What Scripture says
The New Testament never quotes Tobit. Jesus’ description of the Scriptures as “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44, ESV) refers to the Hebrew collection, which doesn’t include it.
Some readers notice a link with Revelation, where John sees “the seven angels who stand before God” (Revelation 8:2). In Tobit, the angel Raphael calls himself “one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord” (Tobit 12:15). That shows a shared tradition about angels, not a quotation.
What the evidence says
History
The story
Tobit is a devout Israelite of the tribe of Naphtali, exiled to Nineveh by the Assyrians. He gives alms and secretly buries Jews executed by the king. One night, bird droppings fall in his eyes and he goes blind. In despair, he prays to die.
Meanwhile, in the city of Ecbatana, a young woman named Sarah is also praying to die: a demon named Asmodeus has killed each of her seven husbands on their wedding night.
God sends the angel Raphael, disguised as a human, to help both. Tobit sends his son Tobias on a journey to collect money, and Raphael travels with him. On the way, Tobias catches a fish, and Raphael tells him to keep its heart, liver and gall. In Ecbatana, Tobias marries Sarah; the smoke of the burning heart and liver drives the demon away. Back home, the gall cures Tobit’s blindness. Raphael reveals who he is, and Tobit praises God.
Date, language and manuscripts
Tobit was written around 225–175 BC, originally in Aramaic or Hebrew. It survives in Greek in two main versions, a short and a long one. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, four Aramaic copies and one Hebrew copy were found, showing it was read by Jews before Jesus. But it never entered the Hebrew Bible.
Themes
Tobit is a warm, carefully told story with much to admire:
- Faithfulness in exile: prayer, almsgiving, fasting and care for the dead.
- God’s providence: God answers two prayers at once, working through ordinary events and a hidden angel.
- Marriage and family: Tobias’s prayer on his wedding night (Tobit 8:5–8) is still read at weddings.
- Moral teaching: Tobit gives his son advice, including an early form of the golden rule: “What you hate, do not do to anyone” (Tobit 4:15).
Problems
- Chronology. Tobit says that as a young man he saw his tribe break away from worship in Jerusalem (Tobit 1:4–5), which happened around 930 BC, and that he was later taken into exile by the Assyrians, around 732–722 BC. That is about 200 years within one lifetime, though the book gives his age at death as 112 or 158 in different versions.
- The angel’s false identity. Raphael introduces himself with a false human name and family (“Azariah son of the great Hananiah”, Tobit 5:12–13).
- Magic-like remedies. Fish organs drive away a demon and cure blindness (Tobit 6:7–9). Defenders note God is the source of healing in the story.
Reception
| Community | View of Tobit |
|---|---|
| Judaism | Read, but not in the Hebrew canon |
| Early church | Widely read; Polycarp and Cyprian quote it |
| Jerome | Translated it but placed it outside the canon |
| Catholic and Orthodox | Scripture |
| Protestant | Edifying reading, not Scripture |
Where they meet
Tobit is a devotional story about prayer, almsgiving, marriage and God’s care for the faithful in exile. Catholics and Orthodox read it as Scripture, and it shaped Christian devotion for centuries. Protestants value it as edifying reading but follow the Hebrew canon, noting its historical problems as reasons it reads more like an instructive tale than history (see 3.8).
What’s still open
Whether the early church’s widespread reading of Tobit should count as recognition of it as Scripture. That is the core disagreement between traditions.
Bottom line
Tobit is the story of a devout exile, his son and the angel Raphael (c. 200 BC). It isn’t in the Hebrew canon, and its timeline has Tobit living through events about 200 years apart. It is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, and the traditions still disagree, so leaving it out is rated Debated.