Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/824

 TOBIAS

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TOBIAS

my good"; Sept. Tw/3ci(£ (Vat.), Ta>/3/os (Alex.), the same name occurring in II Esdr., vii, 62, as Tw/Sid and in the apocryphal III Esdr., v, 37 as Paeviv (Vat.) or piv (Alex.), one of the families that, on their return from exile, could show no written proof of their gene- alogy.

D. — Tobias (II Esdr., ii, 10), an Ammonite who together with Sanaballat the Horonite opposed the fortification of Jerusalem by Nehemias (II Esdr., ii, 19; iv, 3; vi, 17; xiii,4, 8). Heis called "the servant"; we can only conjecture what that means. Cheyne (Encyclopedia BibUca, s. v.) thinks that hdlbed, ser- vant, is a mistake for hd arbi, the Arab.

(E). — Tobias (II Mach., iii, 11), the father of Hircanus.

(F). — Tobias (Tob., i, 9, and passim), the son of the following.

(G). — ^Tobias the elder, the chief character in the book that bears his name.

II. Book op Tobias, a canonical book of the Old Testament.

A. Name.— In Cod. Alex., /3//3Xos XAt"" Tw^It; in Vat., Toi^elr; in Sinaitic, Tw/3e(9; in Latin MSS. Liber Tobiw, Liber Tobil el Tobicp, Liber uiriusqiie Tobim. In the Vulgate and Hebrew Fagii both father and son have the same name, Tobias, tdbijydh. In other texts and versions, the name of the father varies: I6bi, "my good" is Jahweh, in Heb. Munster; Tw^Lr or Tw/3efT in the Sept.; Tobis, or Tobit, standing for tobilh "goodness" of Jahweh, in the Old Latin.

B. Text and Versions. — -The original text, supposed to have been Hebrew, is lost; the reasons assigned for an Aramaic original warrant only a probable opinion that an Aramaic translation influenced our present Greek versions.

(1) Vulgate Versions. — St. Jerome had not yet learned Aramaic, when, with the aid of a rabbi who knew both Aramaic and Hebrew, he made the Vul- gate version. The rabbi expressed in Hebrew the thought of the Aramaic MSS. and St. Jerome straight- way put the same into Latin. It was the work of only a day (of. Praef. in Tobiam). The Old Latin certainly influenced this hurried version. The Vul- gate recension of the Aramaic version tells the story in the third person throughout, as do the Aramaic of Neubauer and the two Hebrew texts of Gaster (HL and HG), whereas all the other texts make Tobias speak in the first person up to iii, 15. The following passages occur in the Vulgate alone : the wagging of the dog's tail (xi, 9); the comparison of the coating on Tobias's eye to the membrane of an egg (xi, 14); the wait of half an hour while the gall of the fish efTected its cure (xi, 14) ; Tobias's closing of the e5-es of Raguel and Edna in death; also ii, 12, 18; iii, 19, 24; vi, 16-18, 20, 21; viii, 4, 5; ix, 12b. Some parts of the Vulgate, such as the continence of Tobias (vi, 18; viii, 4), were looked upon at times as Christian interpolations of Jerome until they were found in one of Caster's Hebrew texts (HL). Lastly, the Vulgate and HL omit all mention of Ahikhar; Achior of Vulg., xi, 20, is probably an addition to the text.

(2) Aramaic Versions. — Besides the Aramaic ver- sion used by Jerome and now lost, there is the extant Aramaic text recently found in an Aramaic commen- tary on Genesis, "Midrash Bereshit Rabba". The writing of this midrash is fifteenth-century work; it contains the Book of Tobias as a haggada on the promise Jacob makes to give tithes to God (Gen., xxviii, 22). Neubauer edited the text, "The Book of Tobit, a Chaldee Text from a unique MS. in the Bodleian Library" (Oxford, 1878). He thinks that it is a briefer form of Jerome's Aramaic text. This is not likely. The language is at times a trans- literation of Greek and gives evidence of being a trans- lation of one or other of the Greek texts. It agrees with the Vulgate in that from the outset the tale of Tobias is told in the third person; otherwise it is

closer to Codex Vaticanus and closer still to Cod. Sinaiticus.

(3) Greek Versions. — There are three Greek recen- sions of Tobias. We shall refer to them by the num- bers given to the Vatican and Sinaitic codices in Vigourou,x, "La sainte bible poly glotte". III (Paris, 1902). (a) AB, the text of the Alexandrian (fifth century) and Vatican (fourth century) codices. This recension is found in many other codices of the Greek text, has been used for centuries by the Greek Church, is incorporated into the Sixtine edition of the Septua- gint, and has been translated into Armenian as the authentic text of that rite. AB is preferred to the Sinaitic recension by Noldeke, Grimm, and others, and yet rated by Nestle, Ewald, and Harris as a compendium rather than as a version of the entire original text. It condenses Edna's prayer (x, 13), omits the blessing of Gabael (ix, 6), and has three or four unique readings (iii, 16; xiv, 8, 10; xi, 8). (b) N, the text of the Sinaitic (fourth-century) Codex. — Its style is very much more diffuse than that of AB, which seems to have omitted of set purpose many ittIxoi of X — cf. ii, 12, "on the seventh of Dustros she cut the web"; v, 3, the incident of the bond divided into two parts, one for Tobias and the other for Raguel; v, 5, the long conversation between Raph- ael and young Tobias; vi, 8; x, 10; xii, 8, etc. X omits iv, 7-19, and xiii, 6b-9, of AB. (c) The Text of Co- dices 44, 106, 107 for vi, 9-xiii, 8.— The first portion (i, 1-vi, 8) and the last (xiii, 9 to end) are identical with AB; the remainder seems to be an attempt at a better version of the original text. Independent work is shown by vi, 9, to vii, 17; viii, 1, to xii, 6, is very close to the Syriac and nearer to }< than to AB; xii, 7-xiii, 8 resembles each text in various small details. Dis- tinctive readings of these cursives are Edna's Gnostic prayer, "Let all the ^ons praise thee" (viii, 15); and the fact that Anna saw the dog running before Tobias (xi, 5). (d) What seems to be a third recen- sion of the second chapter is presented in Cirenfell and Hunt, "OxjThyncus Papyri" (Oxford, 1911), part viii. The text "differs from both AB and X and con- sequently the Greek cursives.

(4) Old Latin Versions. — Previous to the Latin Vulgate translation of the Aramaic recension (see above) there existed at least three Old Latin versions of a Greek text which was substantially X; (a) The recension of Codex Regius Parisiensis 3654 and Cod. 4 of the Library of St-Germain; (b) the recension of Cod. Vat. 7, containing i-vi, 12; (c) the recension of the "Speculum" of St. Augustine.

(5) Syriac Version. — Down to vii, 9, it is a trans- lation of AB; thereafter, it agrees with the Greek cursive text, save that xiii, 9-18, is omitted. This second part is clearlj- a second recension; its proper names are not spelled as in the first part. Ahikhar (xiv, 10) is Achior (ii, 10); 'Edna (vii, 14) is 'Edna (vii, 2) 'Arag (ix, 2) is Raga (iv, 1, 20).

(6) Hebrew Versions. — There are four Hebrew versions of this deuterocanonical story: (a) HL, Hebrew Londinii, a thirteenth-century MS., found by Caster in the British Museum, and translated by him in the "Proceedings of the Soc. of the Bibl. Ar- cha'ology" (xviii and xx). Besides a cento of Scrip- tural exhortations, this MS. rontains the narrative portion of Tobias, translated, Gaster thinks, from a text that stood in closest relation to the Aramaic used by St. Jerome. It is just possible, though not in the least probable, that the thirteenth-century Jewish author of HL made use of the Vulgate, (b) HG, Hebrew Gasteri, a text copied by Gaster from a midrash on the Pentateuch and published in the "Proc. of the Soc. of Bib. Arch." (xix). This MS., now lost, agreed with the Aramaic of Neubauer and was in a compact style like that of the Vulgate recen- sion, (c) HF, Hebrew I'jigii, a very free translation of AB, done in the twelfth century by a Jewish