To the good friend who wrote this about the geography of the Book of Tobit:
Tobias and the Tigris.
Several possibilities exist here. It is not unknown for several
streams to bear the same name, nor is it impossible that the swiftest road into
Media was a highway which was accessed by Tobias traveling to the real Tigris
River to connect with this route.
….
The
AMAIC replies:
What
we have argued with early Genesis, especially the Six Days and the Flood, is
that a ‘surface’ reading of a biblical text may sometimes lead one to a conclusion
that is far from what the original scribe(s) intended, and often far also from
common sense. Such we believe to be the case, too, with standard versions of
the Book of Tobit with regard to its
geography. If we would believe the text as it currently stands, the angel
Raphael was leading young Tobias (our Job) a merry dance inasmuch as, with a
starting point at Assyrian Nineveh, and with the aim of arriving at Rages near Ecbatana
in Media - Ecbatana being some 185 miles east of Nineveh - the angel brings
Tobias in the evening to the river Tigris, directly west of Nineveh.
No
wonder then that, on this basis, The
Jerusalem Bible says that “the geography is inexact”, and that Fr.
D. Dumm (“Tobit”) in The Jerome
Biblical Commentary, exclaims that:
“[The angel] Raphael knows the journey of life
far better than the route to Media!”
Unfortunately, though, Fr. Dumm just leaves it
at that, without being willing, or able, to defend the accuracy of the Bible
with a proper explanation of what is happening here.
But we need to go to other versions of the Book of
Tobit to find the solution.
There is no geographical support in the Book of
Tobit for an eastwards journey, from Nineveh to the classical Media (Ecbatana
and Rhages):
For one, the River Tigris
is west of Nineveh;
And, whilst the Median
Rhages is in the plain, with Ecbatana being in the mountains, the Book of Tobit
has Ecbatana in the plain and Rages in the mountains (see below);
And again, Charan (Haran),
in Syria, is, according to the Douay version of Tobit, ‘midway’ between Nineveh
and ‘Media’;
And furthermore, whereas the journey from Tobit's Ecbatana to Rages
normally took “two full days”, the almost
200-mile journey from the Median Ecbatana to Rhages would have
taken significantly longer. In fact it took the army of Alexander the Great 11
days at full gallop to march from the one to the other 13]. Rightly
then does Jan Simons observe (according to a Median context) that the journey
referred to in the Book of Tobit "would be a forced 'journey of two
days' even for an express messenger"14].
Thankfully there are versions of the Book of Tobit
that set us aright, however, with Ecbatana becoming “Bathania” (the Roman province
of Batanaea), that is, the fertile Bashan, east of the River Jordan in
Palestine, and Media becoming “Midian”.
Thus the angel Raphael knows exactly what he is doing.
Why, did he not inform the anxious Tobit that he
knew the way thoroughly (as an angel would know)?
So we find that the real angel Raphael was escorting
the young Tobias, not eastwards, but westwards from Nineveh, to the Tigris crossing,
then to Haran, and on to Bashan (where the angel then leaves on an early flight
for Damascus).
I [Damien Mackey] discussed all this in Volume Two
[of my thesis], Chapter 2, pp. 38-40, where I had specifically claimed that
“Rages”, a city in the mountains, must be the city of Damascus that dominated
the province of Batanaea” (p. 39). Damascus, almost 700 m above sea level, is
actually situated on a plateau. Secondly, I gave there very specific
geographical details in order to identify this “Rages” in relation to
“Ecbatana” (Tobit 5:6), which I had in turn identified (following the Heb.
Londinii, or HL, fragment version of Tobit) with “Bathania”, or Bashan
(possibly Herodotus’ Syrian Ecbatana as opposed to the better known Median
Ecbatana). According to Tobit, “Rages is situated in the mountains, two days’
walk from Ecbatana which is in the plain”. Now Damascus is precisely two days’
walk from Bashan in the Hauran plain, as according to Jâkût el-Hamawi who says
of Batanaea’s most central town of Nawâ …: “Between Nawa and Damascus is two
days’ journey” (as quoted on p. 39). What further consolidates the fact that
Tobit’s ‘Ecbatana’ was in a westerly direction, rather than an easterly one, is
that his son Tobias, leaving Nineveh, arrived at the Tigris river in the
evening; an impossibility were he heading for Median Ecbatana in the east. And,
according to the Vulgate version of Tobit, Charan, that is, Haran, is situated
“in the halfway” between Nineveh and Ecbatana. The traveller is clearly
journeying towards the west. Whilst Bible scholars today tend to dismiss the
whole geography of the Book of Tobit as nonsensical, a simple adjustment based
on a genuine version (Heb. Londinii), makes perfect - even very precise (“two
days walk”) - sense of it.
The testimony of Jâkût el-Hamawi here was an absolute
clincher for me, not only when trying to make sense of the geography of the
Book of Tobit, but also for having Tobias, with the angel, heading to the very
region in Naphtali from where Tobit himself had hailed (Naphtalian Bashan), but
also - from the point of view of having the geography of Tobit converge with
that of Job (my Tobias) - with the pair of travellers heading to the very
geographical region, Bashan, where ancient legends of Job place his home of Uz and
his final resting place.
Again, this Damascene region is the very one in
which the Syro-Arabic traditions place the home of Job.
The Jâkût el-Hamawi and Moslem tradition
generally mention the east Hauran fertile tract of country north-west of Têmâ
and Bûzân, el-Bethenîje (i.e. Batanaea), as the district in which Job
dwelt. According to Abufelda 25]: "The whole of
Bethenije, a part of the province of Damascus, belonged to Job as his possession".
The Syrian tradition also locates Job's abode in
Batanaea, where lies an ancient "Monastery of
Job" (Dair Êjûb), built in honour of the holy man.
All the larger works on Palestine and Syria agree
that "Uz" is not to be sought in
Edom proper. In these works we also find it recorded that Batanaea is there
called Job's fatherland. In Batanaea itself the traveller hears this
constantly. If any one speaks of the fruitfulness of the whole district; or of
the fields around a village, he is always answered: 'Is it not the land of Job (bilâd
Êjûb)?'; 'Does it not belong to the villages of Job (diâ Êjûb)?'.
It seems that Batanaea (Hauran) and the land of Job
are synonymous.
Job's Tomb and other Relics
Regarding Job's tomb, we read from Ibn er-Râbi that 26]:
"To the
prophets buried in the region of Damascus belongs also Job, and his tomb is
near Nawa, in the district of Hauran".
Delitzsch 27] notes, in favour of Batanaea, that the "heap
of ashes" (Job 2:8) upon which Job sat in his misery is variously translated as
"dunghill", and that only in a Batanaean context is there no
contradiction, since the two were "synonymous notions". There the
dung, being useless for agricultural purposes, is burnt from time to time in an
appointed place before the town; while in any other part of Syria it is as
valuable as among any farmer. This distinctive fact, he concludes, is yet
another indication that Job's "land of Uz" cannot refer to the land
of Edom.
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