In the almost thirty years that have passed since Joseph A. Fitzmyer published his editio princeps (1995) of the Aramaic and Hebraic fragments of the five manuscripts of Tobit found at Qumran, the study of this book has experienced a major acceleration and a qualitative evolution prompted by the discovery of these testimonia, which have unquestionably opened up new and stimulating paths of research.
I had the fortune of completing my study of Hebrew in those years (1997–2001) with the aim of earning a doctorate in Oriental Studies: Ancient Near Eastern Philology which I pursued at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” and of focusing my research on Tobit, although I had to overcome some initial resistance with respect to the “funny story” told in that book, especially from my teacher, Giovanni Garbini, who with good reason had wanted me to dedicate myself instead to Job, a book quite demanding in itself because of the notoriously difficult questions it raises, especially the insidious textual problems that beset it on a linguistic and philological level. Nonetheless, my consideration that we should first of all have critically reconstructed the whole textual tradition of Tobit, which is exceptionally complex and intricate, removed all hesitation on our part, as we sensed also the innovative contribution coming by the comparison of the forms of the Greek receptus and the ancient versions with the testimonia from Qumran, such as to certainly allow us to study the book more deeply and profitably.
In the years following my doctorate, I have returned many times to Tobit to study the different critical problems of that book. First of all, with the publication of a part of the thesis (2004), which treated systematically the problem of the original form of the book, then I studied in depth various critical issues suggested by my reading of the text, presenting the fruits of that work in a few specific contributions and extending naturally my interests also in Job, thanks to the similarities and connections that I found between the stories of the protagonists in those two books. Now that some time has passed, I have collected here some of these articles, which will also allow the reader to see the progress that studies of Tobit have made following the publication of the fragments found at Qumran.1 After all, even though with the passage of time inevitably the number of philological and linguistic contributions on the book have grown a little fewer, nevertheless, the chronological distance from the discovery gives us valuable perspective and makes it possible for us to return to the literary problem of the book with greater objectivity and relevance, by virtue also of new acquisitions by critics.
This collection consists of studies that appeared previously in Sefarad and in the Annali dell’Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” – Sezione orientale, as well as of the first part of an essay published by the Paideia Publishing House; therefore, these articles have now been translated from Italian into English. In these pieces, one will see illustrated, from different angles, some of the more representative literary contributions provided by different sources for the elaboration of the Tobit story, whose roots extend into Classical mythology, legend, and Near Eastern folktale. Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, I have also added some material to connect the different articles, as well as two brief unpublished studies. This frame thus guides my approach by putting in a new perspective the main exegetical problem of Tobit, namely that of the real physiognomy of the controversial literary genre used by the author, which it is possible now to reconsider in light of the critical contributions collected here and brought into relation with each other.
That said, I duly dedicate this volume to the memory of Giovanni Garbini in recognition of the esteem and kindness that he showed me during my research training and of the friendship whose memory remains dear to me still. This small posthumous tribute, although it adds little to the affectionate gratitude I showed many times for the fortune of having met him and the privilege of having spent time with him, renews certainly my admiration for the exemplar quality of his research which was original and free of preconceptions, yet bold in its perspectives and always rich with critical insights. These are, in fact, the essential qualities of all authentic philological research.
The progress made in the research of and the new critical instruments for Tobit that have appeared over this span of time are concisely presented in the valuable status quaestionis presented by Perrin 2014: 107–42.