4. The Old Testament and Apocrypha

The author, as a devout Jew, was naturally well versed in the sacred writings of his own people and religion. They served as a source of the truest inspiration—historical, literary, and religious—and as a standard of orthodoxy by which he might test and repudiate all that was essentially alien to Judaism as he wrote this tractate, which, as shown above, was parallel but in opposition to that propagated by the priests of the god Khons, not uninfluenced by echoes of Zoroastrianism and dependent upon the pagan fable of The Grateful Dead and upon Aḥiḳar, which at the best was not specifically Jewish or deeply religious.

His style, phraseology, religious conceptions, and moral advice are fundamentally influenced by the Pentateuchal narratives and legislation in all their various strata.6 The literary affinities with Genesis are of more than passing interest, for they illustrate the peculiar indebtedness of the author to that book. It was the source from which he derived not only his idea of writing a new patriarchal history, but also the materials with which he paints with consummate art the more important scenes.7 Above all, the author was most deeply influenced by the fact that in Genesis ‘there are more references to the duty of burial of the dead than in any other Scriptural book’.8 Gen. 47:30 is decisive, where Rashi, following the Midrash Rabba, annotates ‘the kindness that a man shows the dead is kindness of truth for the doer has no hope of (receiving) a reward (from the corpse)’. Accordingly, the somewhat frequent references to the burial of the dead are properly and fully explained not only by the influence exerted upon the author by The Grateful Dead and the parallels in Aḥiḳar, but also by his close dependence upon Genesis, resulting in his belief that he could thus best inculcate disinterested charity such as Providence only can reward.

For his knowledge of the periods and scenery which he chose as the background of his story and his vaticinium post eventum he was dependent upon the historical books of the O. T.

It would be, however, an injustice to our author if we were to suppose that, while he knew the historical books well in the uncritical manner of his age and knew the minutiae of the legal system, he did not study the non-legalistic and prophetic writings in existence in his time.1

With some of the latest books of the O. T. not yet in existence, e.g. Daniel, many-Maccabean Psalms, late portions of Proverbs, and other books or sections only composed after his time, he was necessarily unacquainted.

The question of Tobit’s dependence upon Sirach cannot be dismissed so summarily. If literary dependence upon the Greek of Sirach were properly and thoroughly substantiated, it might seriously complicate or facilitate the solution of the problem of the date of Tobit’s composition. In Fuller’s judgement ‘the general impression will probably be that Tobit is more precise and definite than Ecclesiasticus; and this would indicate that of the two Ecclesiasticus is the older book’, but he does not deduce from this that Tobit exhibits any literary dependence upon any form of the text of Sirach. Israël Lévi,2 however, has endeavoured to produce evidence from the text not only of our author’s similarity of expression, but also of his use and misunderstanding of the text of Sirach. Granted Lévi were correct—and well-authenticated misreadings of the text would be a strong confirmation—it would be possible to fix exactly the date of Tobit. The evidence in favour of the pre-Maccabean date would not be weakened, for his arguments are based on supposed misreadings, not of the Greek translation of Sirach (c. 132 b.c.), but of the Hebrew original (c. 190–180 b.c.); Tobit must, then, have been written between 190–170 b.c. Lévi, however, brings forward only two passages in confirmation of this theory of textual dependence and misunderstanding, and in neither case can his reasoning be pronounced sound or his conclusions be accepted.3 Moreover, if the parallels appear ‘more precise and definite’ (Fuller) in Tobit than in Sirach, it is just because in the former they present themselves in more of the original freshness of their ultimate sources.