EXTERNALIZACIÓN

Many commentators have often emphasized the social value of merciful deeds in Tobit. It is de rigueur to claim that the prominence of charitable works in the book arises from the social background that is the Diaspora. Paul Deselaers in fact translates FMFINPTV OI as

solidarisches Handeln, or acts of solidarity, implying that such actions

are meant for building up the community.26 _{They are understood as a}

form of mutual and communal support that reinforces common ties in the dispersion.27 For Jews who were living in a new economic situa-

tion in the Diaspora and who often had to depend on each other, charitable deeds helped preserve the bonds of kinship.28 _{Works of}

charity are meant to facilitate the cohesion and survival of the community in the midst of the nations. They are actions that help carry the other through the valley of the shadow of death (cf. Tob. 5.10).

Michael Weigl also seems to stress the social function of the performance of FMFINPTV OI when he claims that its importance in the book lies in the fact that the practice allows Gentiles to become members of the Jewish community. In the literary integration of Ahikar, a ¿gure known for his wisdom in the original Aramaic text but important in the story for being the nephew who literally feeds and provides FMFINPTV OI for his uncle Tobit,29 _{he enters the force ¿eld of}

Torah ethos and thus becomes an honorary member of God’s family.

26. Deselaers, Das Buch Tobit, pp. 351-54.

27. See, for instance, B. Otzen, Tobit and Judith (London: Shef¿eld Academic Press, 2002), pp. 35-37; P.R. Davies, ‘Didactic Stories’, in D.A. Carson, P.T. O’Brien and M.A. Seifrid (eds.), Justi¿cation and Variegated Nomism. I. The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (WUNT, 140; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), p. 112; I. Nowell, ‘The Book of Tobit’, in L.E. Keck (ed.), The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), III, p. 987; D.A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocry- pha: Message, Context, and Signi¿cance (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), p. 75; Moore, Tobit, p. 176, and Rabenau, Studien zum Buch Tobit, pp. 132-34. 28. The theme of kinship is also a chief concern in the story. See, for instance, V. Skemp, ‘"%&-'04 and the Theme of Kinship in Tobit’, EphTheoLov 75 (1999), pp. 92-103; D. Dimant, ‘The Family of Tobit’, in K.D. Dobos and M. Köszeghy (eds.), Wisdom as a Robe: Qumran and Other Jewish Studies in Honor of Ida Fröhlich (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 21; Shef¿eld: Phoenix Press, 2009), pp. 157-62.

29. In his instructions, Tobit seems to have reduced the essence of wisdom to the practice of charity, just as the story transforms Ahikar from a wise ¿gure into a charitable one.

Its practice opens up the communal structure and makes possible the incorporation of all who will go to the mountain of the Lord bearing gifts in their hands in the eschatological age.30

The exilic situation that pervades the book like death is obviously a pointer to the fact that Jews in the Diaspora did not enjoy easy access to the Temple in Jerusalem, the place where God dwells. Tobit can only look with a melancholy gaze at the days of his youth when he would go to Jerusalem to observe legal and cultic prescriptions of the law (1.3-9). While outside his land, he looks forward with hope to that eschatological time when God restores Jerusalem and its temple to its glory (13.8). Away from Jerusalem in the Diaspora, remembering God through other means becomes even more pressing. The act of remembering ties all those in the Diaspora to the rest of God’s elect; it is an act that literally re-collects and puts the dispersed members back together as God’s chosen people. The antidote to disintegration is remembering. Since remembrance of God is the constitutive element of Jewish identity as it is determinative of conduct and since the very existence of the Jewish community depends on the faithful remem- brance of God, the Torah-abiding Tobit needs to ¿nd creative ways to address this urgent need. In the narrative Tobit endorses the practice of charity from the time of his Assyrian captivity (1.10) to the eschatological ‘time of times’ (14.5). Within this narrative time frame, Tobit re-interprets the deuteronomic instruction, devising a way to remember God by performing acts of charity and exhorting others to do the same.

Works of charity, then, do more than assist the poor and facilitate community solidarity. Engaging in such benevolent acts shows that those who do so remember and belong to the elect of God. In this sense, doing works of charity has a strong theological function. Using language reminiscent of the cult (cf. Lev. 1.2; 2.1), Tobit privileges the theological weight of charitable deeds by asserting that almsgiving delivers from death, purges every sin, and keeps one from going into the darkness (cf. Tob. 4.7b; 12.9).31 _{And so while there is no denying} 30. Michael Weigl, ‘Die rettende Macht der Barmherzigkeit: Achikar im Buch Tobit’, BZ 50 (2006), pp. 213-43. See also M. Zappella, Tobit. Introduzione, traduzione e commento (Nuova versione della bibbia dai testi antichi, 30; Milan: Edizione San Paolo, 2010), pp. 22-24.

31. In later Hebrew and Aramaic textual traditions of the book of Tobit, the emphasis on the religious duty of almsgiving and tithing is more pronounced and

that the performance of FMFINPTV OI has a social and humanitarian value, the text does give the impression that such a value is derived from the fact that acts of mercy are acts of remembering God and are thus ¿rst of all a religious duty. More than anything else, acts of charity are performed in order to remember God and also to stir God into remembrance as Tobit’s NOINP TVOPO of prayer and almsgiving did.

The Diaspora facilitated the religious development that articulates a horizontal relationship with God in terms of aid to the poor. In other words, Tobit’s emphasis on almsgiving as an act of remembering God is an important witness in Second Temple Judaism to the claim that the manifest expression of the elect’s relationship with God is not con¿ned to the cultic alone. The hands of the needy in the community are as important and holy as the altar of sacri¿ce. In other words, the practice of religious piety starts to embrace a ‘sacramental’ sense. In this way, service to God is de¿ned in terms of coordinates that are both horizontal and vertical.

Tobit’s emphasis on almsgiving as a valid act of service to God does not mean that the cultic is abrogated and replaced by acts of FMFINPTV OI. As the story begins, Tob. 1.6-18 juxtaposes cultic acts with charitable deeds. The same is true at the close of the narrative. As Tobit gives voice to the hope of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple (cf. Tob. 14.4b-5a), which clearly assumes the continuing relevance and validity of sacri¿ce and ritual actions, Tobit endorses the doing of charity (cf. Tob. 14.7-9). Tobit thus enfolds works of mercy into the ritual actions of the cult and the temple whereby service at the altar is coordinated with service to the poor. In Tobit, the cultic and the charitable become two inseparable modes of expressing service to God.