It is obvious that Raphael, healing Tobit and Sarah, is portrayed as
the pagan magician. This idea can be followed even further: for example, in
ancient Mesopotamia the gall of a fish is a well-known remedy for eye-diseases
(von Soden 1966: 81–82), and Bernd Kollmann presents a number of texts from the
history of medicine showing that the line of demarcation between medicine (the
cure of Tobit) and magic (the cure of Sarah) is difficult to draw (Kollmann
1994: 292–97). Kollmann emphasizes Exod. 15:26 as the decisive Old Testament
warning against medical magic, but in the book of Tobit the various cures—magic
or not—are performed by the agent of God and thus do not come within the scope
of the Old Testament prohibition of magic. However, as in Sir. 38:1–15, you may
have in the book of Tobit a more or less hidden polemic against magic medicine
that—as in 1 En. 8.3—is taught to
humankind by the fallen angels (297–99). (Benedikt Otzen, Tobit and Judith [Guides to Apocrypha
and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 48)
