What's Missing from Your Bible? The Book of Tobit

Although many English-speaking Protestants uphold the Authorized or King James Version of the Bible (1611), as the translation to follow, very few of them use a complete edition of the King James Bible. Originally, the KJV included, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, fourteen books, grouped together as the Apocrypha that just are not there in most modern editions of the King James Version.

Roman Catholics find eleven of the books of the Apocrypha in their Bible, worked in among other books of the Old Testament, and there are other treatments of the Apocrypha in Luther's translation of the Bible into German and in Jewish scripture. The reasons for these differences would require many long articles.

Most readers of the Bible can read the books of the Apocrypha as the sixth of the Anglican Church's Articles of Religion says, "the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine." There is nothing wrong about them. They just, because of their history, do not meet the standards of the canon (the definitive text of the Bible) of some traditions.

Of the books of the Apocrypha, the Book of Tobit is the most readable, in fact, enjoyable. Maybe it was because I was in high school when I first discovered the Book of Tobit (and it was the first book of the Apocrypha that I read), but it sounds very different from "other books of the Old Testament" or "the books of the Old Testament," depending upon your tradition's beliefs about the Apocrypha.

The Book of Tobit, like other books of the Apocrypha, was not found in Hebrew, only in the Greek translation of the Bible called the Septuagint. Fragments of the book of Tobit have been found in Aramaic and Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here is an article about those fragments by a scholar who translated them.

The Book of Tobit begins in the first person, " I Tobit have walked all the days of my life in the ways of truth and justice." The Book of Tobit deals with the stories of two different people. One is Tobit, an elderly man who, like Job, has undergone many misfortunes. As the book opens, he is blind and yearning for death.

Meanwhile, in a distant city, a young woman named Sara is similarly in despair. She has been married seven times, and each time, a demon killed her husband on their wedding night. The two stories are brought together by Tobit's son Tobias. He travels to Sarah's city to collect money owed to his father Tobit, accompanied by the angel Raphael (in disguise) and his dog.

Suffice it to say that Tobias marries Sarah and survives (his new father-in-law already has a grave dug), Raphael collects the money, and they all return home... and cure Tobit's blindness as well.

The Book of Tobit tells the stories of good people, who do good, who remain faithful to God, and so God remains faithful to them. Again, to quote the Articles of Religion about the Apocrypha, we can read this book "for example of life and instruction of manners." We can also read all fourteen chapters of the Book of Tobit online, since most Protestant editions, at least, omit it.

You can read an article on the Jewish Apocrypha here, an article on the Christian Apocrypha here, and a thorough Roman Catholic commentary here. The King James Version and Revised Standard Version of Tobit can be found here. The Douay-Rheims (Roman Catholic) version, in which Tobit is called Tobias can be found here. The New Jerusalem (modern Roman Catholic) version, using the name Tobit, is here. Read the Book of Tobit with pleasure, and I hope, with an open mind, not to challenge your tradition but to enrich your experience.