Part 60
3. At the time when the Septuagint translations and the apocrypha were composed, books were written on papyrus or leather scrolls and each book would normally have been written on a separate scroll. Thus the issue of what was to be included together with the other books of the Greek Bible only really arose with the Christian adoption of the Codex. Most of the books of the apocrypha are to be found in each of the great codices of the Septuagint from late antiquity without any indication that they are not part of the canon of Scripture, but they are found in different places within the text and not all are consistently included. Thus, for example, the Prayer of Manasseh is not in any of our ancient copies of the Septuagint, but some Septuagint MSS include 3 and 4 Maccabees and Ps 151, which were not to be treated as part of the Apocrypha when the corpus was defined in the Reformation, and by contrast 2 Esdras is not found in any Greek codex of the Septuagint. From all this it is clear that Christians in late antiquity on the whole treated the Apocrypha as part of the canon of sacred Scripture, but since the limits of the canon were still disputed, some books were more consistently treated in this way than others.
B. History. 1. Septuagint. The creation of the Apocrypha is part of the history of the translation of the HB into Greek. The Septuagint, so-called because of the foundation legend that it was the work of seventy (or seventy-two) translators, was produced gradually during the third and second centuries BCE. According to the Letter ofAristeas, the translation of the Pentateuch was produced by translators sent to Alexandria from Jerusalem by the high priest Eleazar at the behest of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283-246 BCE) and, although the detailed historicity of this legend is dubious, and it is more likely that the work was commissioned by Greek-speaking Jews, the Alexandrian origin of the work is plausible since a festival to celebrate the translation was held there regularly in the first century CE (Philo, vit. Mas. 2.7 (41)). But the other books were translated piecemeal and quite possibly in other parts of the Greek-speaking diaspora. All that is certain is that the main body of the Writings and the Prophets were available by the late second century BCE, when the grandson of the author of Ecclesiasticus, Jesus son of Sira, referred, in the prologue to his translation of his grandfather's work, to the existence of Greek versions of 'the Law, the prophecies and the rest of the books'. In the same passage the grandson of Jesus son of Sira referred to the impossibility of precise translation: 'What was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language.' In this he was quite correct, and the translators of different books in the Septuagint varied between those who aimed at a very literal rendering and those who apparently aimed more at reproducing the mood of the original. In the latter case the Greek version often necessarily included a great
4. Confirmation of this view can be found in the lists of canonical works of the OT compiled by Christian authors in late antiquity, in which the books of the apocrypha are found in varying numbers and order. Many Greek Christian writers of the second and third centuries regularly cited apocryphal books, using the same formulas to introduce quotations that they used to cite texts from the OT. However, a few Christian authors, such as Melito of Sardis in the second century and Origen in the third, were aware that although the apocryphal books were to be found in the Septuagint and were therefore 'Scripture' they were not in use among Jews as part of the HB, and in the fourth century Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Amphilochius did not include any of the apocrypha in the lists of canonical books that they drew up.
C. Use of the Apocrypha in the Early Church. 1. There is no direct quotation from the apocrypha in the NT, and it is difficult to be certain whether parallel expression and allusions, of which many can be identified, show use of the
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apocrypha by the authors of the NT or the influence of a common tradition. Thus, for instance, many expressions in the letters of Paul and in Hebrews use imagery close to that in Wisdom of Solomon (e.g. Heb 1:1-3 = Wis 7:25-7), and Heb 11:35-7 alludes to the martyrdom story found in 2 Mace 6-7. Direct borrowing is not, of course, impossible, but these themes may have had much wider currency than just the surviving literature.
in the Hebrew OT, from Nicholas of Lyra and Wycliffe in the fourteenth century to Cardinal Ximenes, editor of the Complutensian Polyglot edition of the Bible in 1514—17.
2. The attitude of Protestant scholars in the Reformation was thus not entirely a break with recent Christian practice. In 1520 Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt published a tracture distinguishing the apocryphal books from those in the Hebrew OT and dividing the apocrypha itself into two groups of non-canonical but holy books (e.g. Tobit, Wisdom, and Sirach) and foolish writings 'worthy of the Censor's ban' (i.e. i and 2 Esdras, Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the Additions to Daniel). Following this lead, many Protestant Bibles in the vernacular, most influentially Luther's German translation completed in 1534, placed the books of the Apocrypha in a separate appendix after the books of the OT, with a preface stating that these books 'are not held equal to the sacred scriptures, and yet are useful and good for reading'. The treatment of the Apocrypha as a separate corpus became standard in Protestant Bibles, although there continued to be rare exceptions, such as the place of the Prayer of Manasseh in the Geneva Bible published in English in 1560, between 2 Chronicles and Ezra, with a note about its apocryphal status.
2. In contrast numerous quotations from the apocrypha can be found in patristic writings. Among Greek-speaking Christians, Wisdom of Solomon was quoted by i Clement at the end of the first century and in the Epistle of Barnabas from the early second; Ecclesiasticus and 2 Esdras were also quoted by Barnabas', Tobit was quoted by Polycarp in the mid-second century; the stories of Susanna and the other apocryphal Additions to Daniel were included by Hippolytus of Rome in his commentary on Daniel. These citations generally treated the text of the apocrypha as inspired like the rest of Scripture. In the fragmentary Muratorian Canon, to be dated probably to C.2OO, the Wisdom of Solomon actually appears as part of the NT, albeit with an indication that this is not certain. Among Latin Christians, such as Tertullian and Cyprian, the apocryphal books were accorded even higher esteem, doubtless encouraged in the view by their inclusion in the Old Latin version of the OT, which was translated from the Septuagint. The main dissenting voice was that of Jerome, who made much use of the HB in creating his new Latin translation, the Vulgate, in the early fifth century. Jerome was persuaded to include some of the apocrypha in the Vulgate on the grounds that these were popular books, but in the margins he marked as missing in the Hebrew the Additions to Daniel and Esther, and, although he translated Tobit and Judith, later MSS of the Vulgate imported into Jerome's corpus the Old Latin versions of the other books. This ambivalent attitude was best summed up by Jerome himself in the Prologues to a number of these books: in his view the apocryphal books might be read by Christians and contained much of value, but they were not canonical and thus should not be used to establish the doctrines of the church. This view coexisted unhappily among Latin Christians with the powerful advocacy of the canonical status of these books urged by Jerome's contemporary Augustine. Among Greek Christians canonical status was generally taken for granted, but early Syriac patristic authors used an OT even more restricted than the Hebrew—of the apocrypha they knew only Ecclesiasticus, which they treated as canonical.
3. This attitude in Protestant churches provoked a vigorous response by the Catholic church, with the declaration in the Council of Trent in 1546 of an anathema on anyone who did not recognize as sacred and canonical all the books found in the Vulgate, although the same Council rather inconsistently denied the canonical status of the Prayer of Manasseh and i and 2 Esdras; as a result, these books were after 1593 regularly printed as a separate appendix, while the rest of the books treated by Protestants as the apocrypha continued to be printed as part of the biblical text as in older editions of the Vulgate. None the less it remained useful for Catholics to distinguish the Apocrypha as a separate corpus and these books were thus often termed by Catholics 'deuterocanonical'.
4. The books of the Apocrypha do not play a major role in contemporary Christianity even among Roman Catholics. Among Protestants the lower status given to these books early led to their omission altogether in many printed Bibles. Among Calvinists the Apocrypha was rejected altogether as wholly without authority, and arguments about the value of these books continued among Protestants in many countries through the nineteenth century. Among the Protestant churches, the most positive attitude towards the apocrypha is found in the Anglican church, in which extensive use is made of these books in the liturgy.
D. Identification of the Apocrypha as a Distinct Corpus. 1. Treatment of the apocryphal books as quasi-Scripture precluded recognition by patristic authors of these books as constituting a distinct literary corpus. Even Jerome, who applied the term 'apocrypha' to these writings (above, A.2), treated them only negatively: the apocrypha were defined as the books found in Greek and Latin Bibles but not in the Hebrew. The insights of Jerome were for the most part ignored during the Middle Ages. Most Christians treated all the books found in the
E. Jewish Attitudes to the Books of the Apocrypha. 1. The late Second Temple period, when the apocrypha were written, was a time of intense literary activity among Jews (see below, G.i6). The basis of that activity was the books now found in the HB, but it is unclear when and how precisely Jews came to agree on the limits of a canon of inspired Scripture. Thus it is entirely possible that soon after their composition the writings now found in the Apocrypha were treated by Jews as similar in nature and authority to the books in their Bible. On the other hand the statement by Josephus (Ag. Ap. 1.43) that 'there are not with us myriads of books, discordant and discrepant, but only twenty-two, comprising the history of all
Septuagint and the Vulgate as of equal value, and many of the books of the apocrypha were widely read and popular. None the less some scholars continued to distinguish the apocrypha from the distinctive authority of the books found
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Renaissance, when scholarly Jews became aware of the existence of a large Jewish literature in Greek, and a translation of the apocrypha into Hebrew was published in the early sixteenth century. Since then Jewish scholars have made much use of these books in the study of Jewish literature and history, but these writings have never reverted to their original status as sources of religious edification.
time, which are justly accredited' almost certainly refers to the biblical books and shows that, even if a fixed canon was not yet generally agreed, the idea that there might be such a canon was familiar. The discovery among the Dead Sea scrolls of fragments of Ecclesiasticus (also found at Masada), the Letter of Jeremiah (in Greek), and Tobit shows that these books were read by some Palestinian Jews before 70 CE, and the lack of the other apocryphal books among the finds may be accidental, although it is worth noting in contrast the discovery at Qumran of parts of every book of the HB except Esther. Josephus used i Esdras, i Maccabees, and the additions to Esther, but his failure to refer to the other books of the Apocrypha may in some cases be only because they were not sufficiently historical to be of use to him. It should be noted that, if Josephus really meant to insist that Jews used a fixed number of historical texts (see above) but himself follows the version of Jewish history in i Esdras, either he did not possess the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah or he believed i Esdras to be canonical and the biblical books to be lacking in authority.
F. Description of the Books of the Apocrypha. 1. Size The corpus of the Apocrypha is about one-fifth of the length of the OT and over two-thirds that of the NT. The books are of very unequal length. Sirach is the longest, almost as long as Exodus. The Prayer of Manasseh consists of one brief chapter.
2. Genres The books included in the Apocrypha show no generic uniformity, i Esdras, i Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees are, or purport to be, historical works. Tobit, Judith, and the Additions to Daniel are essentially moralizing romances.
Sirach is a work of wisdom literature similar to Proverbs; Wisdom of Solomon is a more high-flown and philosophical instance ofthe same genre. 2 Esdras is apocalyptic. The Prayer of Manasseh is an example of devotional literature.
2. Early rabbinic literature shows no awareness of any of the books of the Apocrypha apart from Sirach. This is unsurprising for those books that existed only in Greek, but more surprising for Tobit and Judith, which certainly existed in Aramaic and perhaps in Hebrew, and i Maccabees, which was probably originally composed in Hebrew; at any rate a Hebrew version was known to Origen and to Jerome (see below, F.6). Citations of Sirach (under the name 'Ben Sirah') in early rabbinic texts are quite frequent and are sometimes preceded by the same introductory formula ('as it is written') which was used to introduce passages from the Writings, the third part of the OT (cf. b. B. Qam. g2b). It is clear from this that Sirach was highly regarded, but not that the rabbis treated this text as equal in status to those in the biblical corpus; the rabbinic discussions over which texts 'render the hands unclean' reveal doubts about the status of a number of books that are included in the biblical corpus (e.g. Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes), but not about Sirach. The rabbis may not have used most of the apocryphal texts but they were aware of some of the traditions referred to in those texts. Most important was the festival of Hanukkah, which celebrated the events described in i and 2 Maccabees, but there are also occasional rabbinic references to the martyrdom story of Hannah and her sons found in 2 Maccabees (cf. b. Git. 5yb) and to the stories found in the Additions to Daniel.
3. Dates of Composition The only book in the Apocrypha whose date of composition can be ascertained fairly precisely is Sirach, since the grandson ofthe author, who translated the book into Greek, stated in the prologue to the translation that he had arrived in Egypt 'in the thirty-eighth year ofthe reign of Euergetes', i.e. in 132 BCE; his grandfather must therefore have composed the original Hebrew in the first half of the second century BCE. For some of the other writings (i Esdras, the Additions to Esther, i Maccabees) a final terminus ante quern is the end ofthe first century CE because Josephus knew and used them; the date ofthe translation ofthe Hebrew book of Esther into Greek is given by a colophon which probably fixes it to 114 BCE, but it is possible that the Additions that are found only in the Greek text (and hence are now found in the Apocrypha) were composed separately after the completion ofthe main translation and were only later inserted into the narrative. Composition before c.ioo CE is also likely for the bulk of 2 Esdras since the book was early cited by Christians. It is in any case unlikely that any Jewish writing would have been adopted by Christians with the enthusiasm accorded to the Apocrypha if it had been composed much after that date.
4. The earliest date that most of these books could have been written is in most cases less easy to state, i and 2 Maccabees cannot have been composed before the events they describe; the author of i Maccabees thus wrote after 134 BCE, the author of 2 Maccabees after 163 BCE. In theory all the other books may have originated much earlier, in the Persian period; this is entirely possible, for instance, of Tobit. Arguments for a later date, after £.300 BCE, are commonly advanced, but they rely upon the general nature of these writings, and especially alleged reflections of political events, rather than any specific temporal indication in the texts, and they are thus only hypothetical.
3. The contents of some of the books of the Apocrypha came back to the attention of Jews in the Middle Ages through the wide dissemination of Hebrew versions of some of the stories. The narratives of Tobit and Judith were popular, as was Megillat Antiochus, which repeated in outline some of the material found in the books of Maccabees. Ecclesiasticus, known to the rabbis as Ben Sira, was presumably still known to some Jews in the original Hebrew even in the high Middle Ages, since large portions of the text were found in the Cairo Genizah in 1896, but the uniqueness of this manuscript find, and the scarcity of references to the work in rabbinic literature after antiquity, suggests that the book was not widely read, although the composition in the medieval period of a new work, the Alfabet of Ben Sira, demonstrates the continuing prestige thought to attach to the work of Ben Sira himself. The real revival of Jewish interest in the apocrypha came in the
5. Places of Composition There is no reason to assume that all these books were either written or (in some cases) translated in the same place; only the translation of Sirach can be confidently located in Alexandria in the Egyptian delta. Those writings originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic (see 0.5) may have been written either in the Land of Israel or in
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whatever the aims of the authors, there is no evidence that any ancient pagan in fact read any of these works.
Babylonia or Syria or even in Egypt (e.g. Tobit). Those written in or translated into Greek may originate from any part of the Eastern Mediterranean world, including quite possibly Judea, since some knowledge of Greek can be presumed among educated circles in Jerusalem from at least the third century BCE (see below, 0.15).
G. Historical Background. 1. Political Events In the Hellenistic World The political event of most significance in the shaping of the Apocrypha was the conquest of the Levant by Alexander the Great of Macedon in 331 BCE. For nearly two centuries before the arrival of Alexander, the Land of Israel lay under Persian rule. The Persian state was on the whole content to interfere little with the lives of its subjects, and the small province of Judah was allowed to develop its own distinctive culture around the temple city of Jerusalem. This quiet, parochial existence was shattered by Alexander, who brought Greek culture in all its forms to the Jews.
6. Original Languages Because of the process of transmission of this corpus of texts (see B.I, 3-4), all of them have been preserved in Greek, but this does not mean that all were therefore originally composed in Greek. The Hebrew or Aramaic origin of the book of Tobit is now certain because of the discovery of five Tobit MSS, four in Aramaic and one in Hebrew, among the Dead Sea scrolls. In contrast the original Semitic version of Judith and of i Maccabees can only be hypothesized from the nature of the Greek text, although an Aramaic version of Judith was known to Jerome in the early fifth century and a Hebrew text of i Maccabees was known to Origen in the third century. There is no reason to doubt that both 2 Maccabees and the Wisdom of Solomon were originally written in Greek, but for the rest of the Apocrypha the original language is uncertain. In the third century CE Julius Africanus argued that the play on words in the Greek text of
2. Alexander inherited the throne of Macedon from his father Philip at the age of 20 in 336 BCE and almost immediately embarked on an ambitious campaign to conquer the Persian empire. Astonishing success in a series of battles brought him by the time of his death in 323 BCE control of the whole of the Near East up to the borders of India. Within his new empire lay not just the Jewish homeland and temple but also the great centre of Jewish exile in Mesopotamia. For the next 200 years Jewish history was continually affected by the intrigues and ambitions of Alexander's Macedonian successors. After a period of turmoil following Alexander's death, his generals eventually parcelled out his huge conquests among themselves. Of the great dynastic empires that thus came into existence by 301 BCE, the two most to affect the Jews were the dynasty founded by Ptolemy I Soter, with its base in Egypt, and the rival dynasty of Seleucus I Nicator, which had essentially two main bases, one in Mesopotamia and the other in northern Syria.
Susanna shows that this narrative was originally composed in Greek, but it is also possible that this was the work of an ingenious translator.
7. Authors Most of the authors of the apocryphal books are anonymous or pseudonymous and their identities can only be surmised from the contents of their writings. The exceptions are Jesus ben Sira, author of Ecclesiasticus, who identified himself in the text (50:27) as a Jerusalemite, and his grandson, who translated his work and, according to his statement in the prologue, wrote in Egypt. 2 Maccabees is an abridgement of a larger work in five volumes by a certain Jason of Gyrene (2 Mace 2:23), but beyond the facts that his name indicates that he came from Cyrenaica (modern Libya) and that the details in the narrative suggest (if they derive from Jason) that he had spent some time in Judea, nothing else can be said about him. Despite the preservation of the Apocrypha eventually through Christian rather than Jewish copyists since the end of the first century CE (see B.2), there is no reason to doubt that most of what is found in these books was written by Jews except for 2 Esd 1—2; 15—16; these passages, which are found in the Latin Vulgate, are missing in the oriental translations and appear to be additions by a Christian author. Christian interpolations into the texts of other books of the Apocrypha are possible but seem to have been rare, presumably because these texts were from early on treated as Scripture.
3. From 301 to 198 BCE Jerusalem lay under the rule of the Ptolemys, lying at the northern fringes of the Ptolemaic state, but the territory of the Land of Israel was disputed by the
Seleucids in six wars in the course of the third century, and eventually the Seleucid king Antiochus III in 198 BCE wrested control of the southern Levant into his own hands as part of a general expansion of his kingdom. The result was a change in the method of state control of Judea. In essence the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled through a large bureaucracy, in part a necessity because of the reliance of Egyptian agriculture on irrigation which depended on state regulation; in contrast the much more diffuse empire of the Seleucids relied heavily on cooperation by local elites, who were given incentives to administer their regions on behalf of the state. Hence in the Seleucid empire there were more (or more openly recognized) routes to advancement for non-Greeks than in the Ptolemaic state, but with the proviso that non-Greek elites were expected to behave in Greek fashion if they were to be granted such control over their own communities. In Jerusalem the Jewish ruling elite was essentially the high priest and his associates. During the course of the first quarter of the second century BCE some members of this elite proved sufficiently attracted to the prospect of power to adopt Greek names and some Greek customs. It is possible (although it is hard to tell whether this was actually their intention) that the gradual adoption of this alien culture would have led in time to the end of a distinctively Jewish culture and religion. In any case the process was abruptly halted by the Maccabean revolt.
8. Readership So far as is known, everything in the Apocrypha, apart from the Christian interpolations (see c.6), was written originally primarily for a Jewish readership. Only in the case of the Wisdom of Solomon is it reasonable to speculate that the author may in part have had in mind also Gentile readers: the address to the 'judges and kings of the earth' (Wis 1:1; 6:1) is a literary fiction, but the attack on the foolishness of idolatry (chs. 13—15) may have been genuinely aimed at Gentile pagans, although its prime intention may more plausibly have been to guide Jews away from any temptation to indulge in such worship, and the book as a whole contains so many veiled allusions to biblical history that only Jewish readers could have appreciated it fully. In any case, and
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the Hasmoneans with their Jewish subjects at times became stormy.
4. The Maccabean Revolt In 168 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes ordered the abolition of the ancient cult in the temple in Jerusalem and the conversion of the shrine to pagan worship. Neither the new divinity to whom the temple was dedicated nor the precise causes of this highly unusual attack by a Hellenistic king on an ancestral religion can be stated with certainty; the main sources of evidence are the books of Maccabees in the Apocrypha, which provide as explanation the internal divisions within the Jewish ruling class, and in particular the desire of some high priests to embrace Hellenism as a route to political power, but the wider policy of Antiochus, who first expanded his power through a dramatic campaign south into Egypt and was then compelled to withdraw by the threat of Roman intervention, may have been equally or even more responsible. At any rate this attack provoked an uprising led by Mattathias, a priest from Modiin, north-west of Jerusalem, and his five sons, of whom Judas Maccabee emerged in the course of the struggle as supreme leader. By 164 BCE guerrilla warfare had succeeded and the temple was purified and rededicated.
7. The decline of the Hasmonean dynasty was a direct product of the ambitions of Rome. During the 703 BCE the remnants of the Seleucid state fell into Roman hands and in 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey the Great took advantage of quarrels between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, the two sons of Alexandra Jannaea Salome, to intervene ostensibly on the side of Hyrcanus. Thus Pompey besieged Jerusalem and inaugurated the ensuing history of misunderstandings between Jews and Romans by desecrating the Holy of Holies in the temple simply out of curiosity to know whether it was true that there was no cult image in the shrine. From that date Judea lay in effect within the Roman empire, although for much of the next century Rome preferred to exercise control through proxy Jewish rulers, a procedure common in Rome's administration of her empire elsewhere.
8. Herodian Rule The transfer of Roman patronage from the Hasmonean dynasty to Herod the Great in 40 BCE was not a result of standard Roman policy, for Rome usually sought client kings from within the ranks of existing native dynasties. Nor was it remotely to be expected on the Jewish side, since Herod was an Idumean, descended on his father's side from the people converted to Judaism less than a century before by John Hyrcanus and on his mother's side from a Nabatean Arab, and thus ineligible for the high priesthood. Herod was proclaimed king of Judea by the Roman senate and consuls out of desperation caused by the internal disintegration of the Roman state.
5. Hasmonean Rule Control of the temple did not automatically bring political independence. There continued to be a Seleucid garrison in Jerusalem until probably 129 BCE. Nor did the family of Mattathias and Judas immediately reap in full the fruits of their victory: when the temple cult was restarted by Judas, the new high priest was a certain Alcimus, an associate of the high priest from before the war; Mattathias died during the war and Judas himself was killed in battle in 161 BCE. On the death of Alcimus in 159 BCE there was a hiatus in the high priesthood until 152 BCE, when Judas's brother Jonathan had himself appointed to the post. From that date to 37 BCE all the high priests came from this family. The dynasty was called by the name 'Hasmonean', a reference back to an ancestor of Mattathias. At first the Hasmoneans ruled Judea as vassals, in effect, of the Seleucid kings, but they took advantage of the disintegration of the Seleucid state through internal dissension and the machinations of the Romans, whose interest in the eastern Mediterranean increased during the second century BCE. By the I2OS BCE the Hasmonean high priest John Hyrcanus was sufficiently independent to commence campaigns to expand the region of Jewish rule outside Judea, and by 112 BCE the whole region of Idumea, to the south of Judea, had been forced by him to convert to Judaism. A similar policy of expansion and incorporation was followed by his son Aristobulus, who in 104—103 BCE compelled the Itureans who lived in Galilee to become Jews.
9. The period of civil war that had first engulfed the Mediterranean world in 49 BCE with the struggle of Pompey and Julius Caesar did not abate until the victory of Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, in the battle of Actium in 31 BCE. In the meantime the Roman state was in turmoil and in 40 BCE the Parthians, whose empire in this period was based in Mesopotamia, took advantage of Roman disarray to invade the southern Levant. The Hasmonean ruler and high priest Hyrcanus (67—40 BCE) was carried off into exile in Babylonia and replaced by his nephew, the pro-Parthian Antigonus. The Romans, who had no Hasmonean adult male to put forward in opposition, chose Herod instead simply because he had already proved himself an energetic aide to Hyrcanus and a loyal friend to Rome.
10. Herod's first act once proclaimed king was to join his Roman patrons in a sacrifice to Jupiter on the Capitol, and when he eventually captured his capital in 37 BCE it was through the efforts of Roman legionaries commanded by a Roman general. It is not surprising that, after this inauspicious start, Herod's relationship with his subjects was never easy. He ruled until 4 BCE through repression, constantly fearful of plots, not least by members of his own family. His grandiose building plans, which included the massive reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple, did not succeed in endearing him to his people. His success in ruling through fear was demonstrated by the eruption of widespread revolts when he died. His son Archelaus, appointed ethnarch of Judea by the Roman emperor Augustus, proved incapable of imposing control in the same way, and in 6 CE he was sent by Augustus into exile in the south of France. Judea came under the direct rule of a Roman governor.
6. The brief rule of Aristobulus (104-103 BCE) marked something of a shift in the nature of Hasmonean rule. Aristobulus was still high priest, and his right to power was still justified by the dynasty's role as the leaders of the revolt in the i6os, but he liked to be known as 'philhellene' (a lover of Greek culture) and he had himself declared king. In his rule, and that of his successor Alexander Jannaeus (103—76 BCE), the Hasmonean dynasty behaved much like other Hellenistic rulers, using mercenary soldiers to establish themselves as a regional superpower. When Jannaeus died, his widow Alexandra Jannaea Salome became queen (76-67 BCE), in a fashion found elsewhere in the Hellenistic world but not previously among Jews. In the process the relationship of
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found in all the coastal areas in the eastern Mediterranean from Greece round to Gyrene in Libya as well as in the city of Rome, in the interior of western Asia Minor on the Anatolian plateau, and in large numbers in the countryside in Syria and in Egypt, while the largest diaspora communities were in the great Hellenistic capital cities of Alexandria and Antioch. After the defeat of 70 CE Jews were ever more dispersed, but the emergence of a diaspora in the western Mediterranean cannot be attested until late-Roman times.
11. Roman Rule Judea was controlled directly by Rome for many centuries from 6 CE, with the exception of the glorious three-year rule from 41 to 44 CE of Agrippa I, Herod's grandson, who owed his throne to his machinations in Roman politics and his role in bringing to power the new emperor Claudius, and the periods of Jewish revolt in 66—70 and 132-5 CE. 12. There was a revolt in 6 CE when a census was imposed as part of the organization of the new province, but this phenomenon can also be observed in other provinces in this period. Despite a mass protest in 40 CE when the emperor Gaiaus Caligula attempted to have a statue of himself erected in the temple, and occasional disturbances in Jerusalem at the times of mass pilgrimage on the festivals, the Romans left Judea lightly garrisoned down to 66 CE and evidently did not consider the Jews a particular threat. The revolt in 66-70 CE may thus have come as something of a surprise. At any rate it appears that Roman war aims changed during its course: a war which began as an attempt to make the Jews give sacrifices in their temple on behalf of the emperor ended with the total destruction of the temple. It is probable that the exceptional ferocity of the final Roman assault on the temple owed much to the need of the Roman commander Titus to win rapid prestige in Rome for himself and his father Vespasian, since Vespasian had seized power in a bloody civil war the previous year and, lacking any other qualifications for supreme office, used the victory over the Jews as evidence of his beneficence to the empire. Hence the superfluity of monuments in Rome to commemorate the defeat of the Jews, and the impossibility of an immediate rebuilding of the temple.
15. Cultural Developments Jews in this period were profoundly affected both in the Land of Israel and in the Mediterranean diaspora by the Greek culture spread and promoted by Alexander the Great and his successors. In this respect Jews were part of a much wider phenomenon in which native cultures throughout the Near East fused to a greater or lesser extent with the culture of the Graeco-Macedonian dynasties which ruled over them; the amalgamated cultures which resulted have been termed 'Hellenistic' by scholars since the nineteenth century. Thus the use of the Greek language was widespread in the Land of Israel by the first century CE, although it was probably in more common use in towns and in cities. Jews also adopted Greek architecture, political forms, literary genres, and, to a limited extent, philosophical ideas. Much of this adoption was apparently both gradual and unselfconscious: Hellenistic culture was simply the milieu in which Jews from the time of Alexander found themselves living. Only with regard to the events preceding and during the Maccabean revolt did the adoption of Greek culture and opposition to it acquire wider significance because of the preference of the Seleucids to give greater political power to natives who Hellenized (see above 0.4). It is thus only in the books of the Maccabees that Judaism is explicitly contrasted to Hellenism. The Hasmonean rulers themselves, despite their dynasty's founding myth based on their opposition to Hellenism, adopted much of Greek culture. It is probable that the degree of Hellenization varied among Jews of different places of origin and different classes of society. Richer Jews, and those from big cities, especially Jerusalem, were more likely to speak Greek and operate easily within Greek cultures. In most diaspora communities, apart from Babylonia, Greek was probably the main language of religious as well as secular discourse, and there was little knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic. In the Land of Israel, both Hebrew and Aramaic were in general use down to the end of the Second Temple period, but the native Jerusalemite Josephus proved capable at the end of the first century CE of writing complex literary works in Greek, albeit in a style for which he felt it necessary to apologize (Jos. Ant. 20. 263-4).
13. The destruction in 70 was a terrible disaster for all Jews, but the temple had been destroyed before and eventually rebuilt, so it is wrong to imagine universal Jewish despair. The institution of national Jewish leadership, the high priesthood, was now gone, and the Roman state probably saw no need for any new Jewish spokesman. Most Jews probably continued in their old beliefs and hoped for the temple to be restored. Eventually the rabbis evolved a new type of Judaism which could flourish without a temple, and the Roman state formally recognized the rabbinic patriarch as the political leader of the Jews, but, so far as is known, neither of these processes took place until long after the temple's destruction.
14. Jewish Settlement Judea was the homeland of the Jews throughout this period, and by its end Jerusalem was one of the greatest cities of the eastern Mediterranean, but there was also a large Jewish population in the diaspora. Some of these Jews had been carried into captivity in Babylonia at the time of the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian community remained considerable throughout the Second Temple period, although little is known of its history. The diaspora in the eastern Mediterranean world outside Israel grew rapidly from the third century BCE to the first century CE, partly because of the settlement of descendants of slaves taken captive in the numerous wars which affected the region, partly because of the use of Jews by Hellenistic monarchs as mercenaries settled in Asia Minor and in Egypt, partly through economic migration in the face of overpopulation in the homeland, and partly (but to an unknown degree) through the accretion to Jewish communities of Gentile proselytes. By the early first century CE Jewish communities were to be
16. Religious Developments By the time the books of the Apocrypha were composed there had emerged many different varieties of Judaism, but Jews did have a common core to their religion. All pious Jews had in common their devotion to the one God who was worshipped in Jerusalem, and the belief that God had both chosen his people for care and (all too often) chastisement, and that God's instructions for the correct way for a Jew to live were contained within the Torah, which was itself encapsulated within the Pentateuch. Judaism had become a religion of the book, and there was a general (but not universal) consensus that real prophetic inspiration was no longer possible. The main grounds for disagreement lay in
INTRODUCTION TO THE APOCRYPHA 624
becomes so much more detailed from precisely this period, but it is also possible that the development of sectarianism was a product of the complexities of Jewish life in the land of Israel during the second century BCE.
differing interpretations of what precisely the Pentateuch requires, and religious leaders, whether priestly or lay, tended to gain their authority from their expertise in such interpretation.
19. Literary Developments The new kinds of literature produced by Jews in this period were, like the religious innovations of the time, mostly the product of an intense attachment to the biblical text on the one hand, and the influence of the wider Hellenistic world on the other. The books contained within the Apocrypha comprise only a very small portion of the total literary output of Jews in this period. Many other Jewish writings were preserved by Christians for religious edification and instruction independently from the biblical corpus; such texts included the writings of Josephus and Philo as well as the heterogeneous collection of other works known to modern scholars (rather misleadingly, since not all are pseudepigraphic) as the 'Pseudepigrapha'. A quite different body of writings in Hebrew and Aramaic were handed down through the Jewish rabbinic tradition; although none of the extant rabbinic texts, including the Mishnah, the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism, originated in its present from before C.2OO CE, they incorporate much earlier literary material. Since the writings preserved by Christians and those preserved by Jews overlap to such a small extent, it is a reasonable assumption that both traditions selected the material they found valuable from a much larger pool. That this is so was confirmed by the discovery at Qumran of the Dead Sea scrolls which included many religious texts about whose existence there had previously been no trace. This highly fluid literary tradition provides the background for understanding the literary and religious aims of the authors of the Apocrypha.
17. Many of the disputes attested in writings of this period concerned the conduct of the temple cult in Jerusalem. Since Jews held that there should be only one such temple (although in fact a second temple existed in Leontopolis in Egypt down to 72 CE), the correct performance by the priests of the sacrifices and other offerings made in the temple was of immense importance to all. There was widespread interest in, and disagreement about, the notion of physical purity both as a requirement for worship in the temple and as a metaphor for spiritual purity. Among some Jews this led to high value being placed on an ascetic lifestyle. Jews debated also more philosophical and theological questions such as whether there is life after death (a tenet in which most but not all Jews came to believe from around the mid-second century BCE); the nature of the events to precede the end of the world towards which history was generally agreed to be leading; the nature and role of a messianic figure in those events; the relationship between human free will and divine intervention; the role of angels as intermediaries between man and God; the extent to which customary interpretation of the Pentateuchal laws could itself be taken to reflect the divine will. These debates were sometimes acrimonious but by no means always so, since the areas of agreement among Jews far outweighed the areas in dispute: thus Josephus (Ag. Ap. 2.179-81) could state that, in contrast to Greeks, a characteristic of Jews was their 'admirable harmony... Unity and identity of religious belief, perfect uniformity in habits and customs, produce a very beautiful concord in human character. Among us alone will be heard no contradictory statements about God... Among us alone will be seen no difference in the conduct of our lives.'
20. Some at least of the works composed in the late Second Temple period continued within the genres to be found in the HB; thus there was religious poetry in the style of the Psalms, wisdom literature comparable to Proverbs, and so on. But there were also new kinds of writing The main literary innovations in the post-biblical period were the development of different types of commentary on the Bible, including rewritten versions such as the book of Jubilees, systematic expansions of biblical lemmata, as in some rabbinic midrashim, and many other forms of bible interpretation; the genre of apocalyptic, in which a story is told of the revelation of a divine message to a sage; philosophical treatises, most notably in the writings of Philo of Alexandria; the composition of tragedies in the Greek style but on Jewish themes, of which only one, a play on the Exodus by a certain Ezekiel, is partially extant; the development of communal rules, as at Qumran; and, perhaps most importantly, the adoption of Greek genres of historiography to describe the past. In all these cases it is probable that the literary form had some connection to the ideas expressed in the text—so, for instance, it is not accidental that eschatological speculation is to be found quite frequently, although by no means always, in apocalyptic writings. Similarly, the transmission of many quasi-prophetic texts in this period either under a pseudonym ('pseudepigrapha') or anonymously must be connected to the belief that genuine prophecy belonged to an earlier age.
18. The Emergence of Sects It is all the more surprising that this same author, Josephus, provides the best evidence that a characteristic of Judaism in this period which distinguished it from the biblical age was the emergence within the religion of groups or parties that defined themselves by their distinctive theologies. In many passages he referred to the three, or sometimes four, haireseis (lit. choices) among the Jews, which he defined as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Fourth Philosophy (aboutwhich Josephus is the sole witness). These groups were not strictly sectarian, since they all appear to have participated in mainstream Jewish life, but they all had special doctrines of their own; at least in the case of the Essenes they had a strong communal organization; and in each case they defined themselves as different from other Jews. More clearly sectarian in the sense that they viewed themselves as legitimate in contrast to the rest of Israel were the group which produced the communal writings among the Dead Sea scrolls found at Qumran. It is possible that these Dead Sea sectarians are to be identified with one or other of the groups known from the classical sources, but it is no less possible that this group was a separate sect unknown until the chance discovery of the scrolls in 1947. These groups are first attested in the Hasmonean period. This may be through chance, and the groups may have existed before this time since the narrative in Josephus' histories
H. The Apocryphal Books and History. 1. Our lack of precise knowledge about the date and place of composition of many of
625 INTRODUCTION TO THE APOCRYPHA
3. Additions to Biblical Books The passages inserted into the Hebrew book of Esther and now found in Greek Esther serve to enhance the dramatic and religious appeal of the original version and to bolster its historicity through the citation of verbatim copies of royal edicts. The author of these additions has made no attempt to alter or comment on the biblical story, but only to increase its impact in the spirit of the original. The Prayer of Manasseh, in which the king admits his sins and begs forgiveness from God, was similarly intended to supplement the biblical account in 2 Chronicles because 2 Chr 33:18—19 mentions that such a prayer is recorded elsewhere. The difference in this case is that the prayer was not preserved in the text of Chronicles in the Septuagint but only as a separate text.
the books of the Apocrypha (1.3-5) precludes any certain deduction about the relationship between most of these writings and the historical background outlined in G. It is thus possible that the Additions to Daniel, Tobit, and the Letter of Jeremiah should be understood against the background of the Babylonian Diaspora, and that Wisdom of Solomon and the additions incorporated in the Greek Esther were products of the Jewish community in Egypt in the late Hellenistic age (so e.g. Nickelsburg 1981), but since the circumstances in which these writings were produced can only be deduced from their contents, any argument that the contents reveal the impact of the circumstances in which they were composed is dangerously circular.
2. However, some books in the Apocrypha can be more precisely located. Thus Sirach was composed in the Land of Israel in the first quarter of the second century BCE when the country lay under Seleucid control and Greek culture was being enthusiastically adopted by the upper class of Jerusalem for whom Jesus ben Sira wrote. It is thus significant that, although his thought contains elements apparently derived from Hellenistic philosophy, and especially Stoicism, ben Sira wrote in Hebrew and within the traditional Jewish genre of wisdom literature. On the other hand the book contains no explicit polemic against Greek culture, so if he wrote in opposition to Hellenism he did so only indirectly. From the period following the Maccabean revolt originate of course both i and 2 Maccabees, i Maccabees appears to be an attempt by a Judean Jew to justify the assumption of power by the Hasmonean dynasty by referring back to their great deeds at the time of the rebellion. 2 Maccabees contains an edifying reminiscence for diaspora readers of the heroic deeds of the rebels, putting these comparatively recent events into the same category of the revelation of divine care for Israel to be found in biblical stories about the distant past. The book of Judith, with its interest in political as well as religious freedom, may also belong to this period, but the evidence is uncertain. The only other work in the Apocrypha for which a moderately sure origin can be postulated is 4 Ezra, the Jewish apocalypse incorporated into 2 Esd 3—14, which appears to have constituted a reaction by a Judean Jew to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.
4. Imitation of Biblical Books Baruch is a hortatory prophecy so similar in tone and content to the Hebrew book of Jeremiah that it was treated by some Christians from the second century CE as a supplement to the biblical book. This notion was doubtless aided by references in the book of Jeremiah to Baruch as the prophet's secretary and references to the Babylonian exile in Baruch itself. The book of Baruch contains rather disparate material (narrative, prayer, instruction in the form of a poem about Wisdom, and comfort for the people in a poem about Zion), but all the elements are familiar from the prophetic books of the Bible.
J. The Apocrypha as Independent Compositions. 1. Most of the books in the Apocrypha are self-standing compositions and can be appreciated without reference to the Bible; this includes even those stories, like that of Susanna, which survive only through incorporation into a Greek translation of a biblical book. These works thus reflect many of the literary developments attested in Jewish society in the late Second Temple period (see 0.19—20), although it is worth noting that many of the religious concerns expressed in other Jewish texts of this time (an interest in purity, temple ritual, asceticism, life after death, and so on, see G.i6—18) are not as prominent in the Apocrypha as might be expected.
2. Wisdom Literature Sirach can be assigned to the same wider genre of wisdom literature to which the biblical book of Proverbs belongs, but although it is close both in form and in content to the biblical model, it includes also much that is novel. Like other Jewish wisdom texts, Sirach deals with practical advice and religious problems, but this work is the earliest extant writing of its kind explicitly to identify divine wisdom with the Torah (24:8—29) and to provide a historical perspective by alluding to the laudable deeds of previous generations in Israel (chs. 44-9).
I. The Apocrypha and the Bible. 1. Some of the works in the Apocrypha derive their literary form primarily from their relationship to biblical texts. In no case is this relationship in the form of a phrase-by-phrase commentary, unlike some rabbinic midrashim (see above, 0.19), but the types of association are different in each case.
2. Rewritten Bible i Esdras is a Greek translation of a version of the biblical book of Ezra incorporating material from Chronicles and Nehemiah. It is uncertain whether it is best to explain the book by suggesting that the author possessed something like the Masoretic Hebrew text of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah before he wrote and then adapted it for his own purposes, or that he translated an independently preserved Hebrew text of the biblical books, but if the former is the case, i Esdras constitutes a free reworking of the biblical account similar to the relationship of the book of Jubilees to Genesis and relationship of the Temple Scroll found at Qumran to Deuteronomy.
3. Philosophy On the surface, the Wisdom of Solomon appears to be another offshoot of the biblical genre of wisdom literature, but it often diverges from that genre into philosophical rhetoric, using sophisticated Hellenistic rhetorical devices in order to present both a general attack on godlessness and a novel picture of Wisdom as an independent hypostasis alongside God. In the process of describing the nature of this hypostasis and in his picture of the nature of mankind the author makes use of concepts borrowed from Stoicism and perhaps Middle Platonism. The result is a work of philosophy, albeit on a level rather unsophisticated in comparison to, for example, the writings of Philo.
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extrapolation from verses in Jeremiah or Isaiah. The third Addition to Daniel, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, is a rather different writing from the other two. It consists of two poetic compositions, both of which probably existed as separate works before their insertion into the Daniel corpus.
4. Historical Works i Maccabees is a straightforward narrative history, and in that sense it is similar to and undoubtedly deliberately imitates biblical historiography, but in contrast to the biblical books the author of this work emphasizes the competence and wisdom of the human figures in the study, especially those of the Maccabean dynasty, rather than the effects of divine intervention. 2 Maccabees is a work firmly within the Greek tradition of 'pathetic' history in which dramatic events were written up in an attempt to induce the reader to empathize with the characters, although this work too is specifically Jewish in the moral and religious lessons explicitly derived by the author from his story; how many of these characteristics were the work of Jason of Gyrene and how much the work of the epitomator who produced the current text of 2 Maccabees is unknown.
7. Apocalyptic 2 E sdras is the sole example in the Apocrypha of a literary genre whose popularity in this period has been confirmed by the discovery of fragments of apocalyptic texts among the Dead Sea scrolls (see 0.19—20). The original Jewish part of the extant text (2 Esd 3-14) is divided into three dialogues and four visions, all described by Ezra himself. Ezra is taught by an angel a divine theodicy for the world which makes sense of the disaster of the destruction of the temple by reassuring him of the coming judgement and the beginning of a new age.
5. Didactic Stories The Apocrypha includes a number of stories which, despite their historical setting, seem to have been intended not for instruction about the past so much as to give ethical and religious guidance, and to instil in readers an awareness of the power of divine providence, despite the problems faced by even the most pious. Among such stories are the book of Judith (which deals with the delivery of Jerusalem from the Assyrian Holophernes through the intrigues of the beautiful and good eponymous heroine) and the book of Tobit, which deals with the trials and tribulations of the charitable and pious hero and his son Tobias.
K. The Impact of the Apocrypha. The books of the Apocrypha have been little read in any tradition over recent centuries, particularly because they are no longer printed in most translations of the Bible, but their influence is pervasive (Metzger 1957: 205—38). In particular, European art, literature, and music contain numerous allusions to the stories of Tobit, Judith, Susanna, Judas Maccabee, and the Maccabean martyrs, and sententious sayings culled from Sirach have become cliches in many languages. Among Jews the most obvious impact of the Apocrypha, apart from the festival of Hanukkah which celebrates the events described in i and 2 Maccabees (but without most Jews knowing the original books), has been in the popularity among Jews from medieval to modern times of the names Judah, Susanna, Judith, and Raphael.
6. Of the Additions to Daniel, the story of Susanna and the story of Bel and the Dragon have similar qualities as edifying fictions. Neither tale is particularly well integrated into the biblical text of Daniel, and these writings thus served a very different purpose to the additions found in the Greek Esther (see 1.3.). The story of Susanna illustrates the wisdom of Daniel, who saves her from the wicked lechery of the elders who accused her of adultery, and the correctness of her decision to trust God even when she appeared doomed. The narrative of Bel and the Dragon reveals the foolishness of idolatry; in this case the story may have originated not just in the imagination of its pious author but also in midrashic
Metzger, B. M. (1957), An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York:
Oxford University Press). Nickelsburg, G. W. (1981), Jewish Literature between the Bible and the
Mishnah (London: SCM).
40. Tobit JOSEPH A. FITZMYER, SJ
3. The Greek version of Tobit is known in three forms: (a) The Long Recension (G11), preserved in the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus (discovered in 1844), and part of it in both the eleventh-century MS 319 (Vatopedi 513), and sixth-century MS 910 (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1076). Sinaiticus has two major lacunae, 4:7—19/7 and 13:61—10/7, the first of which is covered by MS 319; also a number of minor omissions of phrases or clauses, which sometimes make the comprehension of its context difficult, but which can be supplied from other Greek forms or the Old Latin version. This recension is used in the NRSV; the numbering of verses here follows that of this recension in the critical text of Hanhart (1983). (b) The Short Recension (G1), preserved mainly in the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus, and
A. Text and Language. 1. The book of Tobit is preserved in four fragmentary Aramaic texts (pap4QToba ar, 4QTobb ar, 4QTobc
ar, 4QTobd ar) and in one fragmentary Hebrew text (4QTobe), which together preserve about one-fifth of the book. These copies date roughly from mid-first century BCE to mid-first century CE. The full form of the book is preserved mainly in Greek and Latin versions, but also in various derivative versions (Arabic, Armenian, Coptic (Sahidic), Ethiopic, and Syriac). Derivative forms are also found in medieval Aramaic and Hebrew versions of the book.
2. The Qumran fragmentary Aramaic and Hebrew texts have been published in DJD 19. In general, these Semitic forms of the book are related to the long recension of the Greek and Latin versions.
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the eighth-century Codex Venetus, and also in a host of minuscule MSS. This form of the Greek text was used before the discovery of Sinaiticus. (c) The Intermediate Recension (G111), preserved in MSS 44,106,107. It may have some pertinence for Tob 6:9-13:8; for the rest it reproduces the text of Vaticanus.
came back to Nineveh, to his father's house, where he used the fish's gall as a medicament to remove white films from Tobit's eyes. Then, when Tobit and Tobias wanted to pay Raphael for his aid, the angel revealed who he was and disappeared, having instructed Tobit to offer thanks to God. Tobit composed a hymn of praise, instructed Tobias to leave the wicked city of Nineveh, once his mother had died, and then passed away. After Tobias buried his mother beside his father, he departed with Sarah for Media, where he continued to dwell with his parents-in-law. There he learned of the destruction of Nineveh.
4. The Latin version is likewise known in two forms: (a) The Long Recension, preserved in the Vetus Latina (VL), for which there is no modern critical text. One must use the eighteenthcentury text of P. Sabatier and supplement it with readings from MSS that have subsequently been published or come to light. This long recension is related to G", but sometimes it is closer to the Qumran Aramaic and Hebrew texts than that Greek recension, (b) The Short Recension, preserved in the Vulgate (Vg) and found in the critical edition of the Monks of
2. Though some modern scholars (Miller 1940) have argued for a historical kernel in the story, most commentators regard the Book of Tobit as a Semitic novel composed for an edifying and didactic religious purpose. Its fictional character is seen in various historical and geographical improbabilities (see comments on 1:2, 4,15, 21; 6:2; 9:2; 11:1; 14:15) and in its use of folkloric motifs ('The Grateful Dead' and 'The Monster in the Bridal Chamber').
San Girolamo (1950). The relation of this form of the book, long used in the Roman Catholic tradition, to a Greek version is problematic; at times it differs considerably from the VL and Greek recensions. Jerome admitted that he dashed off the translation of it in one day (unius did laborem arripui), having found a Jewish interpreter who could read Aramaic and translate it for him into Hebrew, which he then rendered in Latin
C. The Religious Teaching. The purpose of the book is clearly didactic edification. Jews faithful to God, to obligations imposed by the Mosaic law, and to their ancestral customs, even in the time of persecution and deportation, are rewarded for their loyalty and fidelity. God is thus seen not to have abandoned his faithful servants. The book inculcates the teaching of Deuteronomic retribution (see Deut 28), mutual respect for tribal relations, support for family life, monogamous marriage, and the giving of alms. It incorporates numerous maxims characteristic of wisdom literature.
(Ep. ad Chromatium el Heliodorum; PL 29. 23—6). As a result it differs notably from the Qumran Aramaic form known today and from G".
5. Other versions of Tobit and the medieval Aramaic and Hebrew forms are considered secondary because they seem to be derived from G1.
6. The book was probably composed originally in Aramaic, because the Qumran Hebrew form now known has peculiarities relating it to a late post-exilic form of the language and contains words and syntagmemes that argue for an Aramaic substratum. This issue is debated, and some have been trying to maintain that the original was Hebrew. The matter is still unresolved.
D. Date and Place of Composition. The Aramaic of the Qumran form of Tobit relates it to other second/first-century Aramaic compositions known from the Dead Sea scrolls. The Qumran copies thus support the generally recognized date of composition of the book in the early second century BCE. Although the Tobit story recounts events of the eighth-century deportation of Jews from Israel, the post-exilic customs of tithing, the recognition of prophetic writings as sacred, and the absence of any awareness of the Maccabean revolt support that dating of the composition of the book. Whether it was composed in the Mesopotamian diaspora or in Judah itself, or even elsewhere, cannot be determined.
B. Subject-Matter and Literary Genre. 1. The book is named after its principal character, Tobit, a model of Jewish piety. He was a law-abiding Israelite, who had been captured and deported with his wife Hannah and his son Tobias from the northern kingdom of Israel to Nineveh. There he suffered in various ways and was finally blinded. Praying to die, but recalling in his old age that he had deposited a considerable sum of money in far-off Rages in Media, he decided to send Tobias to get the money. At the same time at Ecbatana in Media, a young relative, Sarah, was also praying to die, because she suffered from the vituperation of maidservants, since all seven men to whom she had been given in marriage were slain by an evil demon Asmodeus, as they sought to approach her. In answer to the prayers of the two of them, Tobit and Sarah, God sent the angel Raphael to Nineveh. Raphael accompanied Tobias on his journey to Media to get his father's money. En route, when Tobias bathed in the Tigris, a large fish tried to swallow his foot. Raphael told Tobias to catch the fish and extract its gall, heart, and liver for use as medicine. At Ecbatana in Media Tobias married his kinswoman Sarah and used the fish's heart and liver to smoke the demon away on his wedding night. Tobias then sent Raphael on to Rages to fetch the money. When Raphael returned, Tobias took the money and Sarah his wife and
E. Canonicity. Tobit is not part of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures or of the Protestant OT canon. It is found in the collection of Alexandrian Jewish writings (LXX), and is regarded as a deuterocanonical book in the Roman Catholic church; it is also used as canonical in Eastern Orthodox churches. Jerome did not regard it as canonical and dashed off his Latin version of it only at the insistence of two bishops (who apparently did consider it canonical).
F. Outline The Double Situation in Nineveh and Ecbatana (1:1-3:17)
Title (1:1-2) Tobit's Background (1:3—22) Tobit's Troubles and Prayer (2:1—3:6)
Sarah's Troubles and Prayer (3:7-15) God's Commission of Raphael to Go to Their Aid (3:16-17) Preparations for Tobias's Journey (4:1—6:1)
Tobit's Speech (4:1—21)
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fidelity, whence arises his loneliness in the face of the apostasy of the rest of Israel; 'first fruits of the crops', see Ex 23:16; 34:22; Num 18:21—30; Deut 14:22—3; 18:4; 'firstlings of the flock', see Ex 13:2; 34:19; Lev 27:26; Deut 14:23. The first and best part of crops and flocks were to be dedicated to God and his service, v. 7, 'the tenth', or 'the tithe', mentioned in Num 18:21—30; Deut 18:1—5; 26:12; Lev 27:30—1; 'second tenth', this tithe could be converted to money and brought to Jerusalem every seventh year and spent there (Deut 14:24—6). v. 8, 'third year' tithe, see Deut 26:12; 14:28—9; cf. Josephus, Ant. 4.8.22 §240. Tobit is depicted as religiously carrying out the titheregulations as they were interpreted in post-exilic Israel; 'Deborah', Tobit credits his grandmother with his religious training, v. 9, 'Anna', called Hannah ('grace') in Qumran Aramaic texts; 'Tobias' is the Greek form of the son's name, Tobiyah, see TOE 1:1. v. 10, 'food of Gentiles', Mosaic law prescribed what foods were clean and unclean for Jewish people (Lev 11:1-47; Deut 14:3—20). Unclean food, eaten by Gentiles, caused ritual impurity for Jews. So Tobit is depicted faithfully observing dietary regulations even in captivity, v. 12, 'mindful of God', Tobit is motivated in his fidelity by the Deuteronomic ideas of divine retribution (Deut 28:1—68); whence his prosperity and prominent status in Assyria, v. 13, 'Shalmaneser', see TOE 1:2. v. 14, Media was a realm south-east of Nineveh, situated today in northern Iran. It was under Assyrian domination 750-614 BCE; 'ten talents', this great sum of money becomes an important motif in the story, providing the background for Tobias's journey to Media, his catching of the fish, and his marriage to Sarah, who along with Tobit is eventually cured by the fish's innards. Rages was a town in Media; it is not mentioned in Sinaiticus, but read in G1. Its ruins are found today about 5 miles south-east of Teheran in Iran. v. 15, 'his son
Raphael Engaged to Accompany Tobias to Media (5:1-6:1) Tobias's Journey to Media (6:2—18) Marriage of Tobias and Sarah (j:i—10:14)
Tobias Arrives at Raguel's House and Marries Sarah (7:1-16)
Sarah is Cured of the Demon (8:1—21) Raphael is Sent to Get Tobit's Money (9:1—6) Tobias Prepares to Return to Nineveh (10:1-14) Homecoming of Tobias and Cure of Tobit's Eyes (11:1-18) Revelation of Raphael's Identity (12:1—20) Tobit's Song of Praise (13:1—18) Epilogue (14:1-15)
The Double Situation in Nineveh and Ecbatana (r.i-y.ij)
(1:1-2) Tobit Tob(e)it is the Greek form of Aramaic Tobi, the father's name, which is a shortening of Tobiyah, the son's name, meaning, 'YHWH is my good'. The name characterizes what God does for both in the book. Tobiel, the name of Tobit's father, means, 'El (God) is my good'. The tribe of Naphtali was named after its eponymous ancestor, son of Jacob and second son of Bilhah, the maidservant of Rachel (Gen 30:8). The tribe resided in northern Galilee, near Beth-shemesh and Bethanath (Judg 1:33). 'Shalmaneser' (Gk. Enemessaros): the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V (727-722 BCE) began the siege of Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom (2 Kings 17:5), but it capitulated only after his death (721), to his successor, the usurper Sargon II (722-705), who eventually deported Israelites to captivity in Assyria (2 Kings 17:6; cf. 18:9-13). Thisbe was a Galilean town otherwise unknown. Kedesh Naphtali was a town in Upper Galilee, mentioned in Josh 20:7. From it Tiglath-pileser III (745-727) had earlier (733-732) deported Jews to Assyria (2 Kings 15:29). Asher was probably Hazor (Josh 11:1; 2 Kings 15:29). Phogor was another Galilean town otherwise unknown.
Sennacherib', Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was actually the son of Sargon II, who succeeded Shalmaneser V. v. 16, 'many acts of charity', lit. T made many alms', v. 17 makes it clear that eleemosynai has to be understood in a broad sense, including food, clothing, and even burial. Tobit's generosity is extolled, for he practised it even when it was dangerous for him, in his status as a captive. His activity in burying the dead reflects the Jewish horror of corpses left unburied, especially those of fellow Jews. v. 18, 'when he came fleeing from Judea', i.e. Sennacherib, who had unsuccessfully attacked Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:13—19:37; cf. Isa 36:1—37:38). Sennacherib's fate is duly ascribed to a decree of heaven; 'put to death many Israelites'. This was done in retaliation for the king's failure to take Jerusalem. 'Looked for them'. Perhaps to expose them to further ridicule and disgrace, v. 21, 'forty days', or 'forty-five days' (VL), or 'fifty days' (G1, Peshitta); 'killed him', see 2 Kings 19:37, where his sons are named as Adrammelech and Sharezer; 'Ararat', also mentioned in 19:37, the traditional spot where Noah's ark landed (Gen 8:4) is today in modern Armenia; 'Esar-haddon', another son of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:37), he reigned 681-669 BCERightly named in 4QToba
(1:3—22) Tobit's Background Until 3:6 the story is recounted in the first person singular. Tobit tells of his piety and struggle to lead an upright Jewish life both in Israel and in exile, v. 3, the ancient city of Nineveh became the capital of Assyria under Sennacherib (705—681) and functioned as such during the last decades of the Assyrian empire. It was located on the east bank of the Tigris River, a site today opposite part of the town of Mosul in northern Iraq. See Jon 1:2; 3:2—7; 4:11; Nah 2:7—8; 3:1—19; Zeph 2:13. v. 4, 'deserted the house of David and Jerusalem', according to i Kings 12:19-20 the revolt of the northern tribes occurred in the days of Jeroboam in 922 BCE, but Tobit speaks of it taking place in his youth. 'Chosen from... all the tribes', see Deut 12:1—14; 2 Sam 6:1—19; J Kings 5:5; 2 Kings 23:23. v. 5, 'on all the mountains', high places are mentioned in Hos 10:5, 8; Ezek 6:1-14. 'Calf, see i Kings 12:26-33, where Jeroboam setup shrines in Dan and Bethel so that people would not have to go to Jerusalem to celebrate feast-days. The calf was probably intended as a base for YHWH's throne, but soon it came to be an object of worship itself. Jeroboam also encouraged the offering of sacrifice on high places (i Kings 14:9). v. 6, 'everlasting decree', see Deut 12:11, 13—14; 2 Chr 11:16. To such a decree Tobit affirms his