HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA. 77 



Nineveh for Antioch on the Orontes, which was founded as his chief 

 seat of government by Seleiicus Xicator after the battle of Ipsus in 

 301 B.C. Also Seleucia on the Tigris, opposite Ctesiphon on the left' 

 bank, c. 50 miles north of Bab3ion, and 15 miles south of Bagdad, 

 was founded by Seleucus Nicator {cf. Streck, " Seleucia und Ktesi- 

 phon," Leipsic, 1917). Tobit can not have been written in the days 

 of Sennacherib c. 700; it must have been composed by a Persian 

 Jew c. 170 B.C. Also the Book of Esther was written by a Persian 

 Jew c. 130 B.C. On the other hand, the so-called Third Book of the 

 Maccabees is an Egyptian festal legend for the feast of Purim, 

 while the Book of Judith is a Palestinian Purim legend {Pur. 7 ; 

 Est. 2). 



It has been observed that the Book of Tobit has an Iranian back- 

 ground. This was discussed by J. H. Moulton in ET, March, 1900. 

 An excursus on Magianism and the Book of Tobit is attached to 

 Lecture II in Moulton's Hibbert Lectures delivered in 1912. Tobit's 

 daughter-in-law lived in Ecbatana, the present Hamadan, near the 

 foot of Mt. Elvend, 188 miles southwest of the capital of modern 

 Persia, Teheran. Even now one tenth of the inhabitants of Llama- 

 dan are Jews. The town contains the alleged sarcophagi of Esther 

 and Mordecai, also the tomb of the great Arabian physician and 

 philosopher Avicenna who died in 1037 a.d. Tobit had deposited 

 money in Rages, the Avestan Rhaga, which is mentioned in the 

 Behistun inscription of Darius Hystaspis (2, 13): the Aledian 

 Phraortes, who had rebelled against Darius in 522, fled to Raga, but 

 was captured and impaled in Ecbatana (Weissbach, " Achameniden," 

 pp. 39, 153). The name survives in the huge ruins of Rai, situated 

 some 5 miles southeast of Teheran (DB 4, 193; EB 4005). It was 

 one of the strongest fortresses of the Persian empire. The ruins 

 occupy a space about 4.500 yards long by 3,500 broad. A historical 

 sketch of Ragha, the supposed home of Zoroaster's mother, has been 

 given by Professor Jackson, of Columbia University, in the Spiegel 

 ]Memorial Volume, published at Bombay in 1908. 



Asmodeus, the name of the demon who killed the seven bride- 

 grooms of Sara until Tobit's son. Tobias, expelled him, is the Per- 

 sian Aeshma-dewa. This was pointed out long ago by Benfey in 



