Monday, September 16, 2013

Saint Jerome Had Noted The Resemblance Of Tobit To Homer's Odyssey



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Was Homer’s “Odyssey” Based on the Hebrew Books of
Job and Tobit?
 
 
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The Wide World of Tobit

The Apocrypha’s Tobit and Literary Tradition
 

by Patrick Henry Reardon

Tobit is a short book. Indeed, Jerome tells us that translating it into  Latin   cost him only “the labor of one day.”1 It should be remarked,    however, that this small book belongs in a big world, with a rich and very wide   cultural setting.
I like to think of the Book of Tobit as a kind of universal essay, in the    sense that its author makes considerable effort to place his brief, rather  simple   narrative within a literary, historical, and moral universe of  surprising breadth   and diversity, extending through the Fertile Crescent and  out both sides. To   find comparable dimensions of such large cultural exposure  among biblical authors,   one would have to go to Ezekiel, Luke, or the narrator  of Job.
It is the intention of the present article to indicate and outline several    aspects of the Book of Tobit that join the work to other streams of literary    history. These aspects, which include a fairly wide range of themes, images,    and historical references, will serve to link Tobit to three bodies of  literature   in particular: the Bible; the larger world of Near and Middle  Eastern religious   philosophy, history, and literature; and the tradition of  Christian exegesis   down through the Latin Middle Ages.
 
Tobit and the Bible
The world of Tobit is, first of all, the world of biblical literature and    history. Not only does the book provide an elaborate description of the  religious   deterioration of the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century, and  then the deportation   and consequent social conditions2 of those  tribes after 722, but it   explicitly quotes a prophet of that century, Amos,  and makes reference (14:4)   to the preaching of Jonah at Nineveh.3 Tobit thus presupposes the history   narrated in Kings, Chronicles, and the  eighth-century prophets.
Tobit’s explicit reference to Jonah is of considerable interest in the    light of certain affinities between the two books. First and second, both  stories   take place about the same time (the eighth century) and both in  Mesopotamia.   Third, both accounts involve a journey. Fourth, the distressed  Tobit, like Jonah,   prays to die. Fifth and most strikingly, his son Tobias  encounters a fish that   attempts—with less success than Jonah’s fish—to swallow  him!   Finally, in each book the fish serves as a special instrument of Divine  Providence.
Besides Jonah, Tobit shows several remarkable affinities to the Book of Job,   some of which were noted rather early in Christian exegesis. For example, the   title characters of both works shared a zeal for purity of life, almsgiving,    and other deeds of charity (Job 1 and 31; Tobit 1–2), patient endurance   of  trials sent by God,4 a deep weariness of life itself (Job 7:15;   Tobit  3:6), a final vindication by the Lord at the end of each book, and perhaps    even a common hope of the resurrection.5 As early as Cyprian in the    third century, it was also noted that both men were similarly mocked by wives    unable to appreciate their virtue and faith in God.6
Moreover, the book’s description of long-suffering Sarah, whose seven    husbands all died on their wedding night, carries on another major theme of    Holy Scripture: the barren woman, of which the elder Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel,    Hannah, and Elizabeth are better known examples. Indeed, the mockery that the    younger Sarah receives from her maids in this regard readily puts one in mind    of Hagar’s attitude toward the older Sarah, as well as Peninnah’s   unkind  treatment of Hannah at the beginning of First Samuel.7
The moral teaching of Tobit is also of a piece with the covenantal ethics    of the Bible generally. For example, its prohibition against marrying outsiders   in 4:12f. reflects the strict view of Ezra and Nehemiah (and, down the road,    1 Corinthians 7).8 Then, in the very next verse is found the mandate    about prompt payment of the laborer’s salary, which is clearly based on    Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14f. And so forth. The moral teaching of    Tobit shows endless parallels with both the Torah and Israel’s Wisdom    tradition, and its solicitude for social justice and service is at one with    the teaching of the eighth-century prophets. No matter what is to be said  relative   to its canonical status, the setting, imagery, and moral doctrine of  Tobit is   of a piece with the rest of our biblical literature.
 
The Larger World
Even when the Book of Tobit most closely touches the other biblical  literature,   however, it sometimes does so along lines reminiscent of, and  running parallel   to, more extensive traditions outside the Bible.
An obvious and rather large example is the “Golden Rule” in Tobit   4:15,  “Do not do to anyone what you yourself hate.” Not only does   this prohibition  substantially contain the biblical command to love one’s   neighbor as oneself;9 not only, furthermore, does it stand   in canonical  continuity with the more positive formulation of the same Golden   Rule  preserved in the Gospels;10 it is also the equivalent to an ideal    found in other ethical philosophies. These latter include Greek authors like    Herodotus and Isocrates11 and even classical Confucianism.12   This use of the Golden Rule thus assured Tobit a featured place in the entire    history of religion and moral philosophy.13
A similar assessment is true, I believe, concerning the way that Tobit  develops   the religious symbolism of the journey. Obviously that motif had long  been part   of the Bible, particularly in those sections associated with the  Exodus wandering   and the return from Babylon,14 but it was a topic  not limited to the   Bible. Back near the beginning of the second millennium  B.C., the Mesopotamian    Gilgamesh Epic had inchoatively explored the  religious symbolism of   the journey, and that exploration would continue down  through some of our greatest   literature: the Odyssey, of course,  diverse accounts of Jason and the   Argonauts, the Aeneid, etc., and  eventually the Divine Comedy,   itself inspired by all of them. In a  more secular form the journey imagery continued   with such works as the  Endymion of Keats,15 even after it   had been assumed within  the ascetical literature of the Church as xeneteia,   conceived as both  exile and pilgrimage. A classical example of the latter use   is found in Step 3  of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of Mount   Sinai.
The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in particular was not lost   on that great student of literature, Jerome, as is evident in a single detail    of his Latin translation of Tobit in the Vulgate. Intrigued by the literary    merit of Tobit, but rejecting its canonicity, the jocose and sometimes prankish    Jerome felt free to insert into his version an item straight out of the  Odyssey—namely,   the wagging of the dog’s tail on arriving home with Tobias in  11:9—Tunc   praecucurrit canis, qui simul fuerat in via, et quasi nuntius  adveniens blandimento   suae caudae gaudebat—“Then the dog, which had been  with them   in the way, ran before, and coming as if it had brought the news,  showed his   joy by his fawning and wagging his tail.”16 No other  ancient   version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but Jerome,  ever the   classicist, was confident his readers would remember the faithful but  feeble   old hound Argus, as the final act of his life, greeting the return of  Odysseus   to the home of his father: “he endeavored to wag his tail”  (Odyssey   17.302). And to think that we owe this delightful gem to  Jerome’s rejection   of Tobit’s canonicity!
Thus, when young Tobias made his trip to Ecbatana and then, like Odysseus,    journeyed back to the home of his father, he traveled with a vast company of    classical pilgrims. He was neither the first nor the last to decide: “I   will  arise and return to my father.” On that trip, moreover, Tobias enjoyed   the  fellowship of an angel and a dog, symbolically representing the two worlds   of  spirits and beasts, both associated with Paradise and both mysteriously joined    together in the human being that they accompany.17
Furthermore, some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other    pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus.18 More convincing, I  believe,   however, are points of contact with classical Greek theater. Martin  Luther observed   similarities between Tobit and Greek comedy,19 but  one is even more   impressed by resemblances that the Book of Tobit bears to a  work of Greek tragedy—the    Antigone of Sophocles. In both stories the  moral stature of the heroes   is chiefly exemplified in their bravely burying  the dead in the face of official   prohibition and at the risk of official  punishment. In both cases a venerable   moral tradition is maintained against a  political tyranny destructive of piety.   That same Greek drama, moreover,  provides a further parallel to the blindness   of Tobit in the character of  blind Teiresias, himself also a man of an inner   moral vision important to the  theme of the play.
Bearing just as obvious a connection with non-biblical literature, I  believe,   is the demon Asmodeus (Tobit 3:8), who is doubtless to be identified,  on purely   morphological grounds, with Aeshma Daeva, a figure well known in  ancient Iranian   religion.20 Moreover, Tobit’s nephew Ahikar (1:22) is  certainly   identical with a literary character of the same name, time, place,  and circumstances,   found in the Elephantine papyri from the late fifth century  B.C.21   In short, whatever may be the case relative to questions of  historical dependency,   Tobit’s cultural contacts with the ancient world of  religion, philosophy,   and literature are numerous and varied.
 
The History of Exegesis
And this consideration brings me to what I suggest is a major question of    the Book of Tobit: How does a loyal servant of God live in this very big and    complex world? How does one spiritually survive, and even thrive, in   this world, without being of this world? The preoccupation of Tobit    is, I submit, moral and ascetical. It is a book about how the loyal servant   of  God must live.
In this respect, it is instructive to observe that early Christian exegesis   of the Book of Tobit was of a predominantly moral and ascetical interest. With   very few exceptions, patristic interpretation of Tobit was straightforward and   literal, with relatively little, and hardly any sustained, appeal to hidden    symbolisms. The longest extant patristic work devoted to Tobit, that of Ambrose   of Milan, exemplifies this approach convincingly. After drawing attention to    the major moral features of Tobit’s character, Ambrose devotes the rest   of his  discourse to a robust condemnation of avarice and usury.22 That   is to  say, Ambrose went to Tobit almost exclusively for moral teaching.
To be sure, a modest measure of patristic exegesis of Tobit was allegorical,   in the sense of finding hidden references to the mysteries of the Christian    faith. For example, attention was sometimes drawn to Tobias’s fish, whose    various body parts were used to remedy the problems of the family. Given the    common and widespread Christological symbolism of the fish (ichthys)    among believers, it was virtually inevitable that Tobias’s fish, too,   who  quite literally gave his life for the family, should be regarded as a  foreshadowing   of the Savior. This symbolism is found in the fourth century,  first in the mural   iconography of the Roman catacombs23 and then in a  few literary references.24
Similarly, Isidore of Seville believed that young Tobias, inasmuch as he  healed   his parent’s blindness, “had an image of Christ.”25   Nonetheless, such recourse to allegorical symbolism to interpret the Book of    Tobit was relatively rare among earlier Christian writers.
This assessment, however, does not hold true for the Latin writers of the    Middle Ages. The highly detailed commentary of Venerable Bede26 is    the example that comes first to mind. To leave Ambrose’s fairly sober,    subdued, and straightforward remarks on Tobit and then turn to Bede’s    elaborate interpretation of the same book is something on the order of moving    to another planet. In Bede’s commentary, not even the most minute item   in the  Tobit narrative is without its hidden doctrinal significance, to be ferreted    out by a rich imagination.
Bede’s approach was followed by other medieval exegetes who turned their    very creative fancies loose on the book: Walafrid Strabo, Hugh of St. Victor,    and Isaac of Stella.27 At their hands, the Book of Tobit became a rich   mother-lode of hidden Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, sacramentology,    and so forth.
These medieval interpreters certainly present us with a whole new  hermeneutic   world. One may legitimately question, however, whether it is any  longer the   world of Tobit. Indeed, in these medieval works the overwhelmingly  moral interest   of Tobit’s universe is hardly touched at all, so that the major  preoccupation   of the book—how does the servant of God live in this  world?—becomes   almost entirely lost. This is my chief objection to the  approach taken to the   Book of Tobit among medieval Latin exegetes.
Since his Glossa Ordinaria became a link between Bede and later  medieval   writers, Walafrid Strabo may be particularly cited by way of  illustration. Strabo   begins his interpretation of Tobit by observing,  correctly enough, that the   book “abounds in the greatest examples and  exhortations of the moral life,”28   but then he goes on to explain the  book in great detail without a single scrap   of moral or ascetical teaching.  Tobit’s principal message and concern   thus become hopelessly dispersed in  considerations alien to the book.
It is my persuasion that the message of Tobit should begin with a proper  analysis   of its moral message exactly as it appears at the literary level,  without recourse   to hidden symbolisms that its author himself could scarcely  have suspected and   that float, in fact, without sufficient grounding in  ancient patristic and liturgical   texts.
This is not to say that Tobit should be interpreted apart from the biblical   canon (whatever one holds about its canonical status) or from the context of    Christian theology. Indeed, I maintain the very opposite thesis—namely,   that  Tobit (and, for that matter, all other biblical literature handed down   in the  Tradition of the Church) should be read and understood within that double    interpretive context of Canon and Christology. I believe, nonetheless, that    this approach is best made on the basis of Tobit’s literal meaning, the    meaning it has as moral literature, not fanciful symbolisms unsustained in  either   biblical, patristic, or liturgical testimonies.
Having now placed Tobit within literary history, I propose, in a subsequent   article to be published in these pages, to explore further the book’s   great  moral message and its importance in the Christian life.

Notes:

1. Jerome, Praefatio in Librum Tobiae (PL 29.26A). Among Latin  writers    Jerome stands very much alone, and even eccentric, in his denial of  canonicity   to the Book of Tobit. It was cited somewhat less often by the Greek  Fathers   than by the Latins, however, the question of its canonicity being more  complex   and protracted in the East. This questioned canonicity of Tobit also  accounts   for the unparalleled freedom that copyists took in the transmission  of the text.   We have received Tobit in two major manuscript traditions so  disparate that   Rahlfs’s standard edition of the Septuagint prints them  separately. Because   I will frequently refer to them, I take this occasion to  identify the two earliest   extant manuscripts, both of them from early  fourth-century Egypt: the Codex   Vaticanus (hereafter B) and the Codex  Sinaiticus (hereafter S). Because of its   importance to Latin writers, I will  also refer often to Tobit’s Vulgate   text, translated by Jerome from both Greek  and Aramaic sources.
2. Origen early recognized Tobit’s value as a source of historical and    sociological information on the period; cf. Epistola ad Africanum 12     (Bibliotheke Hellenon Pateron [hereafter BHP, followed by volume and    page numbers] 16.359f.).
3. Thus in B and Vulgate; also see Jerome, In Jonam (PL 25.1119A).   S here says Nahum.
4. Job and Tobit were thus compared by Augustine, De Divinis  Scripturis   28 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter CSEL with   volume and page numbers] 12.436); Ambrosiaster,  Quaestiones Veteris et Novi   Testamenti 99.2 (CSEL 50.191); in the  Latin Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux,    Sententiae 2.25  (Opera, Vol. 6/2, Rome: Editiones Cistercienses,   1972, p. 31); and  still later, John of the Cross, Llama de Amor Viva   2.28 (Obras  Completas, Madrid: BAC, 1991, pp. 960f.).
5. Job 19:23–27; Tobit 2:18 in the Vulgate. Paulinus of Nola commented    that Tobit’s burial of the dead manifested “a holy and sanctified   hope”;  Epistolae 13.4 (PL 61.209–210).
6. Cyprian, De Mortalitate 10 (PL 4.588); among the Greeks,  Asterios   Sophistes, In Psalmos 4.4 (BHP 37.170); among medieval  Latins, Peter   Comestor, Historia Libri Tobiae 1 (PL 198.1433C); and  Peter Damien,    Sermones 4.5 (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio  Medievalis   [hereafter CCM with volume and page numbers] 57.20).
7. This resemblance was likewise remarked by Cyprian, Testimoniorum   Libri 1.20 (PL 4.688–689).
8. Again, cf. Cyprian, Testimoniorum Libri 3.62 (PL 4.767–768).
9. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27;  Romans   12:17–19; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8.
10. Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31.
11. Herodotus, Histories 3.142; Isocrates, Niklokles 61.
12. Cf. Ku Hung Ming, The Conduct of Life: A Translation of the Doctrine   of the Mean, London: John Murray, 1906, p. 26.
13. Tobit’s form of the Golden Rule was maintained, not only in the    apocryphal (e.g., Ps.-Aristeas, Epistle to Philocrates 207) and  rabbinical   traditions (e.g., Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a;  Targum Yerushalmi   I of Leviticus 19:18), but also in Christian  sources as diverse as the    Didache 1.2 (BHP 2.215); the Coptic  Gospel of Thomas 6; the    Apostolic Constitutions 1 (BHP  2.6); Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis   2.22 (BHP 7.359); Didymus the  Blind, De Spiritu Sancto 39 (PG 39.1068);   John Chrysostom,  Homiliae de Statuis 13.3 (PG 49.140); Augustine, Sermones   in  Vetus Testamentum 9.14f. (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina   [hereafter CCL with volume and page numbers] 41.135f.); Gregory the Great,  Moralia   in Job 6.35.54 (CCL 143.323); 10.6.6 (539); and, from the  Latin Middle   Ages, Peter Damien, Sermones 14.9 (CCM 57.69); Stephen  of Grandmont,    Regula 28 (CCM 8.83); and Isaac of Stella,  Sermones 3.3 (PL   194.1698A); 31.6 (1791B). Among later ascetical  writers in the East, there is   Paisy Velichkovsky, Field Flowers 23  (Little Russian Philokalia,   Vol. 4, The Brotherhood of St. Herman of  Alaska, 1994, p. 87.). Sometimes Christians   have spontaneously juxtaposed  Tobit’s negative form with the positive   form from the Gospels; e.g.,  Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, Letters   687 (Correspondance, Solesmes, 1971, p. 442); and the anonymous eleventh-century   Mont-Saint-Michel  manuscript, Expositio ad Galatas 5.14 (CCM 151.202).
14. In the New Testament, the journey motif will play a structural role, not   only in Luke-Acts, but also in Mark 8–10.
15. Cf. Andrès Rodríguez, The Book of the Heart: The Poetics,   Letters,  and Life of John Keats, Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1993,   pp.  44ff.
16. Douay-Challoner translation of the Vulgate.
17. Angels and beasts are also the companions of Jesus in the desert; see    Mark 1:13 along with the comment of Euthymius Zigabenus, In Marcum   (PG 129.776C). Particularly in our hagiography, this motif of angelic and animal   companionship is ubiquitous. Cf. Joanne Stephanatos, Animals and Man: A    State of Blessedness, Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1992.
18. I confess that this one is lost on me, having gone over my Apollodorus    (3.9.15) repeatedly without discerning any really convincing similarity to  Tobit.
19. Indeed, he even speculated that the Greeks borrowed from the Jews in  this   respect; cf. Luther’s Works, Volume 35 (Philadelphia: Fortress    Press, 1976), p. 345.
20. Cf. Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from  Antiquity   to Primitive Christianity, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,  1977, pp.   215, 217.
21. A translation of “The Words of Ahiqar” is found in J. B. Pritchard,     Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton,    1969, pp. 427–430. The story itself appears to go back to Mesopotamia   at least  a century earlier. I hazard passing remarks here on two curious features:   (1)  this text is narrated, like the opening chapters of Tobit, in the first    person; (2) the plan to kill a eunuch slave in place of Ahikar, so that the    latter could later be restored to favor (p. 428, left column), most certainly     does bear comparison to the Admetus legend.
22. Ambrose, De Tobia (PL 14.759–794). Not one paragraph in   ten  of this work is allegorical. See also Ambrose’s simple remarks on   Tobit in  Epistolae 19.5 (PL 16.984A), later echoed by Salvian of Marseilles,     Adversus Avaritiam 2.4 (PL 53.193B).
23. Cf. Henri Leclercq, “Tobie,” Dictionnaire d’Archéologie   Chrétienne  et de Liturgie, Vol. 15, Paris: Letouzey, 1953, cols.   2418–2420.
24. Optatus of Mileve in Numedia, De Schismate Donatistarum 3.2 (PL   11.991); and the anonymous De Promissionibus et Praedictionibus Dei   2.39 (PL 51.816).
25. “Christi imaginem habuit”—Allegoriae Quaedam Scripturae    Sacrae 123 (PL 83.116A).
26. Venerable Bede, Interpretatio in Librum Tobiae (PL 91.923–938).   Cf. the analysis of Bede’s exegesis of Tobit by Johann Gamberoni, Die    Auslegung des Buches Tobias, Munich: Kösel, 1969, pp. 107–123.
27. Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria (PL 113.725–732); Hugh   of  St. Victor, Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum 9.2 (PL 175.737–744);    Isaac of Stella, Sermones 7.11–14 (PL 194.1715). I cite only   those  writers that I know first-hand. For other examples, see Gamberoni, op.    cit., pp. 124–146.
28. Strabo, op. cit. (PL 113.725B).

The substance of this article appeared in Epiphany in  1996.

Read more:  http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=12-02-036-f#ixzz2f1euwlrb

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