared "The books of Sirach and all other books written from then on do not defile the hands", while a contemporary Talmudic baraita insisted that "our Rabbis taught" the present twenty-four book Masoretic canon. Origen, though emphasizing Christian acceptance, acknowledged that "the Jews do not use [it]", and Jerome likewise noted that the Bethlehem Jews had "excised" the book from their canon, relegating it to the non-canonical "agiografa", though still copying and reading it. Fifteenth-century Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts attest to its continued transmission, as does the medieval Midrash Tanhuma, which attributes a probable Tobit allusion to 11th-century Moshe ha-Darshan.

The book is regarded as deuterocanonical by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, though it continues to be absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text. The Protestant tradition similarly deems it Apocrypha, useful for teaching and liturgy but not canonical; in the historic Protestant traditions, the Book of Tobit is located in the intertestamental section straddling the Old Testament and New Testament. Most scholars see the book as a didactic folktale or novella which inserted storytelling elements into a historical context, rather than a strictly literal narrative.

The book has 14 chapters, forming three major narrative sections framed by a prologue and epilogue:

(Summarised from Benedikt Otzen, "Tobit and Judith").

The prologue tells the reader that this is the story of Tobit of the tribe of Naphtali, deported from Tishbe in Galilee to Nineveh by the Assyrians. Tobit himself has always kept the laws of Moses, and brought offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem before the catastrophe of the Assyrian conquest. The narrative notes his marriage to Anna, and they have a son named Tobias.