named it Assumption, and the British flag was first planted in 1580. It afterwards passed into the hands of the Dutch and then of the French, and was finally ceded to the British in 1814. Until 1889 it formed part of the colony of the Windward Islands, but in that year it was joined to Trinidad, its legal and fiscal arrangements, however, being kept distinct. Ten years later it became one of the wards of Trinidad, under a warden and magistrate; its revenue, expenditure and debt were merged into those of the united colony, and Trinidadian law, with very few exceptions, was made binding in Tobago.
TOBIN, JOHN (1770–1804), English dramatist, was born at
Salisbury on the 28th of January 1770, the son of a merchant.
He was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and practised
in London as a solicitor. From 1789 he devoted all his
spare time to writing for the stage. He submitted no fewer
than thirteen plays before, in 1803, he got an unimportant farce
staged. In 1804, having just submitted his fourteenth play,
a romantic blank verse drama entitled The Honey Moon, to the
Drury Lane management, he came to the conclusion that it was
useless to continue playwriting and left London to recruit his
health. The news that his play had been accepted came too
late. He had long had a tendency to consumption, and was
ordered to winter in the West Indies. He left England on
the 7th of December 1804, but died on the first day of the voyage.
In the following year The Honey Moon was produced at Drury
Lane, and proved a great success. Several of Tobin’s earlier
plays were subsequently produced, of which The School for
Authors, a comedy, was probably the best.
See also The Memoirs of John Tobin, with a selection from his unpublished writings, by Miss Benger (London, 1820).
TOBIT, THE BOOK OF, one of the books of the Old Testament
Apocrypha. It is a good specimen of the religious novel, a
form of literature invented by the Jews. The romance may be
read in a beautiful dress in the Revised Version of the English
Apocrypha. It was never admitted into the Jewish canon,
but it was admitted into the Christian Canon at the Council of
Carthage (A.D. 397). In the Roman Church it still forms a part
of the Bible, but by the Church of England it is relegated to the
position of those other books which “the Church doth read for
example of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not
apply them to establish any doctrine” (art. vi.). Some verses
(Tob. iv. 7–9), however, are read in the offertory; and Tobias and
Sarah once occupied the position now held by Abraham and
Sarah in the marriage service.
The Book of Tobit has reached us in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic and Hebrew versions; of these the Hebrew are the latest, and need not be considered. Of the Greek there are three forms. One is in the Vatican and Alexandrian MSS.; another is in the Sinaitic. Both these texts are to be found in Swete’s Septuagint, the former denoted by B, and the latter by א. B is the common text, which is followed in the English Apocrypha. Nevertheless n is fuller, except in ch. iv., and more intelligible; it is also more Semitic than B. The two must have behind them a common original, for they throw light upon one another, and the full meaning of a passage is sometimes only to be got from a combination of both. The fullness of א often runs into superfluities, which are retrenched in B. The third Greek text is only a partial one (vi. 9-xiii. 8). It may be derived from a study of Codices 44, 106, 107 in Holmes and Parsons, which diverge from the Vatican text throughout the part indicated. Of the Latin there are two chief forms, the old translation, sometimes called the Itala, and that of Jerome in the Vulgate. The Itala was published by Pierre Sabatier at Paris in 1751, and is reproduced in the Book of Tobit by Neubauer (Clarendon Press, 1878). It agrees very fairly with א, except in the matter of proper names. Jerome’s version is from the Aramaic, or, as it used to be called, the Chaldee. It cost the saint one day’s work. He describes in his preface the method of its production. He procured the services of a man who was familiar with Chaldee and Hebrew. This man translated to him out of Chaldee into Hebrew, while Jerome dictated to a shorthand writer his own translation into Latin. The work was done at the request of two Christian bishops, Chromatius and Heliodorus. Jerome does not mention the Italo, but it is plain that he was indebted to it. The Syriac text is said to be based on a Greek version. It was only in 1878 that the Aramaic version was brought to light, being published by Adolph Neubauer from a unique MS. in the Bodleian Library. It agrees with א and the Itala, but resembles the Vulgate in having nothing in the first person. According to Neubauer, it is the very text which was used by Jerome, after allowance has been made for the arbitrary methods of the Rabbis and of Jerome himself. But the Aramaic version has Greek birthmarks (see especially p. 7, line 18), which other scholars than its editor have thought decisive against its originality. It was held by Robertson Smith (after Noldeke) to be “ in the highest degree probable that the Greek text is original.” But the Greek text appears to be itself a translation from some Semitic source. Was this source Hebrew or Aramaic? The forms Ἀθήρ and Ἀθουρείας in xiv. 4, 1 5 of א show that, at least, that chapter is drawn from Aramaic, not from Hebrew. But that chapter does not appear in all the versions, and so may be later than the rest.
With regard to the date of composition there is the widest difference of opinion. Ewald refers it to the end of the Persian period, about 350 B.C. (an opinion which Westcott declared to be “almost certainly correct”); Kohut thinks that the book was composed in Persia under the Sassanid Dynasty, about A.D. 250. But Tobit is already quoted as “scripture” by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. ii. 139, p. 503 Pott). The words of Tobit (xii. 8, 9) seem almost to have been present to the writer of ii. Clement (xvi. 4). The date of this document is uncertain; but in Irenaeus (i. 28, § 5) in his refutation of the Kabbalistic heresy of the Ophites, we find Tobias figuring as a prophet, on the same level as Haggai. Earlier still the Book of Tobit is quoted, though not by name, in the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians (x. 2; Tob. iv. 10. Cf. Prov. xii. 2; Ecclus. xxix. 12). Now the martyrdom of Polycarp is assigned by C. H. Turner to the year A.D. 156. We seem to have even a quotation by St Paul from the Book of Tobit (1 Tim. vi. 19; Tob. iv. 9), in which the identity amid difference seems to show that the Apostle is drawing, not from the Greek, but from the Semitic original. Josephus displays no knowledge of the work, but he may have been animated by the same prejudice as the Pharisees of St Jerome’s day, whose displeasure, that father tells us, he had to face in giving to Latin readers a book which was against their canon. (Preface to Tobit.) Internal evidence shows that the writer of the 14th chapter lived after the building of the Second Temple, which was “not as the first.” In vv. 5 and 6 of that chapter Tobit is made to predict a glorious building of Jerusalem and the Temple, which was to be followed by the conversion of all the Gentiles. Such a passage might well have been penned when the idea of Herod’s Temple was already in the air. If so, this chapter may be supposed to have been written a little before 19 B.C., while the bulk of the work may have been indefinitely earlier.
As to the place of composition Persia, Egypt and Palestine have each had advocates. One thing only appears fairly certain, namely, that the Greek versions were composed in Egypt. This conclusion could, we think, be established by an examination of the language, especially of some technical terms of administration. But the tale itself carries us back to Persia. It has what Moulton called an “ Iranian background.” The evil demon Asmodeus (q.v.) is the Persian Aéshma Daeva. Raphael, “one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and go in before the glory of the Holy One,” resembles the protecting spirit Sraosha. And the dog, the companion of Sraosha, is there too. For Tobit differs from all other books of the Bible in containing the only polite reference to the dog. Tobias’s dog indeed does nothing but accompany his young master on his journey to Ecbatana and back. But he is there as the companion and friend of man, which is Aryan and not Semitic. So alien indeed is this from the Semitic mind that in the Aramaic and Hebrew versions the dog does not appear.
