The Wisdom Instructions in the Book of Tobit - (2011)
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Despite the resurgence of scholarly interest in the Book of Tobit in recent years, an important aspect of this deuterocanonical book has been largely overlooked. Within it, there is an instruction manual for an effective way of being and living in exile, namely the wisdom instructions in Tobit...
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2.1.3
A Case of Scribal Error in Transmission
The absence of Tob 4:7-19b in Sinaiticus can be attributed not to redactional intentions but to accident in transmission.
That Sinaiticus may have had a similarly detailed collection of instructions can be partly demonstrated by MS 319. This eleventh century minuscule, which also belongs to the GII family of recensions, contains the verses of Tob 4:719b omitted in Sinaiticus. The Vetus Latina, which closely follows Sinaiticus, also contains these missing verses.19 The Hebrew Qumran fragment 4Q200, which also bears family resemblance to the long Greek version, witnesses likewise to the presence of some lost verses, namely Tob 4:3-9.
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Further, the textual witness of G I reports the presence of a long collection of exhortations. If this textual tradition of Tobit is indeed an abridgement of the long Greek version, it is odd that the collection was not subjected to scribal scissors. In other words,
MS 319 may in fact reflect, or even preserve, the intact state of the Greek long text before the said verses accidentally fell away from the manuscript. All of this may well conspire to indicate that
the omission of Tob 4:7-19 in the Sinaiticus could have been simply due to a copying error or “scribal carelessness.”20 What might the error have been? In a possible instance of homoioteleuton, it is likely that the copyist got confused and his eyes mistakenly
jumped from one verse to another, since euvodwqh,sontai is in Tob 4:6 and the same verb euvodwqw/sin is in Tob 4:19.21 In the same way, the scribe could have simply associated the objective fact stated in kai. pa/sin toi/j poiou/sin th.n dikaiosu,nhn in Tob 4:6 with the subjective reason for such act expressed in dw,sei ku,rioj auvtoi/j boulh.n avgaqh,n in verse 19.22 Such may explain why vv. 7-19 dropped and disappeared from the Sinaiticus text. Looking at Tob 4:3-19, 21 in both GI and GII recensions, one notices that, on the whole, the collection of instructions is similar. The organization of the sayings in both recensions are not entirely or remarkably different. In fact, the entirety of Tobit’s counsels in G I are found in GII via MS 319 with the sole exception of the instruction on
20 Cf. WEEKS/GATHERCOLE/STUCKENBROOK, The Book of Tobit, 13. According to Hanhart, the lacunae in the Sinaiticus seem to be a copying error, a “Fehler eines Abschreibers,” which can be filled and consequently restored using the Old Latin and MS 319. HANHART, Text und Textgeschichte, n.2, 17. Littman comments that “in general MS 319 omits iota subscripts, and has a number of incorrect accents when h stands alone. Because of iotaization, epsilon iota is often rendered with an iota. It is uncertain why S neglected to copy this section.’ LITTMAN, Tobit, 89. See also FITZMYER, Tobit (CEJL), 169-178. Interestingly, Schüngel-Straumann uses GI rather than MS 319 to translate Tobit 4 in her commentary. SCHÜNGEL-STRAUMANN, Tobit, 97. For a critical evaluation of this commentary, cf. SCHMITT, Ein Kommentar zum Buch Tobit, 28-32. 21 Cf. LITTMAN, Tobit, 89. The author hastens to add that it is possible that Tob 4:7-19 did not originally belong to the narrative, having been “simply inserted since it contained additional maxims on righteousness.” To the mind of this writer, however, there are good reasons as mentioned above that decrease the likelihood of such possibility. 22 Cf. SIMPSON, The Book of Tobit, 1:211. The author also entertains the possibility of a lost mss page.
31 A detailed discussion of the various mss and textual traditions of Tobit falls beyond the scope of the study. Fitzmyer provides a readable and easy to follow discussion of the scholarship on the textual history of Tobit in his commentary. FITZMYER, Tobit (CEJL), 3-17. Also helpful are accounts in SCHÜRER, The History of the Jewish People, 3:227-230; MOORE, Tobit, 53-64; OTZEN, Tobit and Judith, 60-65; LITTMAN, Tobit, xixxxv; ZAPPELLA, Tobit, 26-29. For recent treatments, see the monographs of TOLONI, L’originale del libro di Tobia and HALLERMAYER, Text und Überlieferung des Buches Tobit. 32 FITZMYER, Tobit (CEJL), 5. 33 Cf. NICKLAS/WAGNER, Thesen zur textlichen Vielfalt im Tobitbuch, 141-153.
The authors have compared the papyrus fragment 910, GI and GII of Tob 2:2-5, 8 and concluded that few of the Greek mss have special types of readings. For further discussions of GIII, cf. WEEKS, Some Neglected Texts of Tobit, 12-42. 34 Cf. RABENAU, Studien zum Buch Tobit, 7: “Die generelle Linie des Bearbeiters liegt in einer Textkürzung.“ Cf. also THOMAS, The Greek Text of Tobit, 468-469.
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2.1.3
A Case of Scribal Error in Transmission
The absence of Tob 4:7-19b in Sinaiticus can be attributed not to redactional intentions but to accident in transmission. That Sinaiticus may have had a similarly detailed collection of instructions can be partly demonstrated by
MS 319. This eleventh century minuscule, which also belongs to the GII family of recensions, contains the verses of Tob 4:719b omitted in Sinaiticus. The Vetus Latina, which closely follows Sinaiticus, also contains these missing verses.19 The Hebrew Qumran fragment 4Q200, which also bears family resemblance to the long Greek version, witnesses likewise to the presence of some lost verses, namely Tob 4:3-9.
