Texts in Conversation
In Tobit, the angel reveals that his eating and drinking were only a vision. In the City of God, the Christian theologian Augustine recalls this detail and uses Tobit as Scripture, showing his acceptance of it as an authoritative source.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 12:19
Deuterocanon
17 And he said to them, Do not be afraid, peace be to you; bless God to all eternity. 18 I when I was with you, was not with you of any favour of mine, but by the will of God; bless him day by day, praise him. 19 And you behold me that I have eaten nothing, but a vision has appeared to you. 20 And now bless the Lord on the earth and give God thanks: Behold I ascend to him that sent me: write down all these things which have happened to you. And he ascended. 21 And they rose up and could no longer see him.
Date: 225–175 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 13.22
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
For we are not to suppose, when men receive them as guests, that the angels eat only in appearance, though to any who did not know them to be angels they might seem to eat from the same necessity as ourselves. So these words spoken in the Book of Tobit, “You saw me eat, but you saw it only in a vision;” that is, you thought I took food as you do for the sake of refreshing my body. But if in the case of the angels another opinion seems more capable of defense, certainly our faith leaves no room to doubt regarding our Lord Himself, that even after His resurrection, and when now in spiritual but still real flesh, He ate and drank with His disciples; for not the power, but the need, of eating and drinking is taken from these bodies. And so they will be spiritual, not because they will cease to be bodies, but because they will subsist by the life-giving spirit.
Date: 426 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the West, further from the home of the Hebrew canon, and knowing the Old Testament chiefly through the Latin version of the LXX, did not scruple to mingle non-canonical books with the canonical. Hilary and Ruffinus were doubtless checked, the one by the influence of Eastern theologians, the other by the scholarship of Jerome; but Hilary mentions that there were those who wished to raise the number of the canonical books to twenty-four by including Tobit and Judith in the canon. From the end of the fourth century the inclusion of the non-canonical books in Western lists is a matter of course. Even Augustine has no scruples on the subject; he makes the books of the Old Testament forty-four (de doctr. Chr. ii. 13 "his xliv libris Testamenti Veteris terminatur auctoritas"), and among them Tobit, Judith, and two books of Maccabees take rank with the histories; and the two Wisdoms, although he confesses that they were not the work of Solomon, are classed with the Prophets. His judgement was that of his Church ("sunt canonicae scripturae Salomonis libri quinque ... Tobias, Judith ... Machabaeorum libri duo"). The African Church had probably never known any other canon, and its belief prevailed wherever the Latin Bible was read ..."
Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek: With an Appendix Containing the Letter of Aristeas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900).
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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