HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA. 79 



Talmud we read that no one should keep a dog unless it be chained, 

 and Rabbi Eliezer said : Ham-meg add cl kclabim kam-mcgaddel 

 hdsnhn, a man who raises dogs is like a man who raises hogs (BT 6, 

 299, 19). In the Book of Tobit, Tobias's dog accompanies his 

 young master on his journey and follows him when he returns to 

 his parents in Nineveh after having cured his bride. In the Aramaic 

 and Hebrew versions of the Book of Tobit the dog is omitted. Ac- 

 cording to some Catholic exegetes, Tobias's dog represents the 

 Keeper of Israel ; Raphael : the Alessiah ; and Sara : the Church of 

 the New Testament ! 



Tobias also cured his father Tobit who had lost his sight when 

 he was 58 years old. He recovered it after he had been Wind for 

 eight years. The cure of his blindness is said to have been effected 

 by the gall of a fish which Tobias had caught in the Tigris. The 

 liver and the heart of that fish, burned on embers of incense, ex- 

 pelled Asmodeus, who had tormented Sara for years. 



The blindness of Tobit seems to be a subsequent exaggeration, 

 also the number of the husbands of Sara who were killed by 

 Asmodeus before they could enjoy their connubial bliss. In the 

 Talmud we are told that no woman might marry again whom death 

 had bereft of three husbands in succession (Ycbamoth 64^; Niddah 

 64^^). In some parallels to the story of Tobias and Sara the number 

 of the former husbands killed in the wedding-night is not seven, as 

 in the Book of Tobit, but five or three. In an Armenian legend a 

 well-to-do man, riding through a forest, finds some men treating a 

 dead body rather unceremoniously. They tell him that the dead 

 man owed them money. He pays the debts and buries the body. 

 Afterwards he is impoverished. In his native town there is a rich 

 man with an only daughter. She had been married five times, but 

 her husbands had always died the first night after the marriage. 

 An unknown servant advises him to marry the widow. In the 

 wedding-night a snake comes out of the mouth of the bride and 

 threatens to kill him. The unknown servant, who has been on 

 guard, kills the snake and saves the groom. The unknown servant 

 turns out to be the dead man whom he had buried in the forest. 



In a Russian story a man buries his brother. He is married to 



