CHAPTER XLI 



THE FISH OF TOBIAS— DEMONIC POSSESSION 



The fish in Tobit, apart from its ichthyic, possesses two other 

 points of interest, its magical and its medical power. As in 

 Assyria we have found beliefs in magical charms very prevalent, 

 and exorcisms of demons or devils accomplished by various 

 methods, so with the Jews, especially with the Babylonian 

 Jews, the interest in magical charms was very strong, and the 

 means employed for exorcism very similar. 



In both nations it is necessary to have some object into 

 which the spirit may be attracted or driven, in point of fact 

 a Leyden jar in which the malign influence may be isolated 

 under control. It is all the same whether the devils are sent 

 into the Gadarene swine or the jinni corked up in the brass 

 bottle of Solomon. The disease (or oppressing devil) must 

 be gently or forcibly persuaded to leave the human body and 

 enter the dead animal or waxen figure close at hand, and so be 

 brought into subjection, or by cleansing with water or fumiga- 

 tion (often with a censer) banished, and its possession or 

 persecution of the person made of no effect.^ 



As now-a-days even Macaulay's schoolboy wots little of 

 the Apocrypha, a short resume of the book of Tobit seems not 

 amiss. 



Tobit has become blind, and fallen on evil days in Nineveh ; 

 he bids his son Tobias set forth and fetch a sum of money 

 deposited with Gabael in Media. He chooses as a trustworthy 

 companion Azarias, who turns out to be no other than the 



^ Cf. R. Campbell Thompson, Semitic Magic, p. i8. Not analogous but not 

 unakin seems the passage in Theocritus {Idyll, II. 28-9) of the love-slighted 

 maiden melting the wax, " so that Delphis may be soon wasted by my love." 

 Diaper (in his Nereides or Sea Eclogues) imitates the scene, but for the waxen 

 image of the lover and its wasting, substitutes a poor dog-fish, which is pierced 

 so as to torture Phorbas by proxy. Cf. Virgil, Eel., VIII. 80. 



431 



