Tobit or not Tobit

My son gave me a REALLY big “Complete 100-Book Apocrypha” for Christmas. I read a few things there, then bought the very reasonable Kindle version.

Growing up Baptist, I barely knew the Apocrypha existed, other than being told that “it was stuff Catholics added” (turns out it was stuff Protestant sects removed).

Like the positions of most “post-Luther” sects, the answer is more complicated than that. The “canonical” books of the Christian Bible were established by the Council of Rome under Pope Damasus in 382 and affirmed many times.

The Catholic Church considers the “Canon of Augustine” as being “the Bible,” with the Old and New Testaments being the “core,” and the remaining books of the Augustinian Bible being “The Apocrypha” (more accurately, “Deuterocanonical”). If you want to dig a level deeper, here is a link to Augustine's selections which are the Catholic Bible and considered “important” by LCMS Lutherans (Luther included in his translation).

Having struggled through “City of God,” I believe Augustine is a figure in church history that all denominations desiring to be called Christian need to consider. Sadly, American Protestantism largely ignores nearly all church history. The belief seems to be that the KJV and whatever more recent translations they select are THE Bible, and “history is bunk”. This is somewhat interesting as they are typically all about the LITERAL text with little concern as to how that text came to be. I found this to be interesting on the origin of the KJV.

While the current KJV is considered to be one of the best — if not THE best — translations, it was done (very carefully) by humans, published by humans, and therefore required some revisions due to errors. The following from the “origin” link above is an entertaining example. One word can really matter … as is often the case with “is” in theology and Clintonian legality.

Some errors in subsequent editions have become famous. Perhaps the most notorious example is the so-called “Wicked Bible” (1631), whose byname derives from the omission of “not” in the injunction against adultery in the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt commit adultery”).

Back to Tobit. It is a short book written somewhat like a novel. It tells the story of a righteous man (Tobit) living in exile in Nineveh, who has a son (Tobias) who needs a wife. He goes on a journey with a “messenger” to Rages of Media where a relative, Raguel, has a daughter, Sarah.

On the way, they stop by the river Tigris and a fish leaps out. The messenger has Tobias cut out the heart, liver and bile. Tobias is informed that in case a demon is encountered, the heart and the liver can be burned, and the smoke will drive the demon away.

Coincidentally, it turns out that Sarah has been married to 7 men, but on their wedding nights they all “perished in the bride chamber”. As Tobias enters the bride's chamber, realizing it must be a demon that killed the men, he burns incense with the heart and liver of the fish, and in the morning, all is well! The 14-day wedding feast is observed, and Tobias, Sarah and the messenger return to Tobit.

We discover that the “messenger,” Raphael, is one of the seven angels mentioned in Revelation 8:2–6. Sons are born and both Tobit and Tobias live long and prosperous lives!

The message is that if you live righteously as Tobit did, God will send His angel to watch over you, the forces of evil will be defeated, and you will live happily ever after. This doctrine is much more evident in the OT, whereas in the New, Jesus says many times that the more you follow him, the more trouble you will have, but to take heart because he has overcome the world.

Is Tobit “true”? Is Shakespeare “true”? Was the KJV Bible “true” before the errors were fixed, and is it a “true” translation now?

Religion, like life, is not as cut and dried as the more “fundamental” Christians today prefer. But the same Christians tell us that “baptism is only a symbol,” while the Bible they confess to be literally true says in 1 Peter 3:21, “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ”

To paraphrase Scotty, “I’m a computer scientist, not a theologian!”.

Deciding who will be in Heaven is up to Christ, not me, and I’d argue it's not up to anyone on Earth to be “the one true church”. Proverbs 22:4 says “Humility is the fear of the Lord; its wages are riches and honor and life.”

Pride is its opposite, and I am among the Christians who believe it is the greatest sin because it was the sin of the Fall. Essentially, “not God's way but mine”.

The origin of this quote is uncertain, but I fear it often applies to me:

"It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”