MORE BIBLE STUFF
The title of my homily for this 9th Monday in
Ordinary Time is, The Book of Tobit: More Bible Stuff.”
Today’s first reading is from the Book of Tobit. This week we
have 6 readings from the Book of Tobit.
That’s it. And we only get Tobit every other year for our First Reading. However, I’ve noticed that couples often use
Tobit 8: 4b-8 - which has 3 key marriage themes at their wedding. They don’t
use “The Tale of the Monster in the Bridal Chamber” - which Tobit uses in
Chapter 6: 10-18 - when we hear that Sarah was given in marriage 7 times - and
each time the new bridegroom goes into the bridal room, he dies that same
night. Scary stuff. Weird horror story.
Whenever we have for the first reading something from the
beginning of a new book of the Bible, I like to do a little research - any maybe
say something about that book - as sort of a homily.
Hey they are using the book for a reading, so we ought to
say something about it.
So let me mention 5 disconnected things about the Bible -
using Tobit as a jumping off point.
FIRST OF ALL: NOT
IN THE JEWISH BIBLE
The Book of Tobit is not in the Jewish Bible. It’s in the
Septuagint. That’s the Greek Old Testament. That’s the version that Jerome mainly
used for his Latin translation of the Bible - called the Vulgate.
The Protestant translation of the Bible came from the
Jewish or Masoretic text, so that’s why you won’t find the book of Tobit in the
King James Version of the Bible. Check it out.
SECONDLY: 14
CHAPTERS
It’s 14 chapters long - that is the version we have in
our Bible. You can read it in a day.
St. Jerome didn’t think it should be in the Bible - that
is, that it should not be considered canonical. However, as a favor for his
friends, Jerome translated the Book of Tobit from Aramaic into Latin in a day -
with the help of an Aramaic translator.
So it’s not that long - and there was an Aramaic copy of
Tobit around.
THIRDLY: CAIRO
GENIZAH
Last year I read a book on a Genizah in Cairo, Egypt.
A genizah is a special room in a synagogue where folks
dump anything written in Hebrew. There was some law you couldn’t burn or just
throw anything Hebrew away.
In our churches there is the sacristy, the sanctuary, the
narthex or lobby, so in some Jewish synagogues there is a room for Hebrew writings.
I have noticed as priest that sometimes people dump old
prayer books in the rectory side rooms - along with rosaries, scapulars and
broken statues. Someone has died. They had prayer books and religious stuff.
You can’t just dump them in the garbage.
So a genizah is the place religious stuff.
And way back in the 1890’s different folks began discovering
that the Cairo genizah had some valuable old writings - some of which -
specialists had said disappeared from the face of the earth.
Besides the book I read about the Cairo genizah, I noticed
another book entitled, Sacred Trash: The
Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole.
Since the discoveries, they have found fragments of Tobit
in the mix and the mess of over 300, 000, Hebrew manuscripts.
They have a computerized inventory of over 301,000
fragments from that room in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo.
For the Book of Tobit they have three 13th
Century fragments.
They don’t know for sure whether this book of Tobit was
originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.
FOURTHLY: DEAD
SEA SCROLLS
As you know some Arab shepherds - young kids - discovered
in a cave near the Dead Sea a library of ancient scrolls. It’s was 1947.
These scrolls jumped the oldest biblical scrolls a good
thousand years plus. I checked it out this morning in preparing these comments.
Yes they found fragments of the Book of Tobit in the midst of the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
FIFTH AND LAST:
MANUSCRIPT BINDINGS
I also learned something new this morning - that I had
not heard before. Since the 1980’s - in the Archives of Perugia in Italy - they
discovered ancient documents were used to reinforce bindings of ancient books -
which were newer than the documents they were reinforcing.
For example, they found 8 fragments that contain parts of
the Babylonian Talmud. They are part of
a copy of the Jewish Talmud - copied in Spain in the 13th century -
then brought to central Italy. It was used as a sacred text and then removed
and reused to bind other books. They are very important because they only had
at the time one copy in the world of the complete manuscript of that Hebrew Talmud. It’s in Munich and was copied
in the 15th century - with some other incomplete manuscripts. The
reason for the shortage of that Babylonian Talmud was that they were confiscated and burnt by the Catholic Church
and the Inquisition.
That work is only in its infancy and I don’t know if they
have any parts of Biblical texts like the Book of Tobit.
CONCLUSION
It’s 2017 and the sun is going to last a few more billion
years - so we are going to be around a long, long time, so who knows what else
will be discovered and figured out in our world. So there is a lot more
research to do - on books like the Book of Tobit, etc.
