Tobit and Judith

Part of the popular textbook series introducing key themes and issues of books of the Apocrypha and Jewish Pseudepigrapha. The two apochryphal books, Tobit and Judith, are Jewish legends presumably created in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, the first in the Eastern Diaspora, the other in Palestine. The events related are placed in the Assyrian epoch in the 7th century BCE. The book discusses the problems between real history and historical fiction, the genres and purposes of the two books, and the literary and religious motives of the tales. Also dealt with are textual problems such as the Greek text in the Septuagint vs. Hebrew and Aramaic Tobit-fragments from Qumran.