by
“But how certain can we be that Job is
Tobias?”,
a Catholic reader has asked.
My response (having a Catholic aspect to it):
Of the various alter egos that I have proposed, this
would be (in my opinion) the most solid.
Apart from the fact
that, years ago, I read the whole Book of Job on New Year’s Eve (only a bore
would do that), Our Lady’s Solemnity, and then, the next day, her feast day, I,
for some reason, read the whole Book of Tobit (so I considered it a gift from
Our Lady).
Bang! The connection.
In both cases, a holy man with seven sons, and 3-4 generations of kids.
Try to find another
such one in the entire Bible!
The Chaldean raiders (Book
of Job) made sense to me in a later context.
Blessed Anne Catherine
Emmerich (The Life of Jesus Christ and
Biblical Revelations), though, has Job living even before Abram, and
wandering all over the place - from the Caucasus to Egypt.
But the Book of Job is
most like the Book of Jeremiah, which is late of course.
And the Book of Tobit
is certainly late. It is situated in the neo-Assyrian era
What struck me is that,
to the accusations of Job’s three ‘friends’ as to his supposed immorality, Job
replies with his ‘Negative Confession’, as it has come to be called (‘I have
never done this particular wrong’), which is straight out of Tobit 4,
all the things that old Tobit (his maxims) had warned his son not to do in
order to live a good life. Tobias/Job, ever obedient to his father, took these
maxims to heart, and then threw them right back at his accusers.
The Douay version of
the Book of Tobit has a footnote likening the sufferings of old Tobit to those
of the holy Job. Their lives run some notable parallels (both badgered by
their wives, for one).
Then there is the
geography. The home of Tobit (a Naphtalian family) in the eastern Galilean
region, Bashan (‘Ecbatana’), is the very place where Arabic legend has “Uz”,
the home of Job.
Damien.
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