It was originally written in
Aramaic or Hebrew, and there are currently manuscripts of Tobit in nine
languages. Aramaic fragments of Tobit were discovered amongst the Dead Sea
Scrolls. . . . Tobit was considered by some as sacred Scripture at an early point
of its history, because it is included in the Septuagint. The Tobit fragments
amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls also suggest that Tobit had some value as a
religious text for those Jewish groups associated with the texts, albeit not
canon in the strict sense of the word. On the other hand, because many of the
Hebrew or Aramaic originals are lost, it might suggest that some Jewish
religious groups were not interested in preserving the text (Littman 2008:xix).
However, as Fitzmyer (2003:9-15) has shown, Tobit has a rich medieval rabbinic
manuscript tradition (albeit different from ancient Aramaic and Hebrew
versions), which suggests that it was never fully discarded in Judaism. (Chris
L. de Wet, “The Book of Tobit in early Christianity: Greek and Latin interpretations
from the 2nd to the 5th century CE,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological
Studies 76, no. 4 [2020]: 2)
Nature
and Origin
The book of Tobit is one
of the Apocrypha, a collection of books that by the 2nd century CE were
rejected from their canon by the Jews. However, they were accepted by some of
the Christian church fathers who termed them “deuterocanonical books.” Because
these books were contained in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the
Septuagint, which the early church adopted, they have been preserved in general
by the church in Greek. Since Jews were not interested in preserving these
books as sacred texts, most of the Hebrew/Aramaic originals have been lost. In 1947
discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered fragments of The book of Tobit
in both Aramaic and Hebrew.
Manuscripts
of Tobit
Manuscripts of the book of Tobit
exist in nine languages. The relationship of these manuscripts is a complex
and difficult question, yet to be fully answered. The earliest surviving are
the fragments in Aramaic and Hebrew from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran Cave 4,
100 BCE to 20 CE, and two families of Greek manuscripts. The original language
of the book of Tobit was Aramaic or possibly Hebrew. Since the 4th
century CE the available texts of Tobit in the West have been known only
in translation, primarily in Greek and in Latin. (Robert J. Littman, Tobit:
The Book of Tobit in Codex Sinaiticus [Septuagint Commentary Series;
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008], xix)
