HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA. 75 



(/i) 5 for ever? (i) over the heathen who do not acknowledge Thee and 



(/c) 8 for we are very wretched 



(/) 9 Save us and forgive us our sins for the sake of Thy name. 



(ni) II Let the moan of the prisoners come before Thee. 



(n) With Thy great power preserve those doomed to death. 



(o) 12 to our neighbors (p) O Lord (q) Thy people and 



(r) IS And to all generations rehearse Thy glory. 



Into their bosom in v. I2 means into their lap; cf. Luke 6, 38; 

 Is. 65, 7; 2 K 4, 39; Ruth 3, 15 ; see my paper " Abraham's Bosom " 

 in AJP 42, 163 ; Lazarus was not carried by the angels into Abra- 

 ham's bosom, but into Abraham's lap; Michel Angelo's famous 

 marble group Pieta at St. Peter's in Rome shows the Virgin with 

 the body of the dead Christ on her lap (see pi. ix, no. 13, at the end 

 of MK'' 2). 



The best English translation of the Book of Tobit is given in 

 " The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in 

 English," with introductions and critical and explanatory notes to 

 the several books, edited in conjunction with many scholars by R. H. 

 Charles (Oxford, 1913). Tobit has been contributed by D. C. 

 Simpson, of Manchester College, Oxford. He gives an elaborate 

 critical apparatus, but hardly any explanatory notes. In his learned 

 introduction he states (p. 183) that the book is certainly pre- 

 Maccabean, and that it probably emanated from orthodox Jewish 

 circles in Egypt. Although this view is endorsed by a number of 

 distinguished Biblical scholars, I believe that the book was written 

 by a Persian Jew for the encouragement of his coreligionists in 

 Palestine at the beginning of the Maccabean rebellion, about B.C. 167, 

 just as I pointed out six years ago (OLZ 18, 71 ; JSOR 2, yy) that 

 Gen. 14 was written by a Babylonian Jew for the inspiration of the 

 followers of the Davidic prince Zerubbabel who rebelled against the 

 Persians at the beginning of the year 519 B.C. {cf. JBL 37, 210; 

 contrast E. Naville, "The Text of the Old Testament," London, 

 1916, p. 30). We need not suppose that the story of Tobit was 

 brought to Egypt by Persian soldiers of Cambyses (Simpson, p. 194, 

 n. 3). If Tobit had been written in Egypt, the author would not 

 have said that when Asmodeus smelled the liver and the heart of the 

 fish, which Tobias had put on the embers of the incense, he fled into 

 the upper parts of Egypt (Tob. 8, 3). 



PRQC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LX, F, DEC. 20, I92I. 



