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Hello, welcome to the New Books and Jewish Studies channel of the New Books Network podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbolat. Today, I'm blessed and honored to be in dialogue with Dr. Naomi S.
S. Jacobs. She is a community educator in the Denver Metropolitan Area. We will be discussing her recently published book, Delicious Prose, reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink, a commentary published in Light in Netherlands by Real Publishers 2018.
Naomi, it's an honor to be in your presence. To begin, can you kindly tell us about yourself? Can you tell us about your family? How did you become interested in non-clinical Jewish writings and in the book of Tobit?
Sure. So just a little bit about me. My pronouns are she and they. I'm queer, non-binary, autistic, bipolar, and live with chronic illness.
I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, have three passports, and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. I love math, science, humanities, and social sciences and enjoy combining them all together in my scholarship and teaching. I come from a family of Jewish scholars, Hebrew teachers and scientists, many of whom are of Sephardic descent.
Azari de Rossi, who lived from 1511 to 1578, and was the first Jewish scholar to revive the study of Philo and Josephus, is a very distant relative. My great-grandmother, Lio Roginski-Sinai, who was also a medical doctor, and my great-grandmother, Revitsyn, Mary Lee-Monwernie, both studied Jewish studies at an advanced level and were fluent in Hebrew. Mary also wrote poetry and articles for early newspapers. Benjamin Sinai, my great-grandfather, was a Hebrew teacher.
And with his wife, raised my grandmother, and Sinai Conway in an exclusively Hebrew-speaking household in Chicago. Rabbi Aaron Cohen, my great-grandfather, studied at a Jewish college, was fascinated with Greek, with class, physics, ancient Judaism, and Christianity. And I inherited a Hebrew version of the Apocrypha, which he owned, and wrote it. Rabbi Isaac Warren, a micro-great-grandfather, got his PhD in Conigsburg.
And among the languages that he studied, many were the ones that I would learn later, like Evieopic. Herzl Conway, my grandfather, continued this tradition, and it had a vast collection of books in all forms of Jewish studies. I'm very proud to own the original publication of the Dead Sea Scroll, known as Damascus Document, published by Solomon Shek. My far way into the exciting world of non-canonical Jewish writings began when I was eight years old.
I was reading the Encyclopedia of Judeaica, and found out about fallen angels who impregnated human women. Wild! Wild! That was wild.
Then, during my senior year, I attended the Charles Eastwood Jewish Deeskull. I took a class on non-canonical writings, such as Enoch and Jubilees, which talk about these very bad angels. As well as Ben-Sira, taught by our principal, Bonotham Herman, who also brought in an Episcopal-Palian priest to teach us the Gospel of Mark. At the University of Chicago, I studied Hebrew Bible and non-canonical writings with John Collins.
He welcomed me into the field, and has been a lifelong mentor. My Tobitist obsession also began at this time when a Christian story told me the... ...twitched in France, sorry, told me the story. I couldn't believe this amazing tale had been hidden from me all my life.
I've always loved fairy tales. I've always been fascinated with angels and demons, both are which are present in Tobit. I also studied Tobit closely with my teacher, John Stricknell, to whom I've dedicated my book. Tobit was one of his favorite texts.
My wonderful doctoral supervisor at Durham University, Lawrence Stuggenbrick, I'd also love Tobit since his father read it to him as a child. His co-authored collection of primary texts of Tobit was invaluable to my study. Lenny Miller, my classist teacher, helped me with some of the technicalities of obscure Greek grammar. Well, I was writing the book.
Also, the first time I made my spouse, David, we were discussing the Grateful Dead, both the band and the motif, which isn't Tobit. And he told me he loved reading the book of Tobit, even before he knew I was a Tobit scholar. Talk about faith. Thanks for sharing that.
What inspired you to write this book? What message do you hope to convey to readers? So, I chose Tobit because I just love that story. And since bipolar runs in my family, I've lost three relatives to suicide, some before my birth.
I wanted to work with a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I wanted to make sure that I could use some of my favorite languages, like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. My sister, who's always been interested in food as I suggested I look into food and eat it in Tobit. A quick read showed that food and Tobit was abundant in Tobit. Up until that point, there hadn't been any studies that systematically treated food.
And most of the time, any commentaries that discussed food focused on things such as either dietary regulations or common salty, which has to do with who you're eating with. I wanted to help bring about a more of an interest in food and drink, and possibly a roadmap for other scholars who might want to look at food and drink in biblical studies. It's already something that people who do literacrasum have done so well for so long, and it's really time for difficult studies to catch up. I also wanted to highlight how ancient Jews use fictional writings to cope with life under hostile empires, how they incorporated elements from other traditions, making them uniquely their own as a survival strategy.
Also in light of the 2016 election, I wanted to show how the Book of Tobit repeatedly uses actions involving food as a form of cultural and political resistance. Can you summarize the plot of the Book of Tobit for us? So Tobit, who's named after in the book, is from the tribe of Naftali, and he's living in an exile in the city of Nineveh in Syria in the seventh-e-century with his wife, Hana, and his son, Tobias. He works as a purchaser for Syrian kings.
Tobit is proud, some may say excessively proud, of his many righteous deeds, including tithing, giving food to the poor, and bearing the debt, which has nearly caused him his life. Luckily, he has a nephew, Avikhar, who has a place in court and saves him. So Tobit is just about to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuad. He's expecting a really good meal, and he's reclining, all excited to eat.
He sends his son to buy out to find a poor Jewish guest, but when Tobit returns without a guest and the bad news that another Jewish poor has been flung in the marketplace, Tobit doesn't hesitate. He jumps up, skips his dinner, doesn't taste it at all, rushes to move the body to bury later after the holiday. That night he sleeps in the courtyard, bird-dropping, fallen to his eyes, and eventually blind him. Both Avikhar and Hana support the family, Hana, working as a weaver, but when Tobit wrongly accused Hana of stealing a goat, they have a huge fight.
Tobit syncs into a suicidal depression, prays for God to kill him. Meanwhile, Sarah, a young woman, a relative of Tobit, lives with her parents Edna and Rangu on the city of Ekvatana in media, also prays for God to kill her. She initially thinks of doing it herself, but she doesn't want to upset her father. She's been married seven times, but each time a jealous demon as modious murders her husband.
Sarah also gets into a fight, but with her female slaves, whom she has been beating up. Both of their prayers, Tobit and Sarah, reach God, who sends the argument to Rafael. The name means God heals, and his mission is to cure Tobit and Sarah and matchmake, Tobaya and Sarah. Tobit expects to die any time.
Let's Tobaya know that he should travel to media to reach her money deposited with a relative named Gdavel. He also imparts upon the importance of good deeds and wise counsel, many of which involve food and drink. Tobaya goes into town looking for a guide. There he meets Rafael, who is pretending to be a human and pretending to be his own relative named Azaria.
So angels are allowed to lie. Together, they reach the river Tigers' run-night. A large, hungry fish tries to bite and eat his foot maybe more. But fortunately, the angel is there.
He helps Tobaya overpower the fish, cook the fish, and both of them eat it. Rafael explains that the fish contains medicinal organs that should be saved. If you burn the fish's heart and liver, it expells demons. If you apply the fish's gawls to people who have bells on their eyes, it can cure blindness.
He also tells them he is meant to marry Sarah and Tobaya falls in love sight unseen. When Tobaya and Rafael arrive at Sarah's home, they are welcomed with a fine meal. However, when Ragwell urges him to eat, drink, and be married, which is somewhat morbid, Tobaya refuses to eat until he can marry Sarah. They are married in their wedding chamber.
They pray not to get zapped by the demon. They burn the heart and liver. It creates a horrible smell. The demon flees to Egypt, where Rafael binds it.
High end in foot. Tobaya has survived. Ragwell holds a wedding feast, and Rafael goes on a side trip to get the money. Tobaya, Rafael, and Sarah returns to Niaza, and Tobaya rubs the fish gawls in his father's eyes, healing him.
After another wedding feast, Rafael reveals himself to Tobit and Tobaya. The Archangel explains, Tobit was being tested after he did not hesitate to abandon his dinner to attend to the corpse, and he has passed the test. Rafael also notes that he, as an angel, never actually ate anything. Anytime it looked like his eating was an illusion.
Tobaya and Sarah have many children, everyone lives after and after, and Tobaya predicts they will come a time when all Gentiles will come to God. Where can we find the Book of Tobit? In what languages is it written? You can find the oldest forms of Tobit as fragmentary manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
For in Aramaic, one in Hebrew, we don't know which came first. Tobit exists in three Greek treks traditions in translations of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. Septuagint also has texts like Judith, Ben-Sira, one in two Maccabees, with the one with Tobit and others are known as Apocrypha. Tobit appears in Latin manuscripts both prior to the Vulgate and in the Vulgate.
We call those mud manuscripts that originated before the Vulgate, Obladon, although some of the manuscripts have their own developed history. But Tobit has also been translated into many other languages like Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopia, beginning in the 13th century, Sephardi Jews translate Tobit from Greek and Latin into Hebrew and Aramaic, making substantial changes. There are also medieval Yiddish versions of Tobit. To read Tobit in English, you can find in Bibles that include the Apocrypha, like the NRSV.
I also recommend the Jewish Annotated Apocrypha, edited by Chloewans, Jonathan Chloewans and Larry Wills for more background information and commentary. Where and when was the Book of Tobit composed and written? This is hard to say. So, hand-raying analysis, which is generally good, dates the Dead Sea Spreel Tobit material between 125 BCE, but the actual date of proposition is likely earlier.
Now, Tobit doesn't show any awareness of the events involving Seleucid ruler Antikyssopiphanies, which we know about from the Hanukkah story, 167 to 164 BCE. Another thing is that Tobit quotes prophetic writings. Quitting prophetic writings as scripture actually is a somewhat later development. For these two reasons, many dated around 200 BCE.
However, Jews often tell stories involving problematic rulers in a coded way. By setting them in a distant time, we see this a lot in Daniel, where Hellenistic kings are really represented by Babylonian kings. And because there's evidence that Tobit has evolved over time, parts of Tobit could actually be earlier than 200 BCE, and parts like the use of prophetic quotations could be later. If we look at the language that Tobit used in its wedding rites, it contains things that are quite old that we can see in fifth century BCE Jewish documents and things a lot more recent than we can see in the second century CE Jewish documents.
This really does suggest a long period of evolution. Also, if you look at the picture of tithing, angels pretending to eat, and preoccupation with avoiding gender gentile food, it tends to correspond with the same kind of things we get in post-Mekahbian or Macahbian Jewish writings. Earlier in the Hebrew Bible, if EU prophets, Ezekiel, Amos talk about eating guff, I mean, this was a talking about eating such food, maybe it was impure food or in the exile, but it's Esther and the former King Yehoye Hian. They're in another country and they're eating food of the court without any comment.
It's not an issue. I suggest that the contest over one in the first chapel, Daniel, might also be Macahbian sharing that strong interest in avoiding certain foods. It's also, it's really not clear where Tobit was written. Could it be the land of Israel?
Could it be the diaspora? Could it be written in one of those places and edited in another? People have many theories. It's interesting though that after Daniel like Tobit are set in the diaspora, but were likely composed in Israel.
Dead Sea Squaller, J.T. Millick suggests that Tobit might have been written to honor an ancient and prominent Jewish family known as the Tobayads. Just like Tobit, they worked for Gentile rulers and Hellenistic times and they were based in Israel. They get a lot of really bad press in the Book of Ezra and Amaya, and they actually supported Antiochus Epiphanes and were involved at some very core accretes, like Simon and Malayus came from them.
They certainly need the improved publicity present in Tobit. If Millick is right, it would make sense that some part of Tobit was created or edited in the land of Israel. But at this point, all options remain open with kind of combination of places it could have been. What is the genre of the Book of Tobit?
Tobit contains a mix of different genres. It's certainly draws on fairy tales and folklore motifs found around all over the world. Example, using a son using a dragon organ to heal his father. We're here, the fish is standing in for the dragon.
A man healing a woman with snakes in her mouth. Or a man is helped by the ghost of a corpse that he buried. Here, Raphael is representing the ghost. This is known as the Greek Bull dead motif.
And with lovers facing difficulties and lots of travel, Tobit is a romance, similar to 2nd century CE, Hellenistic and Roman novels, like the Kobe pronounces right, Karla Hoi by Chiritan. With wisdom instruction by the father to son prior to death, Tobit thus contains a genre of the testament. Other subgenres include prayer and magical medical recipes. There's a debate as to whether Tobit is a commentary.
What makes it hard to figure that out is because it's evolved over time and contains a mix of voices. And sometimes the contrast of these voices could yield unintended humor. I do think it's funny that, uh, that, uh, Raghuel actually thinks that Tobia won't survive his wedding night and digs a preemptive grave. It's also very interesting that the theme of a young man who wants to get married, but the woman's father is getting in the way, is also a feature of what we call new comedy, which begins in Greece in the 3rd century BCE.
What is special about the book of Tobit? In Tobit, we've got the earliest description of the observance of Feschabuad in the diaspora. Until we get the earliest depiction of Jewish wedding rights, Tobit has one of the most complete accounts of typing in almost all Jewish documents. It is the first story in which we have an angel going along trip with a human on Earth.
Usually angels are there very, very briefly, or they might give someone like Enoch a tour of heaven or hell. Also, this is the first time we have Raphael. Raphael is, I don't believe he's mentioned anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, though he certainly mentioned in the book of Enoch. So this is very important for people who are interested in Raphael.
I think the fact that Tobit incorporates wide material from the world at large, including folklore, martyse, magic, and medical techniques, in order to present a strong Jewish message that observing God's commandments, even if dangerous, are key to enduring hostile rulers and hostile cultures. Now, there is some amount of the illusion within the Hebrew Bible to other parts of the Hebrew Bible, but the scale in which Tobit makes allusions to other writings is quite high. This is known as intertextuality, showing in a document that you are aware of other written documents. Example, when Tobia refuses to eat until he marries Sarah, he echoes the very same behavior as the servant sent to fight Isaac a bride in Genesis 24.
And when Raphael binds the demon after Chabaya expels it, it echoes his own behavior in the book of Enoch. Some have argued Tobit alludes to the Odyssey. It's quite possible it was aware of the work. It's just really difficult to see any specific parts of it that instill explicitly or directly inspired things in Tobit as they both draw on common for formal thieves.
One text that Tobit clearly does draw on is called the story and wisdom of Achikar. It's a non-Jewish story already written in Airmen, and it's only fragmentary in Airmen. It's also been translated into other languages that are more complete and have made some changes. Wisdom and spell non-Jewish Achikar was very popular among Jews in Egypt in the 5th century BCE.
Both Achikar and Tobit depict the ups and downs of engaging with kings. Both feature the same Assyrian rulers, and they both include wisdom given by a son, thought or to a son, or to an adopted son. Tobit says in 417 that you shouldn't leave food on the graves of the unrighteous. This is actually taken straight out of Achikar.
We can see it in the later versions. Even more exciting in making things the world Jewish. Tobit not only makes Achikar and his nephew Israelites, or Jews depending on both our terms are used in Tobit, he makes them actual relatives of Tobit. Why is the Book of Tobit not part of the traditional classical Jewish canon?
This is a tricky question. We aren't sure. I'll give you some theories and I'll give you mine. For example, it's not because it's too late, because the Book of Daniel is arguably later than parts of Tobit, and later than Eoch, which is also not part of the canon.
The belief for Carrie Alinsky said, in Because in Tobit, Raghuwala the father draws up a wedding contract that violates Jewish law, parent chin drop, wedding contacts. But I think that's probably not enough. Other people have made the interesting case that the Hebrew form of Tobit actually came about with the purpose of getting Tobit to be to what is now part of the Hebrew Bible. My theory is that the rabbis didn't want lay people reading wild stories involving fallen angels and demons.
They were familiar with all this material, and they didn't want it. This also leaves out Enoch and Jubilees, but they may have also been left out because they have a solar calendar, which the rabbis also don't follow. Something big is just arrived at Fanduil Casino. Explore how you can level up your playing experience.
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A close reading demonstrates that food imagery is essential to the mission of the Book of Tobit. It is essential for telling the story. It is essential for conveying the message that one should perform right just needs, no matter the circumstances. It is critical for endorsing particular practices, some traceable to the wider world, and some particular to Judaism.
Food is a foot soldier in Tobit's operation to integrate and co-op non-Jewish motifs with distinctively Jewish attitudes. It is the unsung hero in the story's determination to persuade its reader to resist a hostile, powerful culture that can kill at will. That pretty much sums up my thesis. Food is key to the plot.
If we got rid of it, we wouldn't have a story. Even the bird-drobbing that get the Tobit blind you could see as a by-product of digesting food. The medicinal hormones come from a fish that has been consumed and tries to consume Tobia. The numerous meals in the story are very important for building its structure.
References to food and eating at emotion, piecing and excitement. Excitement like when the fish tries to attack Tobia, swallow, swallow him or his foot. Or when both Tobit and Tobia, in key moments in the plot, decide to delay eating until they achieve something more important. Many of the righteous stories which are essential to Tobit's message are linked to food like tithing, avoiding gentile food or feeding the poor.
Rafael, it also draws special tension late in the story to Tobit leaving his dinner to attend a dead body. The story insists that Jews can survive hostile cultures and governments as well as hostile animals, which also may represent those cultures, by keeping our values and culture intact through resistance, often with food, to make it to the next generation. The co-opting of non-Jewish motifs is mirrored throughout Jewish history with foods such as the moths of all coming from Germany, or fried fish from Portugal that later became part of the fish and chips specialty in England. Can you tell us about the demon as modius as depicted in the book of Tobit?
So, we don't have the name as modius in any of the Dead Sea scroll fragmentary manuscripts, but it is in the Greek. His name likely comes from Asimov devi, which means demon of wrath, although the freeze itself was not found in any of the Zori astro-3 and the writings. Unlike this kind of figure, as modius is not a cosmic being, more of a pesky low-level creature. It's kind of strange that the book of Tobit doesn't seem to want to tell us whether the demon is inside Sarah's body.
Is this the same way that people could be possessed where we have exorcisms such as writings by Josephus or in the Gospels? Or is he sort of hovering around there? It's kind of interesting that several Jewish medieval retellings of Tobit have Tobit pheomigate Sarah under her clothes with a smelly smoked fish heart, smoked duck, heart and liver from a fish. This suggests this demon is inciter, possibly in her vagina, in the Talmud, which is also obsessed with snakes crawling into women.
I don't know, please don't ask. Ashma Dai is the king of the demons. He's sort of sometimes good, sometimes bad. He actually, according to the Talmud, he helped Solomon build the temple, and he's also mentioned in Copelistic writings.
Just to say, in general, that magic has been part of Judaism for ancient times and continues to this day. Jews actually had a very good reputation and antiquity as people to come to if you needed help with magical or health issues. Jewish magic includes magical manuscripts, magic bowls and amulets. We still have amulets today in Israel, for example, like Han-san, and I've also seen magical manuscripts as well.
And you elaborate on Tobit's blindness? What does Tobit's blindness teach us about ancient attitudes toward medicine? What can it teach us today with respect to modern medicine? So bird droppings actually can really cause blindness.
Many people think this is funny, or some kind of fantasy idea, it's not. Bird droppings contain a fungal pathogen, and someone, a friend of my family, had a relative who actually really became blind this way. What's really interesting, which only happened once we researched it, that Egyptian Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman medical writings, all of that recommend gals of a variety of creatures, including fish, to cure the same kind of blindness that Tobit has, which is films on the eyes. And in contemporary Chinese medicine, people eat fish gals for eye problems.
Unfortunately, these days they're polluted and caused multi-organ failure, and later on I will tell you more about the theological significance of the blindness. You write as follows on page 204, Tobit remains a story detailing the doings of male householders at the expense of women's slaves and sometimes children. Any twist in the narrative of Tobit, in which female viewpoints are seen, as particularly legitimate, if present cannot be seen, cannot be more of a minor theme. The primary argument about Hana having the right priorities about not wishing to send Tobit away, uniquely be seen as a sign of her lack of faith, just as when she fasts in Chapter 10.
A close study of food preparation and consumption shows that no female or slave is ever seen, eating in a story where consumption is central. Hana's fasting, but not eating, warrants attention. This reflects how women and slaves serve as objects and foils for the male and or slave-holding characters, who matter more, when a female character does not eat, even if she walks talks, she is cut out of the story at the physical level in terms of its deep structure and its spirituality, especially related to righteousness, and is denied her full humanity. Can you expand on this passage for us?
Sure, so it's been suggested that the story of Tobit has a subversus feminist agenda hidden in all the obviously sexual parts, sexist parts of it, because of a scene where Hana is urging Tobit not to tend to their son into danger. She says, it's not worth the money, we shouldn't do it, it's not safe. But Tobit, however, has faith that everything will be okay. Since he is proven to be right, Hana comes off as having a lack of faith, and her whole reason for having a lack of faith is just there to highlight Tobit's faith.
On top of this, in many of the versions, Hana will fast, thinking Tobit is dead, and she's proven wrong yet again, despite having vocal female characters talking all the time, including slaves, because there's not a single woman described as eating in a story where it plays such a huge role, they just aren't fully embedded in the story. And I would say the female sliver are flat devices, they're an excuse for Sarah to get depressed and want to die, and again, they're not, they don't, their own story doesn't particularly matter. Women, women are, or slaves are there to bring more attention to other characters, not themselves. You can read more about this in the feminist companion to Tobit and Judith, edited by Thalia Render, Edan, and Helen Ethimia D.
Keith. Hana is the most active female character in the story, but she doesn't really come across very well. Edna, Sarah's mother, her name meaning sexual pleasure, and allusion to Sarah in Genesis 1812, is a passive character largely acts in Concord or as directed by her husband, Raguo. No one asks Sarah if she wants to marry Tobia, and the story actually states that Tobia is to inherit Sarah, as if she were a piece of property.
Aside from her long prayer in Chapter 3, she says nothing more than a men to Tobia's bedroom player, that's all she says. And this is such a strange problem that later Jewish retellings decided to make some changes. One of them in a collection called the Ozar Kodesh has Sarah fall in love with Tobia first, also sight unseen. In another version of the North French Michelin, Sarah recites a long second prayer on her wedding bed.
It's very, very beautiful. Evil, looking, same as female, biblical prophets. Now, when you read the NRSV translation, it's going to say, Servant, Servant, female Servant, Servant, and that's wrong. The Greek can only be translated as referring to slaves.
We can see Jews and other Hellenistic, Jewish slaves and other Jewish Hellenistic writings. In Judith, the title character makes her slave carry a decapitated Ed. Why can't Judith do that? One also has to wonder whether Sarah beating up her slaves is presented in a negative light.
Is it because otherwise they say she is wise and beautiful? So you wonder, is her beating up the slaves a sign of her being possessed? Or is it expected as ordinary behavior? Can you elaborate on the role of disability in the Book of Tobit?
What is its meaning and significance in relation to Tobit's blindness? In ancient times, blindness, other often acquired in old age, was the most common and emblematic disability and considered devastating. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, blindness and other disabilities are largely undesirable and are used to convey the themes of uselessness, weakness and negligence, including when applied to characters such as Isaac or Eli, the priest in First Samuel. Deuteronomy 28 to 29 has blindness as a form of divine punishment along with madness.
In Isaiah 59, 10, blindness is a way to describe sinners who are separated from God. In Psalm 135, 1519, blindness points to the uselessness of idols. Leviticus 22, 22 says you can't sacrifice blind animals, which is a later problem for the Prophet Malachi. Leviticus 21, 18 says blind priests cannot.
Function is priests, which is repeated, but using more of a modern disability language in a Dead Sea Scroll called MMT. A whole bunch of other Dead Sea Scrolls exclude a range of disabled people. And if we line them all up together, the one thing they have in common as a disability is always blindness. They are, people with disabilities are considered impure and they can't be around in the community or in a kind of cosmic battle because they are impure.
Now, Tobit doesn't have this problem because Robert Al is quite okay as an angel handing out with Tobit. But let's continue about some of the other problems about blindness and disabilities and will return to Tobit in a minute. In the Hebrew Bible and somewhat later, much later in the Gospels, healing blind people, healing other disabled people is a sign of divine favor. Often that we are in the end times.
We see this in Isaiah 29, 1835, 547, in Psalm 146.8, in Matthew 11, 5, 1530 and Luke 23, 29. These theological sized understandings of blindness also deny that blind people can lead meaningful and happy lives such as blind musicians who are known in antiquity. Look up to Tobit, a lines with a view that blindness is horrible and its healing is due to divine favor. The stories suggest that Tobit's blindness separates him from God, just like in Isaiah 59.
Chapter 316 says, quote, Rafa El was sent to heal both of them. Tobit by removing the white films from his eyes, so he might see God's light with his eyes. Tobit is caught off from perceiving God because he is blind. Perhaps even his unfair claim, telling Sarah that she's still the goat that she didn't steal, comes from this blindness of perseverance.
In fact, some scholars have suggested that this whole fight with Sarah that led to him wanting to die actually was not the original cause. The original cause was his blindness. It's also interesting that Tobit's blindness parallels Sarah's possession by the demon, which could be seen as a form of madness. All this shows how the concepts of disability are fundamental to the way we and ancient people think about a variety of topics, none of which place actual disabled people at the center.
In disability studies, we aim to show how ideas we think are natural to our thinking need to be unpacked and challenged. And for the record, most disabled people do not necessarily want to be healed. And that may not be the solution to many of their problems anyway. What insights does the Book of Tobit manifest with regard to pain, suffering, agony, and trauma?
What insights does it provide regarding suicidality? So, the Book of Tobit definitely calls out and recognize, I would call genuine suffering, emotional, physical, otherwise emotional, experienced by individuals and persecuted groups. Its answer is simplistic. We get a very happy ending.
This is quite unlike the Book of Joke, which explicitly alludes to it, according to the Enthia-Portia Young, may be in a direct response to. Now, though, sometimes it is true that a happy ending is what readers want and need to read, especially in a love story. In a modern contemporary fiction, this is known as the HGA, the Haba Aba we ever after. And if you read a romance story and don't have a happily ever after, or at least a happily for now in H.F.N., you are not going to sell.
Tobit's view, however, that suffering is temporary, and all will end well, has been proven wrong. By most of Jewish history, particularly the Holocaust, and for that part, most of world history. On a personal level, it's someone who has experienced suicidal ideation and witnessed the multi-generational trauma of completed suicides. Nonetheless, despite how it doesn't do much for my philosophy or theology, I'm comforted by a story that makes a strong argument that suicide does not have to be a problem.
Suicide does not have to be the answer, and to hang on despite the pain. A pain that I think Tobit really does delve into. Can you comment on the reception of the Book of Tobit in Christianity? Yeah, this is a fun topic.
So we've got five copies in the scrolls, which means Tobit was a popular work. I would say most people later on, such as Jesus and Nazareth or Paul Sarsus, would have been familiar with. There's sort of stuff you could possibly say about some of the Gospels. Mark 169 and Luke 815 say that Jesus healed Mary Magdalene of seven demons.
That sort of makes you think a little bit about Tobia healing Sarah, not super close, but interesting. Jesus has challenged what to do with a woman who's married seven husbands at the time of the resurrection, and then at least has the sort of the seven husband feamed floating. But I would say that our best case of studies for Tobit in the New Testament is in Luke Acts. For example, Francis M.
MacKetang talks about Cornelius in Act 10. There's actually a verse 1031 where Peter says that God has heard Henryus' prayer and remember his gifts to the poor. That sounds very Tobit-like. Also the part of Tobit at the end that says Gentiles were all turned to God also is very much in keeping with the theme.
I think a lot of the most productive studies of Tobit are coming out of the book of Acts. Because the Catholic Bible includes ratings from the Apocrypha as a sort of a second level canon, Tobit is considered holy scripture. The best study of how Tobit was received in the early churches by Johann Gamberoni with a focus on Jerome who is responsible for the Vulgate and the Veneral Bee, who was a saint in England. His grave is actually you could visit in the Durham Cathedral.
So the Vulgate, I would say my view is that Jerome has just made up a lot of stuff that is his own head, but that has affected some of the ways we think about Tobit. He says in his version that Tobit and Sarah have to wait three days before they can have sex. There's also a particular line in Tobit that I think is fundamentally wrong and I've written about this elsewhere, where Tobius is to Sarah in the wedding chamber. I take this made in not with lust but with sincerity.
The word they use for lust is not being lost. The word they use for sincerity does not mean sincerity. The word that they use for lust is parnea, which means a sexual violation. But we already know from chapter four in Tobit what it really refers to is a non-indochamous marriage.
And a lot of the celibate scholars have kept up this line even today. It's in the R&SB and it's got sort of, you can even see problems with that particular verse back in the old London. So there's also a way about Tobit in the early church, a recent study by Quiz Alte West in Harvard Theological Studies. He argues that Tobit had a rich and diverse reception in early Christianity.
The Book of Tobit is cited in Catholic wedding ceremonies and most of the early Tobit scholars were Catholic. I owe a lot to them. They've been some wonderful scholars. Protestant leaders such as Martin Luther, well Martin Luther, he just loved the Book of Tobit.
He thought it was good to read and it was fun to read. There's also a very rich history of Tobit in Christian art. Rambiran in particular did a lot of Tobit paintings. And in his painting of Tobit and Hannah with the go he actually used his own parents as models.
How cool was that? Thank you for sharing. That is really cool. What is the significance of the dog in the Book of Tobit?
So the dog only appears in two verses as Tobit, Tobia is leading and returning home. It's poorly integrated into the novel or could say tale. When we look at across the world, it turns out that dogs both represent and accompany dog-eyed beings all the time. Every continent may be except for Antarctica.
And they especially accompany healing gods or present and healing temples. I think the best strategy is not to try to link the dog to a particular culture or text, which is what the general way people do it. But just recognize the dogs all over the world are associated with healing. And in fairy tales and folklars, you actually can't defeat the dragon without the help of the dog.
So we would have expected maybe the dog in Tobit to help Tobit with the fish. But sadly no. But dogs are also linked with exercising spirits. Since Raphael is a healing angel, the dog could be seen as his accompanying animal.
And more about dogs and spirits. There are customs among people called the Parsis. In India, these are Zoroastrians. And the most famous one we probably ever heard of would be Freddie Mercury of Queen.
He was a Zoroastrian from India. And what they would do when someone died is they would put a dog near the corpse for the dog to swallow any bad corpse spirit. So even though the dog isn't really actively doing anything in Tobit, he's right in the place of a healing situation and an exorcism situation. What does this book offer to specialists with advanced background knowledge?
So it could be very helpful for scholars who would like to apply a study of food and eating to the book writings haven't done it before. Here's a sort of roadmap. Also scholars interested in the text critical source critical or redactional aspects of Tobit will find these very good technical discussion of them for anyone studying those particular verses. On the text critical level, my study employs a much wider range of texts that you would see in most other commentaries, especially when it comes to the old landing manuscripts.
I use about 10. Most people usually use maybe one. Can you comment on the Jewish holiday of Shabbu Walks in relation to the book of Tobit? So that's there's a lot of interesting stuff about that.
In the Greek, actually, there's a gloss that adds that this is also known as Pentecost. So one of the things about Shabbuah, which is the festival with the idea that God gave the Torah to Israel is not in our Hebrew Bible. It isn't Jubilees. I have no idea whether Tobit had that idea or not.
The way of celebrating Shabbuah appears just mean having a really nice meal. It doesn't mention any kind of going to pray with anyone else. The other question that scholars have about Shabbuah in Tobit is is he celebrating two days like we do now in the diaspora or one day? It's looking like he might be only celebrating one day.
And that's just very interesting in the whole history of when we actually started celebrating Shabbuah or any of the other holidays with an extra day. Now, Shabbuah is also the holiday of the first fruits. And in the section in Tobit in chapter one, which goes through as many times, these also do include first fruits. Now, the really weird thing is that one of the Jewish medieval versions actually changes it and makes it so good.
I've been trying to understand why I don't have a really good guess. But it seems like the holiday, you know, it's one of the part about the holidays is it's supposed to be a sign of joy instead. It's a sign of sorrow. So that's the fact that it's with the holiday.
We're trying to expect something very good with this really super good meal. And so that's the way that it plays in the story. And you comment on the melodorousness of the fish in the book of Tobit. What does this teach us about smell?
So smell is, you know, one of the most intimate kinds of senses that we have. It's often linked with fear. It's very, very primal. It also helps us, of course, enjoy food.
We know that in ancient religions, it was very common to use a pleasant smells for the gods. And to get rid of demons on pleasant smells, we see this in a Mesopotamian work, Sherpoo. We see this in Josephus where he uses some kind of smelly root to get rid of a demon. And the smell is just, you know, it adds a very good, it gets us really into the story.
You know, when we people were writing fiction nowadays, one of the biggest things is to use the five senses. And Tobit does this brilliantly with the bad smell. Can you comment on the relationship between food and hospitality in the book of Tobit? So hospitality is very important in ancient times where people travel.
It may have been some kind of hotel situation, but often they were staying with someone. And it's almost a sacred thing to do. There's enormous amount of hospitality also in the Odyssey. Question as often arisen, Rockwell, Sarah's father, is he being unusually hospitable?
He certainly goes out and has animals killed, which is usually done for special occasions, which he does first for the welcoming male and later for the wedding celebration. Just looking at other places, for example, in the Mishnah about how many animals people used for a wedding celebration, he's about average. I wouldn't say he's unusually hospitable. And the fact that he says, E-trick and be merry, the reader is going to start thinking, and tomorrow you will die as the next thing.
So in way, Rockwell is kind of the iffy character. He's actually, I would say, some of the same things that Laban says in the Hebrew Bible, and Laban is not a trustworthy guy either. But you've got to say, Rockwell does apply food. He also urges to buy it to stay on with him even longer, which could be a sign of extended hospitality.
But Tobia needs to see his parents again. A two-week wedding celebration does seem to involve a lot of resources. So Rockwell certainly seems to have a lot of animals to be able to kill them. As we bring today's dialogue to a close, can you tell us over your time and attention have gone since completing this book?
So I've continued research and teaching. I'm a taught kids, adults, a Jews, non-Jews, beginners, advanced, and I have in my teaching, I often have a strong focus on non-canonical writings. Currently working on a paper that uses disability theory, quick theory, and feminist, Roman womanist theory to understand some minor, but I argue important characters in 2 Samuel. I also have been an artist for a long time.
You can find my abstract, expressionist works at the website artnumber2uplive.com. I also write speculative fiction, often Jewish, often queer. I'm currently revising a novel entitled for the love of Alan Turture. He writes, leader Harvey Milk and mathematician Alan Turing fall in love in the afterlife.
With a set of friends, they reincarnate in an alternate universe to prevent the Holocaust, World War II, the 8th Abbot death, Emmett, and more. Harvey is eventually going to become US President in 1976, followed by Andre Lorde. Their friends include Alan's Best May Christopher Morgan and Frank, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Superspice, nor Anaconda Senesh, Sophie and Hans Scholes of the White Rose Society. I've learned a lot about novels from studying Tobia and other ancient novels, and I hope I've been put that to good work.
You can read more about it at my author website at argillon.com. Also, I want to be a good citizen and help out with any resisting activities needed in this country. Thanks so much, Ari, for having me on your podcast. I hope you had as good a time as I did.
I was honored to learn from you everything you shared. I was so lucky and blessed to glean all the wisdom that you so eloquently and errant tightly shared with us. Thank you. You've been a good interviewer.
It was my hello, Donner. As we end today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbolette, your host on the New Books and Jewish Studies channel of the New Books and at her podcast. Today, I've been grateful to be in dialogue with Naomi S.S. Jacobs.
She is a community educator in the Denver Metro area. We have been discussing a recently published book, Delicious Prose, reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink a commentary published in Leiden, Netherlands, by Brill 2018. Thank you all heartedly. The S.S.A.F.A.E.E.
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