HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA, 81 



is connected with Syr. kchlntd, hood, perhaps also with Arab, mijnah, 

 veil (see the cuts in RB 1427/8; DB i, 628; CD 671 1^ cf. CD 

 1273'', below; Cant. 31, n. 19; BL 44; also JAOS 41, 34, n. 23 and 

 n. 35). Qara abbabd does not mean he knocked at the door,hvX he 

 called ; a caller denoted his presence at the door by a call. 



Tanhuma bar-Abba lived about the middle of the fourth century, 

 but the parallel to Tobit is not found in the oldest form of the 

 Midrash Tanhuma, which was edited by Solomon Buber in 1885; 

 it is printed at the end of the second volume of the Warsaw edition 

 (p. 124). It is also given, in a slightly abridged and modified form, 

 in N. Lewin's Talmudic chrestomathy " Mewo Hatalmud," Wilna, 

 1907, pp. 14-16. It is there entitled sdson tdliath chel, Joy instead 

 of Grief (Tob. 7, 16). This story (which is ascribed to Moses had- 

 Darshan. of Narbonne, the teacher of the compiler of the great 

 Talmudic dictionary, known as 'Ariikh, R. Nathan, w^ho died at 

 Rome in 1106) was given in Hebrew (according to the Mantua 

 edition of 1563) and in English in Adolf Neubauer, "The Book of 

 Tobit" (Oxford, 1878). Neubauer's book was inaccessible to me 

 when I prepared my translation which is based on the text in " Mewo 

 Hatalmud " ; but I have not deemed it necessary to make any 

 changes ; the omissions and additions in " Mewo Hatalmud "' are 

 immaterial. The Aramaic version published by Neubauer is not the 

 original Aramaic text of the book, but a later version made from the 

 Greek. It can hardly be older than the seventh century a.d. Simi- 

 larly the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, which was discovered about 

 25 years ago, .is not the original text, but a retranslation from the 

 Greek or the Syriac versions (JAOS 40, 219, below). 



The haggadic story at the end of the " IMidrash Tanhuma " may 

 be translated as follows : 



There was a rich wise man with an only daughter who was very 

 beautiful and pious. She had been married thrice, but on the mor- 

 row of the wedding her husbands were always found dead. There- 

 fore she made up her mind to remain a widow. 



Her father had a brother in another city, who was very poor, but 

 he had ten sons. Every day he and his eldest son brought bundles 

 of wood from the forest and sold them. In this way he supported 



