DAY 196
CHALLENGE
“The book of Tobit contains numerous implausibilities—for example, a woman being married seven times yet each husband dropping dead on the wedding night, how Tobit is presented as the uncle of the legendary figure of Ahiqar, and the phenomenally long life
spans of Tobit and his son.”
DEFENSE
The alleged errors are clues to the audience telling them what kind of book they are reading.
Like Judith (see Day 181), Tobit is a literary work that functions as an extended parable rather than a historical account, and various aspects of the text signal the audience that this is the case.
For example, the Pontifical Biblical Commission notes: “The death of the seven husbands of the same woman before the consummation of the marriage ([Tob.] 3:8–17) is a fact so unlikely that, this, by itself, suggests that the narrative is a literary fiction. . . . We have here, then, a popular religious fable with a didactic and edifying purpose which, by its nature, places it in the sphere of the wisdom tradition” (The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture 109).
Similarly, in the book’s first chapter, the text describes Tobit as the uncle of Ahiqar (Tob. 1:21), a legendary Middle-Eastern sage. Ahiqar then helps Tobit (Tob. 1:22, 2:10), and he attends Tobias’s wedding (Tob. 11:18). This is the ancient equivalent of a modern book whose first chapter establishes that the main character is the uncle of a legendary figure like Paul Bunyan, who then goes on to appear in the story.
Thus when the text says that Tobit lived to be 112 (Tob. 14:1) and Tobias to be 117 (Tob. 14:14)—and some manuscripts list higher ages— in a world where most adults died at half of those figures, it is another clue to the literary nature of the text.
This does not mean that Tobit cannot contain a historical nucleus that has been elaborated in literary style, but its primary character is literary rather than historical, as different aspects of the text make clear.
In view of considerations like these, John Paul II concluded: “The Books of Tobit, Judith, and Esther, although dealing with the history of the Chosen People, have the character of allegorical and moral narrative rather than history properly so called” (General Audience, May 8, 1985).