Bonus Goat (Transcript)

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Chris Sims: "Then Tobit answered his son Tobias, ‘He gave me his bond and I gave him my bond. I divided his in two; we each took one part, and I put one with the money. And now twenty years have passed since I left this money in trust. So now, my son, find yourself a trustworthy man to go with you, and we will pay him wages until you return. But get back the money from Gabael." The Book of Tobit, chapter 5, verse 3.

[Music: "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas]

C: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers sit down to read the Bible, but we try not to be jerks about it. We are your heavenly hosts. My name is Chris Sims, and with me as always is Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you today?

Benito Cereno: I'm great. I'm great. I'm pumped, now, thanks to that top of the show music. I got the music in me.

C: About that, about that music. We had a really hard time figuring out what music to use for Tobit. And then it, like a thunderbolt from the heavens, I realized it was right in front of us all along.

B: It's very good.

C: That's right, everybody. Today we are reading the apocryphal book of Tobit. This is capital A, Apocrypha, correct?

B: Absolutely, yep.

C: And you can find that in the NRSV version of the Bible, where it is included, which is on Bible Gateway.

B: Some of you guys might have noticed, we missed a week. That one, well, it's kind of on me, kind of on the one who controls things like weather. I'm not pointing any particular fingers, but whoever it is that controls the weather.

C: Someone who could maybe speak and calm the storm.

B: Right. That person or spirit or presence, whatever, decided to send a very large multi-state encompassing storm this past weekend that knocked out my power for a couple of days. And so we were not able to record. Someone was not looking forward to us talking about Tobit, I guess, which is weird because Tobit is a very fine book. I think we're going to have positive things to say about it. I don't know. But here we are. We're back. Thank you for your patience. Thanks for waiting on us. How about you, Chris? What have you been up to?

C: Do you feel like maybe we should stop doing this show?

B: Yeah, like when a storm hits my house and not just my house, but leaves 70,000 people in my city without power for like three days. Yeah, it does seem like a sign.

C: When we're planning on doing this show where we talk about the Bible and then a storm that stretches from Lexington, Kentucky to Minneapolis, Minnesota knocks your power out. I don't believe in signs.

B: Yeah.

C: But if I did, that would be a sign, my man.

B: Yeah, it really, yeah, I had to send Chris the weather map to show him how huge the storm system was. Because yeah, we were right at the bottom of it. But if you just zoomed out on the map, you can see, oh, Ohio too. Oh, and Indiana. Oh, also Wisconsin. Oh, that goes all the way up into Minnesota and most of the way to Canada, is a very large, it's a very large storm. And the way that they color how serious the storm is, like where it's like a red or orangish red where the storm is worse, then yellow, then you got green outside that. It looked like the scariest avocado was just sitting over the Midwest and South. Like it was very bad.

C: Well, because it's been a couple weeks since we've recorded, I had an eventful time.

B: Yeah?

C: I had a very eventful couple days.

B: I need to hear about this.

C: Well, first of all, I had an interesting experience. Do you remember in the Gospel of John?

B: I've heard of it.

C: When the Romans come to get Jesus and they ask him if he's Jesus and he says, I am, and the force of those two words like knocks everybody over.

B: I do remember that. It's a very memorable passage.

C: Yeah, I understand that completely now because I saw Janelle Monáe in concert and it was a very similar experience.

B: I can see that.

C: She is incredible, first of all. If you have the chance to go see Janelle Monáe live and you don't, you hecked up, big time. But she put on an amazing show to the point where she left the stage, everyone left the stage, and Aiden my wife turned to me and said, "What is she going to do for an encore after that?" The answer was that she was going to come out and tell us that the devil was real and that we were gonna all join together and take back America from him so give me a heck yeah on that one.

B: Heck yeah. Wow.

C: Janelle Monáe rules–

B: I wasn't expecting that. You really caught me with that encore anecdote

C: The tone of your voice sounds a little bit sarcastic.

B: Not at all, I'm being completely sincerely astonished,

C: Well, heed the words of Janelle Monáe: the devil is out there.

B: Yeah.

C: Even though he's the size of a kitty cat.

B: But nevertheless...

C: Watch your back.

B: He roams the earth like a lion seeking whom he may devour. By missing last week we missed a Jewish holiday. Last weekend was Tisha B'Av, which means the ninth of Av, so it's kind of Cinco de Mayo in that way. Av is just a month on the Jewish calendar. But it's not a happy one. It's not one where you say Chag Sameach to somebody because it's a sad one. In fact, it's considered the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, saddest day of the year, because it commemorates what they call five catastrophes, five calamities, the two major ones being the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians And then also the destruction of the second temple by the Romans, which according to Talmud happened on the same day, which huge if true. Like anniversary. You know what I mean? Like hundreds of years apart. Like if it were literally both of those things happened on the 9th of Av, that's wild.

C: A real Shakespeare's birthday situation there.

B: Yeah. I mean the other calamities are not as big. It's like the spies that Moses sent into the promised land coming back with a bad report, a couple of revolts that got knocked down. Really, it's the temples getting destroyed are the big one. So like, it's a day where you're not supposed to do anything cool or fun. Like it's a fast day, first of all, but you're not even supposed to– you're not supposed to wear leather shoes because that might be too comfortable. And there's not a thing you say to each other. Like even on like Yom Kippur, which is another sad holiday. And by the way, like what does it say about us as a world that Judaism as a culture has to have multiple sad holidays? What does it say? What have we done? What have we done to these people is terrible.

B: But even on Yom Kippur, you can at least say, hey, have an easy fast. But this one, you don't say anything because you're not even supposed to say hello to other people on Tisha B'Av. You're not supposed to greet anybody. You're not supposed to read the Torah because that might be too fun or cool. So you're only allowed to read sad books of the Bible like Lamentations or Job. And yeah, obviously you don't eat. You may not have marital or presumably extramarital relations. Not allowed. No application of creams or oils, so dry cracking skin has to carry on. But anyway it's considered to be a day on which on which terrible things happen and considering that this year it landed right in the middle of San Diego Comic-Con, I would say that tracks.

B: But yeah, like sad holidays man I was trying to like, does Christianity have sad holidays? I guess, I mean Lent.

C: I mean Easter!

B: Well no easter's the happy one, right?

C: Okay easter's the happy one, but I mean Good Friday.

B: Good Friday, yeah, but like.

C: We call it Good Friday, but it was actually a pretty rough Friday for all concerned.

B: Yeah, so I mean, yeah, I guess, so like Lent, I guess, but like in the church I grew up in we didn't really do anything for like, we didn't even give things up, right? But for a lot of the catholic kids I know it's like, "Oh I can't eat as much candy for a while or whatever and then maybe I have to eat more fish or lentils than I normally do." It doesn't feel the same as like, "Oh yeah, by the way, the center of our entire religion was destroyed twice. And also some other people have taken over it and we can't have it back." That's a whole thing.

C: But... I mean, most Christian holidays are good times.

B: Yeah.

C: Christmas, very good time. Easter, the resurrection, that's a good time. Pretty much every day is somebody's feast day.

B: Yeah.

C: So you always have a chance to go down to the Olive Garden like I know you like to do.

B: Yeah.

C: Your favorite place to go.

B: It is my favorite. That's where Jesus went. Jesus went to the Olive Garden. He went there to pray and presumably eat breadsticks.

C: We actually had someone say that Jesus's bread was probably more like the cinnamon bread that you get at Dollywood.

B: We also had the suggestion of Cheddar Bay Biscuits from Red Lobster.

C: Cheddar Bay Biscuits, overrated.

B: Oh!

C: Coming down hard on that. That was an Apocrypals judgment call.

B: Nope, not from this half. Nope. I don't need Karla Pacheco coming to murder me. I don't need that. I don't need that on my conscience.

C: So one last thing to mention before we get into Tobit. Benito.

B: Yes, Chris.

C: What can you tell me about the Sons of Thunder?

B: Well, there are two of them. James and John.

C: Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You thought I meant the apostles, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. No, I'm talking about the 1999 CBS action drama, Sons of Thunder.

B: Wow.

C: The spinoff of Walker, Texas Ranger that I found out about the day we were supposed to record this episode.

B: Oh no.

C: "When Reverend Thunder Malloy, a close friend of Walker, dies from a heart attack, his son Trent returns home and eventually quits the army to stay. Walker and his partner Trivette go after a serial cop killer who has Carlos on his list, which Trent ends up getting involved in by accident when he saved Carlos's life, and later helped Walker and Carlos take down the criminal. Finally, in 1999, they got their own spinoff series, which only lasted six episodes. Carlos resigns from the police department after his partner is murdered. He teams up with Trent to find the assassin, and they later decide to form their own private investigation firm called Thunder Investigations."

B: Wow. That's a lot.

C: I got to the part where he is literally the son of a man named Thunder.

B: Yeah.

C: And I feel like, obviously that is not scripture, but it does seem scripturally adjace.

B: Yeah. I feel like the producers of Walker, Texas Ranger knew who their demographic was. And they're like, let's do this very good Bible allusion spinoff show. Also a man actually named Thunder is there. He's a preacher.

C: But yeah, I am genuinely surprised that Sons of Thunder has not been used as a title more often.

B: Yeah. It seems like a very comic book-y superhero kind of thing that you could have. Like if I guess you could do a future generation, the children of Black Lightning's daughter, right? Thunder and Lightning are his daughters, right?

C: Or the Captain Marvel of the 853rd century. Her name was also Thunder. CeCe Beck was her name.

B: A very good touch.

C: All right. So you want to talk about the Bible?

B: Yeah. Hey, let's talk about Tobit a little bit. All right. So yeah, Tobit, named after the guy who's in it. Not really the main character, actually. Most of it's about his son, Tobias, but Tobit is the framing character. And he is allegedly the narrator of the story, right? It starts in first person before shifting to third person a couple of chapters in. And so it's just named after Tobit, the guy.

B: And the Greek name Tobit or Tobith comes from the Hebrew word Tovi, which means my good. I didn't know Hebrew before the show, but I feel like I'm going to come out the other side knowing a decent amount of Hebrew here. Because the T-O-V, the Tov there is the same as in Mazel Tov, right? When you say Mazel Tov to somebody, you say it to mean congratulations, but it literally means good luck, right? As in you've had good luck, not wishing someone good luck, right? And you can also hear it in Shana Tova, which is a good year. You say to someone on Rosh Hashanah, right, when it's the Jewish New Year, you say Shana Tova. And so this is it, Tovi, with the E there at the end. I'm guessing from context, similar to the Eloi, meaning which was my God. Now we've got Tovi, so that's my good.

B: And then his son is Tobias. And so that's from Tobiah, which is Yah is good. As we've learned, pretty much anyone from a Greek portion of the Bible whose name ends in I-A-S is probably from a Hebrew name that ends in I-A-H, which means something about Yah, as in Yahweh. And we see that Tobit's dad is Tobiel. And so that would just be El, another name for God. That El, that God, is good or my good. So Yah is good, Yah is my good, El is my good, my good. So many good, good boys. So many good, good boys in Tobit.

B: Here's what we know about the authorship of Tobit. If you want to go the traditional route, it was written by Tobit, a real man who existed and had mysterious, magical things happen to his eyes and face, and also his son, Tobias. And he lived during the Assyrian exile, which would put us roughly during the time of the 8th century BCE, which would have been around time of 1st Isaiah. So if you're going to traditional view, it's easy. Tobit wrote it, and he wrote it in the 8th century BCE.

B: What we do know outside of that is the author is Jewish. The original was probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and we do have some fragments of an Aramaic version. But the full versions that the translations we would have read came from would be from Greek and Latin versions. Obviously, as part of the capital A Apocrypha, the deuterocanon, it would be part of the Septuagint, part of the Greek Old Testament. We don't know exactly where it was written. The information is a little tricky. It might be from somewhere in Mesopotamia, might be from Judea, maybe somewhere in Egypt. People think there's a lot of different theories.

B: But if you don't accept the traditional view, if you don't believe that Tobit was real and wrote down his own life story, the historical view is that Tobit was probably actually written considerably later than the Assyrian exile, probably between 225 and 175 BCE, which would put us closer to the composition of Daniel. Originally, people thought that it was quite a bit later, maybe as late as 100 CE. But then copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. And we know the Dead Sea Scrolls, or fragments, I should say, the Dead Sea Scrolls we know range from 100 BCE to 25 CE. So it couldn't be that late. But the fact that it quotes prophets like Amos and Nahum, it shows that the prophetic books were kind of fixed and canonical by that point, which indicates a date post-Babylonian exile. And the phrase that he uses a couple times, Book of Moses, Law of Moses, that indicates a later date as well. However, it's probably from before 175 BCE because there's no references to Hellenization. It doesn't include any references whatsoever to the Seleucids and the people that would have been relevant during the Hasmonean times, the Maccabee times. So the rough window, it's about 225 to 175 BCE.

B: The book, like we said, is capital A Apocrypha, which means that among the Catholic Church, it's considered deuterocanon, secondary canon, or later canon. Also the timing of it, the books of the deuterocanon are generally considered to be from the intertestamental period. They were written between the end of the composition of the Old Testament and the composition of the New Testament. but it's not considered Jewish canon. Originally, people thought it wasn't part of the Jewish canon because of the late date in which it was composed, but it's possibly for halakhic reasons, halakha being the law, the Jewish law, and so namely the fact that in the story, the bride's father, Sarah's father, writes out the marriage contract instead of Tobias. And according to law, the groom should be the one to write the marriage contract. And so because of that kind of contradiction of law, some people think maybe that's why Tobit didn't make it into the Jewish canon.

B: But like I said, it was part of the Septuagint, so that makes it canon or deuterocanon for Catholic and Orthodox churches. It was listed and mentioned as canonical at the Council of Rome in 382, at the Council of Hippo in 393, the Council of Carthage in 397, the Council of Florence in 1442, and the Council of Trent in 1546. So Tobit is among the most canonical, non-canonical books, right?

C: So wait, wait. How does it in the 1500s, in the 16th century, how is it considered canon when it's not canon now?

B: So again, it's like it's considered deuterocanon because of its late date. The reason it's not canon for for Protestant churches and the reason why it's considered fully apocryphal and not included in most Protestant Bibles, in American Protestant Bibles especially, is because it's because it's only in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew canon. So the 66 books that we think of in America as like full canon, that's from the Hebrew canon. And so the things that are considered apocryphal by Protestants and considered deuterocanon by Catholics and Orthodox churches, those are from the Septuagint but are not included among the Jewish canon. Does that make sense?

C: I mean, no. Not at all. I don't understand how these decisions are made, because we talked about this would be in the same level of apocrypha as we got back when we were talking about the Prayer of Azariah and Susanna and Bel and the Dragon when we went through Daniel and those are other adventures of Daniel right like those are we talked about how those kind of obviously don't fit in, but Tobit being its own thing because it does tell a complete story beginning to end. And after we read in the gospel of John about how there was a lake where an angel would just come down and make an angel jacuzzi for a minute, nothing in this seems that unusual.

B: True. Yeah. But yeah, it really, I mean, for the Catholic church, it really has to do with the timing of it. It's the fact that it would have been written in that intertestamental period.

C: Here's my question for you.

B: Yeah.

C: Has anything ever been considered apocryphal and then instated into full canon, like reinstated?

B: Not that I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure some very dutiful listener, if they know of one, will know that. I mean, there were so many debates about what was canon, especially for the Christian church. A Jewish canon was decided relatively early on, but the Christian canon was argued for so long. And there's all sorts of different lists of what books are in and what books are out. And a lot of Christian canons would have included Tobit and would have included some of these other books, Judith, Maccabees, and so on. I don't have the book on me right now, but I do have a book that includes lists of canon that were proposed by different early church fathers. And they mostly line up with the 27 books of the New Testament we have now.

B: But sometimes they would have other things. There's other books, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas. Those were books that would have been considered basically canon early on and then got knocked out. I don't know of a book that was fully non-canonical that was brought in later. There's definitely some that were heavily debated in the New Testament. Some of the early church fathers didn't like Hebrews or James, and those got brought in later. Some books in the Old Testament were considered not worthy of inclusion, like Esther or Song of Solomon, some others. But they ultimately, because of their popularity or because of the fact that they're attributed to an important figure from history, do eventually get brought in. So it's not a clean or easy process for either the Jewish canon or the Christian canon because it's a lot of debate over a lot of time. So yeah, there are some things in and out. But I don't know if something that was fully out at some point that later gets brought in, especially in the New Testament canon. But maybe I'm just forgetting an egregious example that somebody, aka Ben Rowe, will message me about later.

C: So that leads me to a question.

B: Yeah.

C: Because you talked about how there is– there was at least a debate over when Tobit was written. And that the Dead Sea Scrolls provided an earlier version than we previously knew about.

B: Right. The version would be about the same, but it dates it earlier. We know that it is from much earlier than it was originally thought.

C: So if they find a second ominous black sarcophagus in Egypt, because it's 2018, who knows anymore what's going to happen.

B: Yeah.

C: And they, they crack that bad boy open and inside it is a, a piece of parchment with Tobit on it that dates back to the eighth century BCE.

B: Yeah.

C: Then what do we do? Do we go, okay, I guess this one counts, and then it gets into our HCSB Bibles so that we don't have to go on BibleGateway to read this one.

B: No, I doubt it. The canon is considered closed and has been for many hundreds of years. So I really don't think that there, I mean, the fact that it already was declared, you know, canon at one, two, three, four or five different ecumenical councils, like I feel like it's got as much as it's going to get. Like I said, it is as canonical as a deuterocanon book can be. Like Tobit, Judith, 1st and 2nd Maccabees. Those are the ones that are like, yeah, basically. Those are basically canon.

C: Oh, I forgot to mention, when they open up the 2nd Black Sarcophagus and find the parchment, it's autographed.

B: Ah.

C: And it says, to my good friend Tobit, keep your eyes open. Ha-ha, God. Then what do we do?

B: If it's autographed by God, maybe. It feels more likely it would be autographed by Raphael, maybe. But who knows? Maybe God. Yeah, maybe God. Yeah.

C: Don't sleep under any fences. Ha ha.

B: My good dude.

C: Have a great summer. God.

B: Oh, man. So, of course, according to the first person account here, Tobit claims to be a historical account, but it actually is kind of a compilation of three different secular folk tales. The first one being a folk tale of the type known as the Grateful Dead, which is actually the source of where the name of the band comes from. In that particular story type, it's one in which a poor man buries a corpse and then gets rewarded. We see that, like that's Tobit's main thing is burying dead bodies.

C: You may be familiar with that type of story from Hellboy.

B: Yeah.

C: Here in the modern era.

B: Hellboy or Antigone. She doesn't get rewarded, though, unless you consider her martyrdom a reward, which Christians would. I don't know that Sophocles did. But anyway, Grateful Dead, that's one. Number two, Monster in the Bridal Chamber. Worse than Monster in Your Pocket. But we obviously see that here with Sarah and the demon who kills her husband on a wedding night.

C: Don't, don't think you can move past that. We're gonna get to that section of the story and how buck wild that is. You're telling me that's a genre?

B: Yeah, like there's a number of stories featuring that element to it, yeah. Like if you go if you go back– I don't have examples on hand, but I'm sure I'm sure that story carries on. There's probably like a Brother's Grimm story that's got a similar element to it, if you looked, because yeah, it's a trope. And then finally, the third story is a story from a popular, one of the first internationally popular stories, the tale of Ahikar, who is the wise courtier who was falsely incriminated by his adopted son. And he's actually called by name. In this version, he's integrated in the story and made into Tobit's nephew, and he's a recurring background character. But yeah, those are the three main elements that are tied together.

B: Some of the things that make it a little dubious, a little doubtful at least, that Tobit is a fully historical narrative: there's a couple of historical errors, like the succession of the Assyrian emperors or Assyrian kings, and then also some of the geographical stuff, right? There's a lot of stuff where Tobias walks a distance in a day that couldn't possibly be done. I mean, if you want to say, okay, he could walk a day because there was a secret angel, but maybe?

C: Spoilers?

B: Yeah, sorry.

C: Benito?

B: Sorry.

C: Jeepers.

B: But from a historical perspective, Tobit doesn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny as a 100% true historical account from the 8th century.

C: I mean, that makes sense, because if anybody was reading along with us, it has the structure of a fable.

B: Yeah.

C: It has, it's very much, you know about wickety-wack into my sack, I'm sure. Did they show that to you in school?

B: Mm-hmm.

C: If you don't know, like there was a series of extremely Southern versions of like "Jack" stories.

B: Yeah.

C: You're familiar with Jack, I assume.

B: Jack the Giant Killer?

C: Yeah, Jack of the Tales. And this is very much a literal "go off and get your fortune" story that involves all of those classic elements of Tobias leaving home, wandering through some wilderness, getting a mysterious piece of advice that becomes extremely relevant later, and accomplishing these heroic feats in a very neat fashion in that everything he gets comes back. Chekhov's fish parts.

B: Yeah. Chekhov's fish parts. Yes. Very good. Yeah, let's– you want to just run through the story? I think we can fairly assume that our listeners, especially those who didn't read along, are not as familiar with this story as they are with say for example the Gospel of Matthew so maybe let's just go through the story.

C: Okay so we start out with Tobit basically dropping an intro verse about how great he is. Very Jay-Z.

B: He tells us who he is. He gives us his family line. It's interesting here because here, obviously, if you guys remember from our Isaiah episode, the Assyrian exile was the one in which the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they were conquered by the Assyrians. And so this is a story of the North. We've really focused a lot on the South and that's not going to change. A lot of the Bible was written in the Southern Kingdom where Jerusalem was. But here we really have a story of someone from the north. He's from the tribe of Naphtali, which is like the northernmost tribe. And so it's kind of a cool change to see that. But yeah, so keep in mind this is around the time of what we call First Isaiah in our Isaiah episode. So if you want to go back and listen to that for some of that historical context.

B: But yeah, he's here in exile. He's one who has been driven out of his home and now he currently lives in Assyria.

C: So the entire upshot of Tobit chapter one is that Tobit's a good dude, and we know he's a good dude because of chapter 1 verse 17 which says, "I would give my food to the hungry and my clothing to the naked." Standard stuff, standard good guy stuff, right? "Oh, and if I saw the dead body of any of my people thrown out behind the wall of Nineveh, I would bury it," which... I have questions

B: Yeah, well, I mean...

C: That's a rough place to be living.

B: It is. It is. And again, I mean, it really shows you what a tough spot the Israelites were in at this time. Like if you guys have read Antigone, you have an idea, like for the Greeks, what it means to leave a body uncovered, right? Antigone is the story of the daughter of Oedipus. Her brothers killed each other and one was considered a traitor and the other wasn't. And the one that was considered a traitor was left out. His body was left out. And she snuck out and buried it in order that his soul might move on to the to the afterlife.

B: It's a similar kind of thing where like burial of the dead is a major thing for the Jewish people and for the bodies to be left out. And we've seen it several times, like in the story, the good Samaritan, for example. And in your story about let the, you know, let the dead bury the dead and so on. Dead bodies are ritually unclean. It's a big deal for dead bodies to be out and you don't want to touch one. You don't want to see one. You don't want to come in contact with one at all. And so, yeah, so Tobit, like we see like one of his main things besides the fact that he gives away as much of his wealth as he can, and helps out people, one of his main things is he sneaks out in the night and he buries dead bodies that are left out to rot because it's a huge insult to his people.

C: So I just want to I just want to point out, I know that there... I know that things are bad in a lot of parts of the world but if you're listening to a podcast currently, I think it's safe to say that unless it is specifically your job, you do not generally encounter dead bodies on the street.

B: Right. Probably not.

C: If you do, it is a notable event in your life.

B: Yeah.

C: It's happening so often to Tobit that it's his thing. Like, people are going, "There goes Tobit, off to bury another dead body."

B: Yeah, which is, that's not a joke. Like, that's actually from the text. Yeah, and he does it so often he gets in trouble for it. We see the kings here, Shalmaneser and then Sennacherib. That's a name we saw in Isaiah. He takes over. But really, Shalmaneser actually died before the fall of Samaria. So Shalmaneser would not have been relevant to this story. It would have been Sargon II. And so Sennacherib succeeds his father, Sargon II, in 705 BC. Historical note, for those of you keeping track, of Assyrian kings.

B: But yeah, Sennacherib did not like that. at all. And so Tobit and his family are actually kicked out of Nineveh, which is the capital of Assyria. Most of you guys probably, if you're like me, you mostly know Nineveh from the story of Jonah, but it was actually, it was the capital of the Assyrian empire. And so not 40 days passed before two of Sennacherib's sons killed him. And then a new king comes in, Esarhaddon, and he appoints Ahikar, the wise counselor who's the nephew of Tobit. And so Tobit's able to come back, but he's lost all his wealth, basically. He was very wealthy before, and now he has basically nothing.

C: Tobit's good-natured habit of burying the dead has some unfortunate consequences. This is chapter 2, verse 7. "When the sun had set, I went and dug a grave and buried him. And my neighbors laughed and said, Is he still not afraid? He has already been hunted down to be put to death for doing this. And he ran away. Yet here he is again, burying the dead again." That's the text.

B: Yeah.

C: "That same night I washed myself and went into my courtyard and slept by the wall of the courtyard. And my face was uncovered because of the heat."

B: Tobit, no!!

C: Now, what– I want everybody to take a moment, get out a pencil and a little piece of paper, and I want you to write down what you think happens to Tobit because he's outside sleeping, under his courtyard wall with his face uncovered because of the heat. Do you want to give everybody a minute?

B: Yeah, we'll just give everyone a second to write down your answers and enter them into the Guess-o-tron 5000.

C: Uh-huh. Okay.

B: Yeah.

C: Good news, everybody. If you wrote down that sparrows poop in his eyes and he goes blind, you got it.

B: Yeah.

C: Good news.

B: I'm looking in the Guess-o-tron 5000. There's not a lot of those entries. Not a lot.

C: Congratulations, Ben Rowe.

B: Yeah, congratulations, Ben Roe. Everyone else who didn't write poop blindness, I'm sorry.

C: So sparrows poop in his eyes, and he's blind now.

B: Yeah.

C: And it says because his walls have white films over them.

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: So he's got like Batman eyes now.

B: Yeah. And doctors try to heal him by rubbing ointment on his eye, which, ugh. And it makes it worse.

C: Which is, yeah, of course it is. "I went to physicians to be healed, but the more they treated me with ointments, the more my vision was obscured by the white films."

B: Yeah, the more Vaseline they rubbed in my eyes, the harder it was for me to see.

C: The more they just jammed their fingers in there. Sorry, everybody. I know a lot of people have eye things. I apologize. But yeah, so Tobit's blind and now his wife, Anna, has to go earn money.

B: Yeah. There's a lot of weird stuff in this book. This is the weirdest part to me. The part that she goes to work and she does so well, they give her a bonus goat. That part's not weird. The part that she brings the goat home and then Tobit is furious because he thinks his wife stole the goat. I don't understand this. I actually tried to search. I went searching for commentaries on this. I was like, can anyone explain to me what the meaning is behind Tobit being mad about this bonus goat?

C: "But she said to me, 'It was given to me as a gift in addition to my wages,' but I did not believe her and told her to return it to the owners. I became flushed with anger over this. Then she replied to me 'Where are your acts of charity? Where are your righteous deeds?'" Why are you being such a jerk Tobit?

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: I got a bonus goat.

B: This does not come back. There's no resolution to Tobit being– he gets so mad he goes to pray. He's like, "I gotta pray about this goat situation," and then he does a prayer, a pretty nice, pretty good prayer. "You're righteous to the Lord and all Your deeds are just, all Your ways, mercy and truth to judge the world," etc.

C: I mean, you say it's a "pretty nice prayer" and then you say, "etc." The back half of that prayer is him begging God to kill him because he would rather be dead.

B: True. You're right. You're right.

C: "So now deal with me as You will. Command my spirit to be taken from me so that I may be released from the face of the earth and become dust. For it is better for me to die than to live because I have had to listen to undeserved insults and great is the sorrow within me." Same TBQH.

B: Yeah. But what's cool about this is it makes a very nice segue because it's like, "Speaking of someone who's wishing for death: meanwhile in Ecbatana in Media... [Batman '66 transition sound effect] We cut and we get introduced to another one of our major characters. Her name is Sarah. Very good name for a wife to have, if you're going to have one, I recommend it. But she lives in Media which is in what today would be like northwestern Iran, close to where Persia would have been. And so that's why the Persians and the Medes are always mentioned together in Daniel, because they were geographically close to one another.

B: And we also meet the villain of the piece. We get, that's right, a new named demon. And you know who it is?

[Music: "Runnin' with the Devil" by Van Halen]

C: Oh, it's a big one.

B: Are you ready for this, Chris? Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus. Rock me Asmodeus!

C: Is it not AsMOdeus or did you do that for the meter?

B: No, it's actually ASmoDEus. It actually is. I also thought it was AsMOdeus, had to look it up. It's actually ASmoDEus.

C: So this is the wicked demon Asmodeus who just stays killing Sarah's husbands. Yeah, but you say, "Sarah - good name for a wife?" Mmmm. Not if you're one of these dudes.

B: Well, it's not good for, it's not good for– I'm just saying it's a good name. If you're going to have a wife, Sarah's a good name for your wife to have, is what I'm saying.

C: You say I do. I do take this woman, Sarah, to be my lawfully wedded wife. And then Asmodeus shows up, and see you at the crossroads, my man.ß

B: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah. She's had. Yeah.

C: No, quick question. I'm sure that if a demon shows up, like a straight up devil that we in 2018 CE know the name of.

B: Yeah.

C: That's probably only going to happen like once, max three times, right?

B: Not seven times. Not as many as seven times.

C: That's the highest number Peter can think of.

B: Yeah. It's like in Watership Down, which is my favorite book, by the way, for those who are assembling trivia about me. You know about Watership Down, Chris? You know, have you ever read it?

C: Never read it. That's the one where all the, like, rabbits kill each other, right?

B: Well, yes. Yeah, it's a book about rabbits and they're traveling. Their warren is destroyed and some of them escape and build a new one. And it's very – it's got many parallels to the destruction of Troy and the establishment of Rome, part of the reason I like it.

C: It would probably be much harder to get a giant wooden horse into a city for rabbits.

B: It's true.

C: Maybe you could get a regular-sized wooden horse in there.

B: Yeah, a little pull-string horse. Anyway, a thing about the rabbits, like you learn part of their language and stuff in the book. And one of the things that you learn about rabbits is they can count as high as four. And then anything over four, they call prayer, which is a thousand. So it's like one, two, three, four, a thousand, because they can't handle any number larger than that. That's what I think of every time we talk about Peter getting to seven. He's just like, "Seven and that's it, right? What could possibly be bigger than seven?"

C: Two things. One, we know that Peter is three numbers smarter than a rabbit.

B: Yeah.

C: Two, I feel like rabbits generally have like more than four kids.

B: They do. And one of the characters, like the second main character of the book, his English name is Fiver, but his name in the rabbit language is Hrairoo, which means "little thousand" because he was the fifth one born. And his mom was just like, "I don't know how many kids I got now. You're just the thousandth one, I guess."

C: You know, I might be thinking of Redwall. Is that the one where all the rabbits kill each other?

B: No, you're thinking of Watershed Down because a lot of people remember the movie as being very scary. There definitely is a rabbit war that happens at one point, which is definitely dramatized in a frightening way in the animated movie. But yeah, anyway, that was just a cool little aside. Let's talk more about Asmodeus, why don't we?

C: Yeah, so he's a seven-time husband killer.

B: Yeah.

C: And a real wedding night blocker, I guess is the best way to put that.

B: Which is ironic because here's what we know about Asmodeus outside of the book of Tobit. Obviously, this is one of his major appearances. Like this is his big star move at this point, at least in any kind of like Bible-Bible that we're going to hold. But his name, he's known as Ashmedai in Hebrew. He is considered a king of demons. He's one of the seven princes of hell, which in later demonology, that's later. This is, I'm getting into some medieval stuff. It's getting to be a mishmash. You guys, you could sort it out. You'll figure it out.

C: Wait, there are as many as seven princes of hell?

B: As many as seven. Yeah.

C: Huh.

B: Yeah. And the idea is each of the seven princes of hell corresponds to one of the seven deadly sins. Right? And so the irony is that he's the demon of lust, which he's not doing a great job letting that go on. Maybe he doesn't like intramarital relations. Maybe that's what it is.

C: I mean, I kind of feel like if you're Sarah, you're probably looking forward to your wedding night.

B: Yeah.

C: And about time number four, you're like, all right, this time it's going to happen. And no, no, here comes Asmodeus.

B: Yeah.

C: To just keep you frustrated.

B: Yeah.

C: To the point where you start praying for death.

B: Yeah, she's because, yeah, she feels ashamed. She's about to kill herself too. So there's a nice parallel. I'm still talking about Asmodeus. Hold on. So despite the fact that in later demonology, he's considered the demon of lust, his name may derive from an Avestan name, which was the Eastern Iran that originates in Zoroastrianism. It may come from the term "Aishmadaiva," which would mean demon of wrath from Zoroastrianism. But that specific form is not actually attested to. So some people have kind of constructed that because it gives you a sound like Asmodeus. But that specific form is not ever found in any Zoroastrian documents.

B: Asmodeus, besides his big star turn here as the heavy of Tobit, he also appears in the Talmud as a foe/frenemy of Solomon. In the Talmud, Solomon and Asmodeus, their relationship is kind of similar to how Thor and Loki are in the movies, where they don't like each other, but it's a frenemy kind of thing. Hopefully we'll get to do some of those stories later, like where Solomon, for example, tricks Asmodeus into actually building the temple form. But he also appears in a more serious form in the Testament of Solomon, much later in the Malleus Maleficarum and the Dictionnaire Infernal, and also the Lesser Key of Solomon. Of course any kind of list of major demons: Asmodeus is going to be there. He's one of the big big big big guys so...

C: Are we gonna eventually get into the Malleus Maleficarum?

B: It would be a while because that definitely is much later than most of the material that we're looking at but maybe?

C: That's the bad hammer, everybody.

B: Yeah.

C: That's the bad hammer.

B: It's the hammer of witches. The hammer of the witches, "the hexan hammer," as it's called. "Hexenhammer," as it's called in German.

C: So dope.

B: Yeah.

C: Like maybe the best name any book has ever had.

B: Yeah, so yeah. We, I mean, maybe if this show goes on forever, and eventually we're just like, "all right ,we just gotta hit that medieval renaissance/early modern stuff. We just gotta do it. There's no other options." Yeah, we might get there, but I do...

C: We're gonna need Halloween specials going forward.

B: Exactly, but I do feel let's call it "wink wink" extra confident that we'll definitely hit the Testament of Solomon sooner rather than later, Lesser Key of Solomon is a likely probability as well. Probably not as early as Testament of Solomon however. But anyway, yeah, so Asmodeus, he's a big deal. And here he is, this big thing in canon. Yeah.

C: Before we move on, do you know off the top the other six princes of hell?

B: Oh, boy.

B: Yeah, according to the Lantern of Light, which is from 1409, the seven princes of hell are Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, Abaddon, Mammon, Belphegor, and Asmodeus.

C: Familiar names.

B: Yeah, probably.

C: Well, familiar names in Belphegor.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: He doesn't get a lot of play these days.

B: Yeah. No, the other ones though, yeah, should all sound familiar. We've hit, we've encountered a couple of them already. Obviously we think of Lucifer, Beelzebub and Satan all as the same guy. We hit Abaddon somewhere. Isaiah maybe? Mammon, of course, when Jesus talks about you can't serve God and Mammon. There he is. That's that guy. He represents greed and wealth. But yeah, so according to that list, those are the seven princes of hell.

B: All right. So yeah. Anyway, back to our story. We've got these two parallel narratives. And then...

C: Yeah, Sarah's getting yelled at by her maids.

B: Yeah, that's rough.

C: Yeah. They're like, "Hey, stop killing your husbands." And she's like, "it's actually Asmodeus who is a demon." And they're like, "That sounds super fake, actually."

B: Yeah, yeah. And then at the end of chapter 3, we decide instead of going for tension, Tobit, or the author of Tobit decides...

C: Bad narrative choice. Bad narrative choice.

B: ...decides to go for dramatic irony instead of tension by basically telling us what's going to happen.

C: Yeah we're going to skip over though. All you need to know is that these two prayers come in on the hotline and God gets on his phone and goes, "Get me one of the ninja turtles."

B: "That's right some summon one." Which one? We'll see in just a second. What happens then in the story? Tobit remembers that he has some money saved up, that he, for safety reasons, left with a relative of his in Media. So he decides to send his son Tobias, who is our actual protagonist of the Book of Tobit. He's brought in and he's gonna go travel to Media to return his father's bond and pick up this considerable sum of money. I can't remember how much it says it is. Is it...

C: 10 talents.

B: 10 talents. That's a lot of money. That's, we can't, it's, I can't, you know convert it to dollars but it's a lot...

C: It is one fifth of what Julius Caesar would be ransomed for.

B: There you go, but it's a lot.

C: I know things!

B: All right.

C: I know history!

B: Yeah. It's a lot. Anyway. So yeah, the problem is Tobias he's young. He's never been to Media, he doesn't know how to get there. Also he doesn't know Gabael, this relative he's never met him, and he's a little worried about that. So, well first, Tobit gives him this long very long list of ways to be good which kind of shows us that someone probably picked a chunk out of some traditional wisdom literature. Wisdom literature being a genre similar to like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or other books like the Wisdom of Sirach and other things that we'll eventually get to. But it's just a bunch of Proverbs and advice on, on how to be good. First he says, you need to, you need to get a good wife. Someone we're related to that one doesn't hold up as much. Find a good, good cousin to get married to. Even setting aside the fact that we're not talking about like super close blood relatives necessarily, the fact that he's like, "only marry within your own tribe," like, "avoid miscegenation," like that doesn't hold up I think. That's not–

C: Yeah, that part's a little... he's very strict on that point too.

B: Yeah, "First of all, marry a woman from among the descendants of your ancestors; do not marry a foreign woman, who is not of your father’s tribe," okay slow down Tobit. But anyway he's got other good advice for him. It it really reminded me, of course reminds me of Polonius and Hamlet the whole–

C: Yeah.

B: Did you think of that too?

C: Yeah.

B: The whole to thine own self be true and all that stuff. It's very similar to that, so if you guys know that bit from Hamlet, it's that but longer. So that's basically the entirety of chapter four of Tobit.

B: But yeah, Tobit's like, "I'll do everything you said, dad, but how do I get that money?" And so he's like, "Well, you need to find somebody. Find somebody to go with you who knows the way to media."

C: So this is amazing.

B: Yeah.

C: Tobit chapter 5, verse 4. "o Tobias went out to look for a man to go with him to Media, someone who was acquainted with the way. He went out and found the angel Raphael standing in front of him; but he did not perceive that he was an angel of God." That's quick.

B: Yeah, very fortunate. Yeah. So here we go. Raphael, we got our third named angel. I did go back and double check because I wasn't sure if Gabriel and Michael are specifically called by name in Daniel. They are. So this is definitely our third named angel

B: in here, obviously, deuterocanon. So in full canon, it's just Gabriel and Michael. But here, among Catholic and Orthodox churches, for a book that is considered canon, You've got a third angel here. And of course he's in disguise.

C: I like to imagine that he is still like a six winged on fire dude covered in eyes, but he's wearing one of those plain black baseball caps that they had in like Winter Soldier.

B: Yeah. What he's actually doing, if you know...

C: Where Chris Evans, the most beautiful man in the world, just puts on a black baseball cap and we're all like, "That can't be Captain America. He doesn't wear a hat."

B: If you actually know the habits of Raphael, you know that he's wearing a trench coat and a fedora, and that's how he's disguising himself while walking around the streets of man.

C: And probably a red mask too.

B: Yeah.

C: Like a red domino mask.

B: Yeah. He's got a different bandana over every pair of eyes. It's lots of bandanas.

C: Oh, that's a beautiful image. If we get fan art of anything going forward, please let it be that.

B: Oh man. Do we want to talk about Raphael here for a second? Let's talk about.

C: Yeah. Well, here, before we talk about Raphael, I got to say.

B: Yeah.

C: There is, not to be a Roy Thomas, there's a missed continuity opportunity here.

B: All right.

C: Because it's, if memory serves, Gabriel, who's in the book of Daniel.

B: Yeah. And Michael. They both are.

C: Who goes into the furnace?

B: That one is not said by name. Gabriel and Michael both appear in Daniel's apocalypse and his vision.

C: Okay, well then maybe that's Raphael. I think we should, in the way that we have discovered the absolute true fact that the apostle Peter was 16 years old during the time of Christ, I think we need to pin that angel as Raphael. Because when he's in disguise, when he puts on his trench coat and his fedora and goes and gets a pizza, he gives the name Azariah.

B: Yeah, he sure does. Azariah son of Hananiah, and we saw both of those names, that's Shadrach and Abednego, sorry Meshach.

C: I like Raphael coming down from heaven and being like, "What's a human name?"

B: "What's a name that a human has?" Yeah.

C: And Tobias is like, "hey what's your name?" He goes, "Hmmmm... Tobias?" and Tobias goes, "No that's my name."

B: Oh man, so yeah, alright. So Raphael also pronounced RAYphael or Raphael depending sometimes but we're gonna go Raphael that's the name. That's how we're all familiar with it.

C: And of course the El is, I've learned this from the show the EL is Elohim, the name of God, and Raph means cool but rude.

B: Yeah so God is cool but rude.

C: Very Old Testament.

B: It means God heals. And so that makes sense. Not to spoil it, but Raphael does turn out to be a bit of a healer. He is traditionally considered to be the jacuzzi boy from John. So it's typically considered that Raphael is the one who goes down and stirs up the water in the Bethesda pool that heals people because he's the healing angel. And so like Gabriel and Michael, the other archangels, he is venerated as a saint. His feast day is either October 24th or September 29th, which is the feast day of all archangels. When we see him in art, you can recognize Raphael a couple different ways. He might be holding a bottle, he might be holding a fish because of this story, or he might be carrying a traveler's staff, like in also from this story. And he is the patron and protector of ones that will make sense: apothecaries, pharmacists, and druggists. He is also the patron of ordained marriage, blind people, bodily ills, eye problems.

C: All those make sense. All those track.

B: Yep. Happy meetings. We see that here, right? Like literally this chapter, right? He's just there when Tobias needs somebody. And he's like, "Oh yeah, by the way, I'm your cousin. And by the way, yeah, I live totally exactly where you need to go. So yeah, we're good." So yeah, serendipity, he's your boy. He's also, among his other healing, he's the patron of people with mental illness, protection against nightmares. He's the patron of lovers, which makes sense from this story as well. Again, not trying to spoil anything, but he's the patron of physicians, shepherds, travelers, young people, and of course, Dubuque, Iowa. So. Yeah.

C: Makes sense. Makes sense. Quick question.

B: Yeah.

C: How are angel saints? That doesn't seem right.

B: Yeah. It's, it's like a technical category. Like I've looked into this cause like St. Michael, right. Michael, the archangel. Yeah. To the point where like the castle, Sant'Angelo, the Pope's old Pope castle, the Saint angel is Michael. It's a different kind of category. Like it's, it's kind of synched in name, but they don't fit the rest of the qualifications to be a saint. So they do get that name, Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel, Saint Raphael. But yeah, it's a different kind of saint, yeah.

C: So basically the rest of the chapter is Azariah, aka the angel Raphael, going in to be interviewed by Tobit, which is basically Tobit going, "Are you Jewish?" And Raphael going, "I'm extremely Jewish." And Tobit going, "Great, that's exactly what I wanted to hear."

B: "You are hired." He even says that he's related to Tobit and Tobias. So that's the best thing. Obviously, we know that Tobit doesn't want his son mixing with people from outside of their particular tribe. So, of course, Azariah says all the right things. And yeah, so he's hired. He gets hired.

C: Now, here's another part of the story that I thought was very lacking.

B: Okay.

C: Chapter 6 we get, "The young man went out and the angel went with him; 2 and the dog came out with him and went along with them." We do not get details on this dog. I want to know more about this dog. That is an excellent element of this story.

B: It really is because first of all, this is like the only positive mention of a dog we're gonna get. Like, yeah like the idea that someone has a dog as a pet? This is like the only appearance of that in the Bible. And so yeah we see that, and then he doesn't play any role in the story we do not see the dog again until they're coming back home and it's like, "and the dog was there by the way." So yeah.

C: Yeah just so everybody's cool with it: the dog lives the dog is fine.

B: The dog lives, the dog is fine, because the dog is a completely extraneous element to the story, which is a sign that probably what happened was there's a dog in the original folktale that this is adapting, and the dog probably had a role in the original story, and that just kind of gets lost. Editorial fatigue.

C: So they go out and they stop and get some fish. And Tobias catches a fish. And Raphael's like, "Hey, keep that fish's heart and liver and gallbladder. Because if you keep the heart and liver, you can burn those to make smoke in the presence of a man or woman afflicted by a demon or an evil spirit. and every affliction will flee away and never remain with that person any longer. Also, interesting thing about gallbladders of fish, you can rub those on blind people's eyes and they can see again. Hope that's useful information for you."

C: Tobias does not immediately go home and cure his father of blindness.

B: Yeah, he goes, "You know what it's really good for? It's really good for that specific white film blindness. So if you know anybody that's got that, you might use that." Which you actually, you didn't just catch the fish. He catches the fish because the fish tries to eat his foot. His foot is in the water. He went to wash his feet and a fish tried to eat his foot and he cried out. And the angel says, "Grab the fish, idiot." And it's a very good, very useful fish.

C: I just want to point out that this is the same day. This is the first night. They leave Tobit's house, walk to the river, and they're like, this is a good place to camp for the night. Then Azariah, a.k.a. the Angel Raphael, goes, "Oh, that can cure blindness just like your dad has." And Tobias doesn't go, "Cool, this journey can wait six hours," and go back home. I feel like if I could cure my parents of blindness, I would maybe, the ten talents of silver are going to be there in another day.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: I can go do this right now.

B: Yeah.

C: So that's their first stop. Their next stop is they go to Ecbatana.

B: Yep.

C: And Raphael's like, "Hey, you have a hot cousin who lives here. You should marry her."

B: Yeah. You're her closest relative. Isn't that enticing?

C: Yeah. Which means you've got the claim more than anyone else.

B: Right.

C: Which is how marriages should work. It should always be your closest relative who you never met.

B: The thing is, that is what he finds most enticing. He goes, "You're right. She is my closest relative. I love her."

C: Yeah, he's not fully up for it, though. Verse 14, "Then Tobias said in answer to Raphael, 'Brother Azariah, I have heard that she already has been married to seven husbands and that they died in the bridal chamber. On the night when they went in to her, they would die. I have heard people saying that it was a demon that killed them.'"

B: Yeah.

C: I don't want to die and then have my parents' bodies rotting in the sun because I was not there to bury them. Thanks, but no thanks.

B: But then Raphael says, "Hey man, remember that fish that tried to eat your foot and then I told you very specific things that you could do with its internal organs? Great news. You have citronella for demons."

C: Quick question for you, Benito. We know that names are like – we know, for instance, that Jude and Judas and Judah are all the same name.

B: Right.

C: And that Jesus and Joshua are the same name.

B: Right.

C: Is the name Tobias at all related to the name Henry?

B: Henry?

C: Yeah.

B: Not that I am aware of.

C: Well, because, see, he's about to get married to the widow next door and she's been married seven times before.

B: Okay. Yeah.

C: Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a little bit worse. So they go in there and they get married. Like that– the courtship is a paragraph.

B: Yeah.

C: Which is– and it's mostly him saying, "Hey check out how closely we're related!"

B: Yeah of course, I mean of course it's him talking to her father, to Sarah's father Raguel. Raguel. And he's, "Hey, my dad's Tobit, and I'm Tobias and I'm your daughter's closest living relative. We should be married probably."

C: You know, in accordance with the law and decree written in the book of Moses.

B: Yeah. And he's like, great, let's make this happen.

C: So they get married and then they have a very nice reception.

B: Yeah, they have a special double wedding. Because typically you have a seven-day marriage feast and he's like, let's do this one two times as big. But does that happen after the wedding night? They have the double wedding feast is declared.

C: I think that's after the wedding night, yeah.

B: Because, you know, you're not going to plan a 14-day party if you're pretty sure the groom's not going to make it out to day two.

C: Yeah, pretty sure a demon's going to show up and murder that dude in unspecified ways. So yeah, they get married. They have a quick party, like just knock out the Cha Cha Slide real quick. Raphael is the only one who knows how to Charlie Brown. And then they go into that bedroom.

B: Yeah.

C: And Tobias is like, "Hang on, this is where all those dudes got killed by demons. Let me real quick make some fish smoke."

B: "Yeah, I'm going to vape that fish real, real nice. I'm going to put some fish liver in my vaporizer just right quick."

C: "There's a lot of ohms, but it's worth it."

B: Yeah.

C: Now, here is again a poor narrative choice. "The odor of the fish so repelled the demon that he fled to the remotest parts of Egypt, but Raphael followed him and at once bound him there hand and foot." The end.

B: Yeah.

C: No more of that story.

B: That's the end of Asmodeus. So, I mean, it's Egypt because Egypt was associated with demons and magic and evil, dark magic. And so that's what that's about. But yeah, it feels like maybe I could get a little less description of the marriage contract and a little bit more of the archangel fighting the prince of hell in the desert, right?

C: I feel like there might be a theological reason for that.

B: Do you?

C: Yeah, because presumably, like, we're all on God's side in this particular battle if we are engaging with the text. If there is drama to the fight, then there is the possibility that Raphael and therefore God are going to lose.

B: Right.

C: So presumably it's just a foregone conclusion, "oh yeah he's an angel – you know from God?" And that's that.

B: Right. yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right, but the fact that there's not a little bit more to it... but then again, it also shows you the author of Tobit's interest is in Tobias, not in Raphael. Right? It's Tobias' story. The angel's just there to help him. So.

C: Yeah. So what does Tobias do? Can we say "bones down" on this show? Because that is what happens.

B: Yeah, it's true. I'm going to say yes.

[Clip from Brooklyn '99: How dare you, Detective Diaz? I am your superior officer! Bone! What happens in my bedroom, detective, is none of your business. Bone! Don't ever speak to me like that again. ]

C: So that's what happens. Then they party for a full fortnight. They party for two weeks, which, again, I cannot stress this enough, is two extra weeks that Tobit is blind.

B: Right.

C: They party so long that back at home, Tobit and Mrs. Tobit.

B: Anna is her name.

C: Tobit and Anna are like, oh, I guess our kid's dead.

B: Well, yeah, Anna is giving into despair. She's like, "Oh, Tobias is dead." But Tobit is very much like, "He's probably fine. Who knows? All sorts of things could happen out there." So yeah, Tobit's wife is Anna. I should also point out Raguel's wife's name is Edna, which is one of those that's a little bit shocking to hit in the Bible. Like I found out, I found out recently that there's a woman named Candace in the Bible. That feels weird.

C: I read recently that Tiffany was actually a name in the Middle Ages and that it is related to Theophilus.

B: Probably Theophania, I would guess, probably. So like the appearance of God, something like that, probably.

C: Someone was writing about how because of our perceptions about the past, like you could, it would be very historically accurate to have a couple in like the 13th century named Tiffany and Chad.

B: Yeah.

C: But no readers would accept that.

B: Right.

C: Which I think is very interesting.

B: Yeah. But it is a little bit strange to just be going along, and it's like, "and then Edna said," yeah.

C: So they party for two weeks. Then they head home. It's,

B: Well.

C: It's a party of 4 now.

B: Well, the thing is, Tobias does get worried about his parents. And so because he has sworn an oath to Raguel, that he won't leave the wedding party, he sends Raphael in his place to go get the 10 talents of silver from Gabael. And so that shows you how much at this point Tobias trusts Azariah, that he would send him completely in his place to go and get the money, which he does. He goes and Raphael, of course, says all the right things he needs to get the 10 talents of silver. And then he comes back and then yeah, Tobias, now with his wife and then half of Raguel's wealth and 10 talents of silver and an archangel, and by the way, a dog comes rolling back.

C: Second and final mention of the dog. I highlighted them both.

B: Comes rolling back home. Yeah, here it is. "When they came near to Kaserin, which is opposite Nineveh, Raphael said, 'You are aware of how we left your father. Let us run ahead of your wife and prepare the house while they are still on the way.' As they went on together Raphael said to him, ‘Have the gall ready.’ And the dog went along behind them." There it is.

C: Yeah. So they just right quick, completely cure Tobit's blindness.

B: Yeah.

C: And Tobit is like, this is awesome. We're rich, which means I can give all of this money to the poor. You got a wife and took out a demon. We got a dog now, which is great.

B: Yeah.

C: I didn't know we had a dog. I just thought it was another stolen goat.

B: But what I like about how he heals is it's not even, he doesn't even take the gall and rub it in his eyes. He like pulverizes it in his hand and then blows it into his face. And he doesn't even tell him he's going to do it. He just walks right up to him. "Then Anna ran up to her son and threw her arms around him, saying, 'Now that I have seen you, my child, I am ready to die.' And she wept. Then Tobit got up and came stumbling out through the courtyard door. Tobias went up to him, with the gall of the fish in his hand, and holding him firmly, he blew into his eyes, saying, 'Take courage, father.' With this he applied the medicine on his eyes, and it made them smart. Next, with both his hands he peeled off the white films from the corners of his eyes. Then Tobit saw his son."

C: Gross, by the way. Horrifying.

B: Don't put your hands in your dad's eyes, y'all.

C: No, because it's like, it makes it sound like it's stickers.

B: Yeah.

C: And he's just like pulling, like, ugh.

B: Yeah.

C: Not into it.

B: Yeah. Don't you know you're supposed to take the sticker off? That's why the touch screen isn't working. You left the sticker on. Dad.

C: So then, everything has been solved. We have our classic comedy ending we have a wedding and then a blindness cure. Then, Raphael walks up to Tobias and Sarah and he's like, "Hey guys I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord,"which is a pretty heavy thing for your bro to drop on you.

B: "That was me." And my favorite detail is he says, "remember when you thought I was eating? That was an illusion!"

C: "You can't be an angel, I saw you eat a fish!"

B: "No man it was all a trick! I was just I turned my head to the side and I made it look like it was going into my open mouth but I actually dropped it into my sleeve and then later flung it into a planter later. He says, "Although you were watching me, I really did not eat or drink anything—but what you saw was a vision," and then he ascended. He's like, by the way, peace out.

C: I don't really get angel rules yet. I'm sure we'll run into that at some point. We got to get into some, some angelology.

B: Yeah, we will.

C: Because there are rules about angels of which, with which we are not familiar.

B: Yeah.

C: Like how they don't eat. They don't eat and they just wear black baseball caps.

B: They don't get married. That's the thing we learned in the gospels.

C: So everything ends up well. We get some final moral lessons. And then Tobit dies at 117 years old.

B: Yeah. So really, he was only blind for four years of that. So it's really – it's basically nothing.

C: Could have been blind for like three years and 11 months. But his son needed to party down with his new wife.

B: That's true. Yeah. Yeah, he was 62 when he lost his eyesight. And then he regains it and lives to be 112. And then we see that Tobias has seven sons. So that's good. That's the perfect maximum number of sons.

C: It's as many as you could possibly have.

B: As many as there could possibly be.

C: Oh, and then it's Tobias who lives to be 117.

B: Yeah. Anna lives for a long time as well. Everything goes great. And then we also get a reference to Ahikar again. We see, "For I see that there is much wickedness within it, and that much deceit is practiced within it, while the people are without shame. See, my son, what Nadab did to Ahikar who had reared him. Was he not, while still alive, brought down into the earth? For God repaid him to his face for this shameful treatment. Ahikar came out into the light, but Nadab went into the eternal darkness, because he tried to kill Ahikar. Because he gave alms, Ahikar escaped the fatal trap that Nadab had set for him, but Nadab fell into it himself, and was destroyed." So that kind of assumes a familiarity with the story of Ahikar there, right? But we get the idea here and we get a restatement of one of the major themes. The two main themes, give alms, bury the dead. It does do those. Those are like the two main things. If you want to be a good boy like Tovi and Toviah, who both are so good they got good in their name.

C: All right. So that's it. That's the book of Tobit.

B: Yeah. Pretty cool, right?

C: Did you have a preferred verse that you wanted to talk about?

B: Yeah, I do. And I think you like this one too. This is from Tobit's long set of instructions for his son. Chapter 4. This is verse 14. "Do not keep over until the next day the wages of those who work for you, but pay them at once. If you serve God you will receive payment." As a freelancer, I find this very good advice that editors might take to heart.

C: When you get that invoice, remit promptly.

B: How about you, man? You got a fave?

C: Yeah. I really liked the bit in chapter four because Tobit says a lot of, let's just say, disagreeable things in this. But it is important to remember that Tobit, like many of the biblical figures we've seen, hates having money.

B: Yeah.

C: And knows what you should do with it.

B: Yeah.

C: In Tobit chapter 4, verses 10 and 11, "For almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from going into the Darkness. Indeed, almsgiving, for all who practise it, is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High." Which I think is nice.

B: It is very nice. I mean, here's the thing I like about the book of Tobit. Once you remove Asmodeus, once you chain him up in Egypt, everyone in this book is a pure, likable, perfect person. They just want to do good things. It's like it's not just Tobit. It's not just Anna. It's also Raguel is very good, and he only wants the best for his people. Edna, Raphael, Gabael, anyone.

C: Sarah.

B: Sarah too. Anyone in the book is such a perfect, pure cinnamon roll of a person.

C: There's another real quick bit that I like. This is in chapter 13, verse 2, when they are talking about God. It says, "For he afflicts, and he shows mercy; he leads down to Hades in the lowest regions of the earth, and he brings up from the great abyss, and there is nothing that can escape his hand." Which I think is a very, very nicely worded passage.

B: Yeah, it's really good. Tobias, or Tobit's, rather, Prayer of Thanksgiving here, his song of thanksgiving is really nice and it's a really good shout out to the exiles, right? It's very nice because he knows like people they're away from home but he knows God's gonna bring 'em back and so you know, "Acknowledge him before the nations, O children of Israel; for he has scattered you among them. He has shown you his greatness even there. Exalt him in the presence of every living being, because he is our Lord and he is our God." and so he's just like shout out to all the exiles out there, stay strong. We'll go back home. And you know what? He was right. And they did. And not just once, right? Assyrian exile, Babylonian exile, diaspora. It's, I mean, rough times. It's so tough. There are multiple sad holidays in the Jewish calendar. But, you know, God's still looking out and Tobit recognizes that. It's really nice. Chapter 13.

C: Yeah, and I really like that. That is the kind of Bible verse that has that ominous ring to it that there is nothing that can escape his hand. But what it's talking about is lifting people up from hell. That is a nice thing to take comfort in because I like that it acknowledges – we've seen in the Gospels, we saw Jesus say, "Hey, nothing bad is going to happen to you. Don't worry about it." Did not actually turn out to be the case for all but one of the apostles.

B: Right.

C: One of them exploded, several were crucified.

B: Yeah. many were stabbed with spears, etc. Of course, like we said in our gospel episodes, martyrdom was considered a happy ending like for so much of early christianity. I forget, I didn't even mention, I should have mentioned, like, even up through the middle ages because I thought we were talking definitely about early christianity where martyrdom narratives were, like I mentioned Perpetua and Felicitas, like that's a major early one where that's considered a happy story, where the two protagonists are killed. But even you get into the the middle ages and you've got this nun named Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim who actually, very notable in the middle ages for writing comedies, like she writes comedic plays that are full of slapstick, right? But they're fully comedies because they end with the main characters getting martyred. They're big slapstick comedies in which the main characters are all killed and go to heaven at the end, so like martyrdom was the happy ending for christians for a very long time.

C: And like, Santa Barbara you might have heard of Saint Barbara, she probably has the best because she is martyred, and then gets revenge from beyond the grave with explosions.

B: Yeah, she's the patron of explosions now.

C: Yeah. But I do like this acknowledgement that like, that even if suffering is going to be inevitable, like, yeah. Hey, sometimes it sucks out there, everybody, but here's hoping that Raphael will show up and teach somebody how to rub fish parts on your eyes.

B: It could happen.

C: So that's Tobit, everybody. We hope you enjoyed that little trip to the capital-A Apocrypha with us. Benito, do you want to talk about what we're doing next?

B: Yeah. We had something planned, we were going to get started, but we're going to push it back a little bit because it's another big thing, and because of missing a week last week, it kind of threw our schedule off a little bit. So we do have another big thing planned, but we're going to be starting it not next week, and not the week after that, but the week after that we'll be starting a new big series. And so next week, let's not be done with Tobit's family, what say. And so for next week, we're going to be reading and discussing the Story of Ahikar. So we're going to learn all about Tobias's cousin, Ahikar, the wise vizier who was framed by his adopted son. And I'll have a link for that for you guys that you can find on our blog, or you can find it also on earlyjewishwritings.com. We've been using earlychristianwritings.com a lot, but there's also an early Jewish writings. If you guys want to go there, you can find a link to the complete text of the story of Ahikar. And that's what we'll be doing next week.

C: Yeah. So in the meantime, where can everybody find us online?

B: Well, if you want to find links to such things as that, as well as supplemental art and music videos, sometimes and maps and all sorts of that kind of thing, you can find us at apocrypals.tumblr.com. If you like the show and you want to help us keep it going, help us improve it, help pay for things like the hosting and those very good music cues that Chris always drops in the show. If you want to help us out with that, you can leave us a tip at K O dash F I dot com slash apocrypals. That's ko-fi.com/apocarpals. And there you can leave us a tip in increments of $3. So you can be $3, $6, $9, or even $153, which, as a number, I realized upon re-listening to our previous episode is not a prime number but is in fact a multiple of three. Thank you no one. Thank you that no one called me out on that particular mistake. Although someone did call me out on the fact that actual historical Spartacus was not crucified, only movie Spartacus was crucified. Anyway thank you for not calling me out on my math there.

C: We talked about Xena–

B: I know

C: In that same discussion.

B: I feel very justified in the fact that I could say Spartacus is a famous crucify-ee, because people are more familiar with the movie version. So I feel like I can say Spartacus is a famous crucified guy. And even if actual Spartacus presumably died in action, 6,000 of his men and supporters were crucified by Marcus Crassus. So by association, I think I'm still pretty solid, including Spartacus in our list of famous crossboys.

C: Point being, thank you to everyone who has donated.

B: Yeah, also that.

C: Over at kofi.com/apocrypals. Thank you if you have left a review, if you have talked about the show. We do appreciate that. As long as you are not saying mean things about me personally, please continue to do so.

B: Yeah, we appreciate anybody who uses #apocrypals on Twitter. If we see you there, we might engage, probably retweet. And we super love, we love you all, but we super love people who leave written reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just in an informal way, I was thinking it would be really great if we could get to 100 reviews and ratings on Apple Podcasts by Chris's birthday, which is August 12th. We're a little over halfway there. I don't know if we'll be able to make it, but if you're listening and you haven't left a review, or a rating on Apple Podcasts. It would be really cool to do that because it helps us get noticed. It helps us get featured in such categories as best Christian comedy shows like we are.

C: That's it for this week. And yes, that big undertaking that we are going to be doing soon is probably the one you're thinking of. So be here for that. But in the meantime, we've got a lot of fun stuff planned. So until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Peace be with you.

[Music: "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas]