§ 6. DATE OF COMPOSITION

That Tobit is not an autobiography1 written in the seventh century b.c., is evident from the writer’s historical inaccuracies, e.g. 1:15, chronological blunders, e.g. 1:4 as compared with 1:15–22 and 14:1, and knowledge of events long subsequent to 722 b.c., e.g. 14:4 f., 15. He differentiates between the return from the Babylonian exile, which has therefore taken place already, and the promise of a further return and the dawn of a still more glorious era, 14:5. He betrays a religious as well as literary dependence on the latest portions of the Pentateuch.2 Similarly a date at the very earliest a little subsequent to the rise and establishment of Judaism is necessitated by his religious and moral teaching (see § 10). The same terminus a quo is favoured by the author’s general outlook, developed style, and artistic composition, the product of an age accustomed to the chronicling of singular experiences, 12:20, as well as to the somewhat formal drawing up of marriage contracts, 7:13 (14). Financial and commercial relations had superseded purely agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and the writer and his contemporaries had grown more or less accustomed to the foreign domination.

The terminus ad quem is more debatable, but the book is certainly pre-Maccabean. While the author has some knowledge, derived from the historical books of O. T., of historical events prior to, and including, the Return, and reflects the general religious point of view of the period subsequent to Ezra, he reveals no knowledge of the stirring historical crises of the later Greek domination and the Hasmonean period, and lacks the intense hatred of the heathen they inspired. Not only does he not accept, but in most cases he shows no knowledge of those explicit dogmas of Judaism which first came into prominence at or after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, such as advanced apocalyptic expectations, formulated doctrines of a personified and hypostatized Wisdom, stereotyped descriptions of the Messianic age, explicit belief in a resurrection and immortality. He knows practically nothing of the problem Job was the first to raise, the Hellenizing apostasy, the Essenes’ self-abnegation, or the long fight of Pharisaic progressiveness against Sadducean conservatism.3 The comparatively early date of the book, as it appears in the earliest form known to us, Rs, is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by comparison with Rv, which dates from the second century of the Christian era (see § 3).

There are, too, certain other features which also point more or less definitely to this pre-Maccabean period, though some are much less significant than is usually allowed. To this latter class belongs 14:4–6, once a mainstay alike of the more conservative critics4 in their defence of the book’s pre-Herodian date, and also of extremists, like Hitzig,5 to whom it presents equally circumstantial evidence of composition after the destruction of Herod’s Temple in 70 a.d. But while the words καὶ οὐχ ὡς τὸν πρῶτον must certainly have been written before that event, they are quite as likely in the mouth of a pious contemporary of Christ, scandalized by the paganizing tendencies of Herod’s Temple architecture and the spiritual unreality of its services, as in the mouth of fainthearted worshippers in Zerubbabel’s Temple (cf. Hag. 2:3)! It is equally unfortunate that Tobit’s scrupulous care for the burial of the dead has been exalted to a position of primary importance for the settlement of the date, e.g. by Graetz, who consequently assigns the book to the reign of Hadrian; by Kohut, who dates it c. a.d. 226; and by W. R. Smith and Riggs, who, comparing 2 Macc. 5:10, refer it to the Maccabean revolt. This trait is ultimately due, so far as the author, not later redactors, is concerned, not to contemporary political troubles, but, in the case of Tobit’s own action in chs. 1, 2, chiefly to his literary dependence on The Grateful. Dead, 6 and, in the case of advice to the same effect, to the influence of Aḥiḳar7 and especially to the book of Genesis and its traditional exegesis8. Again the stress which, it is usually alleged, is laid by the author on the agnatic or consanguineous marriages led Graetz9 to suppose that he endeavoured to inculcate the laity’s observances of the (late) Talmudic regulation10 which was originally intended to regulate only Priests’ marriages. The author himself appeals to the Pentateuch (6:13; 7:12)! Kohut’s explanation1 that it is due to Zoroastrian influence, is open to the same objection, as well as being contradicted, as Gutberlet2 first pointed out, by Kohut’s own theory, that the book is a protest against Zoroastrianism. To Rosenmann3 belongs the distinction of having first partially unravelled this problem of the agnatic marriages, while Müller has advanced a stage nearer the true solution. The former scholar has demonstrated that the Talmud nowhere insists on its actual observance by any generation except that of the wilderness wanderings, that even before the destruction of the Temple, a.d. 70, an annual festival on the 15th of Ab had been instituted in celebration of the abolition of the custom, that it had never been recognized by the Pharisaic party, and that ‘therefore in practice agnatic marriage was no longer known to the first pre-Christian century’.4 Thus also Rosenthal’s theory that Tobit emanated from the School of Rabbi Akiba is bereft of the support it claims from this quarter. In Rosenmann’s judgement the author wrote in order ‘to break a lance on behalf of agnatic marriage which was already in a moribund condition’. If, however, the author’s main interest, as seems to be the case5, was in Jewish as opposed to international marriage, and his references to agnatic unions were only subsidiary to that and primarily the result of his close dependence on his chief sources, he must have lived in an earlier period, the pre-Maccabean, when agnatic marriages were still to some extent in vogue even in the Diaspora, where the most pressing danger of the day was that of international marriage.

With equal clearness Rosenmann6 has disproved the inferences which have been drawn from 7:11–13 (14) in favour of a late date.7 The ceremony described in these verses differs only from those of the O. T. in its mention of ‘an instrument of cohabitation’. Graetz, followed by Rosenthal, understands this συγγραφή as the Greek equivalent to the technical כתובה which appears in Ar and M, and which, he supposes, was first coined in the reign of Queen Salome by Simon ben Shetah But the כתובה was in existence before that time, for Simon did not invent it; he only modified the details of its working. To identify, however, this כתובה with the συγγραφή of the present passage is to remove from the narrative all mention of betrothal or marriage-rite. Moreover, the usual Greek equivalent of כתובה was φερνή or ἀντιφέρνη which also represent מהר in LXX of Ex. 22:15f., the passage from which the Talmudic rite of the כתובה and its amount are derived.8 The term συγγραφή, on the contrary, is the usual equivalent of שטר של אירוסין or שטר של נישואין. Tob. 7:11–13 (14) therefore casts an interesting side-light on the early forms of the procedure before it had assumed the stereotyped character of the Talmudic age. Here the father prepares and signs the συγγραφή; in the fully developed Talmudic ceremony it should be done by the bridegroom.9 Here the marriage is consummated the same night; in Talmudic times a virgin could not be married until twelve months, and a widow till one month, after this solemn betrothal.10

Finally the references to the dog (6:2 (1), 11:5),11 the number (seven) of Sarah’s husbands, 6:14 (13), 7:1, and the statement that Noah, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was a prophet and a ‘father’ of the nation who contracted an agnatic marriage, contribute additional evidence of the comparatively early origin of the book. In the Talmudic period it was prescribed that no one should keep a dog unless it was led by a chain;12 no woman might marry again whom death had already bereft of three husbands in succession;13 and admiration for Noah, displayed e.g. in Jub., ch. 25 (where the very features of his life appear to which Tobit alludes)14 gave way to the view that Noah was saved not by his own good works—which did not exist—but by the grace of God.15 So well known and widely accepted, in later times, were these specifically Rabbinical points of view, that in Ar and M, the common Aramaic ancestor of which dates from this period, the dog was not mentioned; in the Addition to the Midrash Tanḥuma, 16 as in the ספר שעשועים,17 Sarah’s seven husbands were reduced to three; and in M no reference at all was made to Noah.18

Is it possible to define the date more closely? Ewald19 favoured 350 b.c., but a number of considerations, more or less cogent, point to a date much closer to 170 b.c. The period subsequent to Alexander the Great seems to be demanded by the use of the Greek drachma, 5:15 (14), the Greek name of the month, 2:12, the wide extent of the Diaspora which the author presupposes, and by the fact that Rages, 4:1, &c., probably the Ragha of the Avesta,1 was comparatively unknown before it was rebuilt by Seleucus Nicator, 321–281 b.c.2 The second tithe, 1:7 (still less the third of Rs, 1:8), was still unknown to the Chronicler (c. 300 b.c.), though it appears in Jubilees and in the LXX of Deut. If the author wrote in Egypt, his enthusiastic description of Tobit’s marriage to the beautiful Jewess, his relative Sarah, is probably an attempt to substitute a more edifying story for the scandal, still fresh in his own and his readers’ minds, of that apostate descendant of another Tobias, Joseph the notorious tax-collector.3 This did not take place before 230 b.c.4 Further, the author’s affinities—in thought and point of view—with Sirach certainly lead one to suppose that they belonged to the same tendency and type of thought within the pre Maccabean period. Unfortunately they are far from being sufficiently close, immediate or numerous as to warrant the assumption that either writer was dependent on the other.5

To sum up, Tobit was written at the very earliest, c. 350 b.c.; at the latest, c. 170 b.c., probably much nearer the latter than the former date.6