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



The parents of the bride were in their room weeping. When 

 midnight approached, the man and his wife arose to prepare a grave 

 for their son-in-law before daybreak. ... At daybreak they heard 

 the bridegroom and the bride laughing and rejoicing; so they went 

 to the chamber to see how things were. When they saw them, they, 

 too, were overjoyed, and they told this thing to the congregation 

 and praised God. — 



Also Tobias's father-in-law had dug a grave for the bridegroom 

 in the night after the wedding, but when he found in the morning 

 that his son-in-law was alive, he bade his servants fill the grave. 

 Instead of the prophet Elijah in the Alidrash Tanhuma or the grate- 

 ful dead in the Armenian legend we find in the Book of Tobit the 

 angel Raphael. In Tob. 3, 17 we are told that Raphael was sent to 

 heal both Tobit and his daughter-in-law, Sara, that is, to scale away 

 the whiteness of Tobit's eyes, and to give Sara, the daughter of 

 Raguel. for a wife to Tobias, the son of Tobit, and to bind Asmo- 

 deus, the evil spirit. Raphael means God healed. He is one of the 

 seven angels who stand and serve before the throne of God's glory, 

 presenting the prayers of saints. Raphael acted as Tobias's guide on 

 his journey from Nineveh to Ecbatana. He claimed to be Azariah, 

 a kinsman of Tobit, and accepted a remuneration of one drachma 

 per day for his services. He brought Tobit's money from Rages, 

 while Tobias and Sara celebrated their wedding in Ecbatana for 

 two weeks. He had advised Tobias to put on the embers of incense 

 in the bridal chamber the heart and the liver of the fish he had 

 caught when it leaped out of the Tigris and would have swallowed 

 him up, while he was bathing in the river. The fumes drove Asmo- 

 deus away, so that their connubial bliss was not disturbed. 



Sara's demoniacal possession may have been a case of hystero- 

 epilepsy. In the New Testament, hysterics and epileptics are re- 

 garded as demoniacs. In Mark 9, 18 we have the description of an 

 epileptic cured by Jesus. The boy is said to be torn by a spirit. He 

 foams and gnashes with his teeth. When he saw Jesus, straightway 

 the spirit tore him, and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. 

 The father told Jesus that the boy had had these fits from an infant. 

 Ofttimes the spirit had cast him into the fire and into the waters, to 



