Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit. Part Two: Tobit’s Dog and ‘Argus’ in Homer

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

The fact that both the Book of Tobit and the Book of Job - which also has mention of a dog(s) (Job 30:1) - can, in combination, be compared with The Odyssey, further reinforces me in my view that the prophet Job was Tobias son of Tobit.

 

 

 

Since as far back as St. Jerome, there has been discerned a definite resemblance between the Book of Tobit and Homer’s The Odyssey, this often focussing upon the dog.

We read, for example, at: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=12-02-036-

 

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

 

The knee-jerk reaction of scholars is inevitably (as in the quote above) to interpret the situation as the Hebrew text being dependent upon the pagan one. But this is astonishing in the case of the Book of Tobit, which is set firmly in relation to a succession of real neo-Assyrian kings.

Can Homer’s The Odyssey claim to be an historical record? Was Homer even a real person?

 

The fact that both the Book of Tobit and the Book of Job - which also has mention of a dog(s) (Job 30:1) - can, in combination, be compared with The Odyssey, further reinforces me in my view that the prophet Job was Tobias son of Tobit.

 

In The Odyssey, Argus is a much-loved hound. For example:

https://www.quora.com/In-The-Odyssey-who-is-Argus

Argos (Argus) is Odysseus' loyal dog, appearing in book 17. He waits the full 20 years for his master to return home. When Odysseus enters his palace disguised as a beggar, Argos recognises him, but Odysseus can't give away his emotions/ recognition in case he gets discovered.

Once he's seen his master come home again, he can pass away in peace.

 

“Argos, the hound of Odysseus, of the steadfast heart, whom of old he had himself bred, but had no joy of him, for ere that he went to sacred Ilios. In days past the young men were wont to take the hound to hunt the wild goats, and deer, and hares; but now he lay neglected, his master gone, in the deep dung of mules and cattle, which lay in heaps before the doors, till the slaves of Odysseus should take it away to dung his wide lands.

There lay the hound Argos, full of vermin; yet even now, when he marked Odysseus standing near, he wagged his tail and dropped both his ears, but nearer to his master he had no longer strength to move. Then Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear, easily hiding from Eumaeus what he did; and straightway he questioned him, and said: “Eumaeus, verily it is strange that this hound lies here in the dung. He is fine of form, but I do not clearly know whether he has speed of foot to match this beauty or whether he is merely as table-dogs are, which their masters keep for show.”

To him then, swineherd Eumaeus, didst thou make answer and say: “Aye, verily this is the hound of a man that has died in a far land. If he were but in form and in action such as he was when Odysseus left him and went to Troy, thou wouldest soon be amazed at seeing his speed and his strength. No creature that he started in the depths of the thick wood could escape him, and in tracking too he was keen of scent. But now he is in evil plight, and his master has perished far from his native land, and the heedless women give him no care. Slaves, when their masters lose their power, are no longer minded thereafter to do honest service: for Zeus, whose voice is borne afar, takes away half his worth from a man, when the day of slavery comes upon him.” So saying, he entered the stately house and went straight to the hall to join the company of the lordly wooers.

But as for Argos, the fate of black death seized him straightway when he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.” — 17.290

 

It's a short yet poignant recognition scene, in part displaying the pockets of loyalty within Odysseus' household, and their suffering while he's been away. ….

 

And Edward M. Cook has found that: “Tobit's dog also shows up more than you might think in literature”: http://ralphriver.blogspot.com.au/2005/04/tobits-dog.html

 

Tobit's Dog

 

I've been doing some research lately on Ahikar, a major extrabiblical character who shows up in the book of Tobit in a minor role. Doing this reminded me of another minor character in the book of Tobit: Tobit's dog.

Tobit's dog appears only twice (in 6:2 and 11:4) and plays no role in the story (actually he accompanies Tobias, Tobit's son). Like many dogs, he just shows up whenever something seems to be going on. This little detail has greatly exercised the commentators, and even now no one seems to know how the dog got into the story.

Tobit's dog also shows up more than you might think in literature. For instance, here he makes an appearance in Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random:

With this view he approached us, with many bows and grimaces, and, after having welcomed Miss Snapper to the place, asked her in the hearing of all present, if she could inform him of the name of Tobit's dog. Miss was so much incensed at his insolence, that I should certainly have kicked him where he stood without ceremony, had not the young lady prevented the effects of my indignation, by replying with the utmost vivacity, "His name was Nash, and an impudent dog he was."

 

Voltaire puts these words in the mouth of a fictitious scholar:

I will show them, with outstretched neck and twisted mouth, that you hold an erroneous opinion in relation to the cells in which the Septuagint was studied; that you have even spoken disrespectfully ten years ago of Tobit's dog, which you asserted to have been a spaniel, while I proved that it was a greyhound.

Jonathan Swift wrote:

THAT Expression in Apocrypha about Tobit, and his Dog following him, I have often heard ridiculed; yet Homer has the same Words of Telemachus more than once; and Virgil says something like it of Evander. And I take the Book of Tobit to be partly poetical.

The militantly Protestant, of course, don't like Tobit or his dog. A character in Walter Scott's Waverley: ‘But if your honour wad consider the case of Tobit — ’

‘Tobit!’ exclaimed Gilfflan, with great heat; ‘Tobit and his dog baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae been mista’en in you, friend.’

And J. N. Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren, has this to say:

Look at Tobit, and his dog; it is absurd! Bel and the dragon may be true, but it has nothing to do with inspiration.

But my favorite mention of the dog comes in Robert Browning's "Ring and the Book":

Let

Each level have its language! Heaven speaks first
To the angel, then the angel tames the word
Down to the ear of Tobit: he, in turn,
Diminishes the message to his dog,
And finally that dog finds how the flea
(Which else, importunate, might check his speed)
Shall learn its hunger must have holiday ...

 

 

JiSeong J. Kwon has likewise recognised (following others) similarities between the Books of Tobit and Job, he having here recorded an abundance of comparisons. For example: https://www.academia.edu/34905218/Meaning_and_Context_in_Job_and_Tobit_JSOT_2018_Forthcoming_

 

As many pointed out, there are similar motifs and common literary structures between the books of Tobit and of Job: ….

 

1. Job and Tobit are described as pious and religious men (Job 1:1, 4-5; Tob 1:3-12, 16-18); Sarah confesses that she “is innocent from all impurity with a man” (Tob 3:14).

 

1. As a result of their pious lives, they are greatly blessed (Job 1:2-3; Tob 1:12-13); this is lacking in Sarah’s story. ….
    
2. Job and Tobit suffer from losing their possessions (with children in Job), although they do not engage in any misbehaviours, and rather do right things (Job 1:13-19; Tob 1:20); Sarah’s agony is related to the loss of her seven husbands irrespective of her sins (Tob 3:8). ….
3. Their bodies are at some points damaged (Job 2:7; Tob 2:9-10); Job suffers because of a skin disease while Tobit loses his eyesight. ….
    
4. When Job and Tobit are in agony, the wife of Job and Anna the wife of Tobit appear as antagonistic (Job 2:9-10; Tob 2:11-14); Sarah’s servant criticises her (Tob 3:8). ….
    
5. Their friends or relatives console them in the midst of their agony (Job 2:11-13; Tob 2:10) ….
    
6. Job and Tobit (also Sarah) pray for their hardships (Job 9:25-35; Tob 3:2-5, 11-15) and they desire to end their lives (Job 3:1-26; 6:8-10; Tob 3:6, 10). ….
    
7. In the process and ending of each story, losses of the two characters is finally recovered and they reach a full age (Job 42:12ff; Tob 14:2, 11).
    

It is certain that both Job and Tobit share affinities to some degree as characters in family relations. In particular, there is a noteworthy link about their wives, found in Job 2:9 (31:10 [LXX]) and Tob 2:11-14, so much as that a probable dependence of Tobit upon Job has been suggested. ….

[End of quote]

 

Though, historically, the events described in the Book of Tobit would have pre-dated those narrated in the Book of Job, with Job, who is Tobias, now being an old man. So there may be good reason to think, instead, that the Book of Job was likely dependent upon Tobit.

 

JiSeong J. Kwon has also discerned a connection with Homer’s The Odyssey. But he, too, would have the biblical literature drawing upon the Greek text.

Thus he writes in Meaning and Context in Job and Tobit (JSOT; 2018 Forthcoming):

 

It is remarkable that the literary structure both of Job and of Tobit opens up the story of a sufferer, develops dialogues between characters, and encloses the main body in the parenthesis of the restoration and grand death of the main character. The book of Job adopts a form of dialogues demonstrating visible tension between Job and Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu, and Yahweh …. Likewise, the book of Tobit has many dialogues and conversations between its characters,  but the performance of such characters as Tobit, Tobias, Raphael, and Sarah explains little (e.g., Tobit/Tobias 2:2-3; 5:9, 17; Tobias/Raphael 5:4-8; Tobit/Raphael 5:10-17) and is didactic  between Tobit and Tobias (e.g., 4:3-5:3; 6:4-18) and rarely builds up the tension between characters (e.g., Tobit/Anna 2:13-14; 5:18-22).

 

Dialogues in Tobit do not bring such a well-constructed dialogue, including the literary form of lawsuit, but it uses the narrative of Tobias’ adventurous journey for a money collection from Gabael, for marrying a wife from Tobias’ kindred and for getting medicine for Tobit and Sarah. This deliberate scene and plot could be derived from the two potential texts. Firstly, this literary form would probably be drawn from the Telemachus’s story of Homer's Odyssey [sic] where Telemachus departs on his journey with the Mentor/Athena who develops as a helper to the young man; compared to Tobias/Raphael. ….

 

St. Jerome saw resemblance of Tobit to Homer’s The Odyssey

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

“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”.

 

Patrick Henry Reardon

 

 

This is most interesting to learn, given my view of those striking:

 

Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit

 

http://www.academia.edu/8914220/Similarities_to_The_Odyssey_of_the_Books_of_Job_and_Tobit

Patrick Henry Reardon writes of

 

The Wide World of Tobit

The Apocrypha’s Tobit and Literary Tradition

 

Tobit is a short book. Indeed, Jerome tells us that translating it into Latin cost him only “the labor of one day.” …. 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. …. 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 … 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. …. 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. ….

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. ….

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). …. 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 … not only, furthermore, does it stand in canonical continuity with the more positive formulation of the same Golden Rule preserved in the Gospels … it is also the equivalent to an ideal found in other ethical philosophies. These latter include Greek authors like Herodotus and Isocrates … and even classical Confucianism. …. This use of the Golden Rule thus assured Tobit a featured place in the entire history of religion and moral philosophy. ….

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 … but it was a topic not limited to the Bible. Back near the beginning of the second millennium B.C. [sic] 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 … 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.” …. No other ancient version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but Jerome, ever the classicist, was confident his readers would remember [sic] 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. ….

Furthermore, some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus. …. 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. …. 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. …. 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. …. 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 catacombs … and then in a few literary references. ….

Similarly, Isidore of Seville believed that young Tobias, inasmuch as he healed his parent’s blindness, “had an image of Christ.” …. 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 Bede … 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. …. 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,” … 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.