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The Christian theologian Athanasius, in his Defense Against the Arians, authoritatively quotes Tobit, demonstrating how early Christian tradition used Jewish texts like Tobit as a reliable source for theology and practice.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 12:7
Deuterocanon
5 And he called him and said, Take the half of all that you had when you came for your wages, and go in peace. 6 Then he called them both privately, and said to them, Bless God, and give him thanks in the sight of all that live, for the good things which he has done to you, to bless and praise his name. The words of God show forth to all men with honour and do not be slack to give him thanks. 7 It is good to keep close the secret of a king, but to confess and reveal the works of God. And confess them with honour. Do the good, and evil shall not find you. 8 Better is prayer with truth, and alms with righteousness than riches with unrighteousness; it is better to give alms than to lay up gold: 9 almsgiving does deliver from death, and it purges away all sin. They that do alms shall be fed with life;
Date: 225–175 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians 11
Early Christian
And as for the cup belonging to the mysteries, what was it, or where was it broken by Macarius? For this is the report which they spread up and down. But as for Athanasius, even his accusers would not have ventured to blame him, had they not been suborned by them. However, they attribute the origin of the offense to him; although it ought not to be imputed even to Macarius who is clear of it. And they are not ashamed to parade the sacred mysteries before Catechumens, and worse than that, even before heathens : whereas, they ought to attend to what is written, 'It is good to keep close the secret of a king;' and as the Lord has charged us, 'Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine' We ought not then to parade the holy mysteries before the uninitiated, lest the heathen in their ignorance deride them, and the Catechumens being over-curious be offended. However, what was the cup, and where and before whom was it broken? It is the Meletians who make the accusation, who are not worthy of the least credit, for they have been schismatics and enemies of the Church, not of a recent date, but from the times of the blessed Peter, Bishop and Martyr. They formed a conspiracy against Peter himself; they calumniated his successor Achillas; they accused Alexander even before the Emperor; and being thus well versed in these arts, they have now transferred their enmity to Athanasius, acting altogether in accordance with their former wickedness. For as they slandered those that have been before him, so now they have slandered him. But their calumnies and false accusations have never prevailed against him until now, that they have got Eusebius and his fellows for their assistants and patrons, on account of the impiety which these have adopted from the Arian madmen, which has led them to conspire against many Bishops, and among the rest Athanasius. Now the place where they say the cup was broken, was not a Church; there was no Presbyter in occupation of the place; and the day on which they say that Macarius did the deed, was not the Lord's day. Since then there was no church there; since there was no one to perform the sacred office; and since the day did not require the use of it ; what was this cup belonging to the mysteries, and when, or where was it broken? There are many cups, it is plain, both in private houses, and in the public market; and if a person breaks one of them, he is not guilty of impiety. But the cup which belongs to the mysteries, and which if it be broken intentionally, makes the perpetrator of the deed an impious person, is found only among those who lawfully preside. This is the only description that can be given of this kind of cup; there is none other; this you legally give to the people to drink; this you have received according to the canon of the Church ; this belongs only to those who preside over the Catholic Church, for to you only it appertains to administer the Blood of Christ, and to none besides. But as he who breaks the cup belonging to the mysteries is an impious person, much more impious is he who treats the Blood of Christ with contumely: and he does so who 'does this' contrary to the rule of the Church. (We say this, not as if a cup even of the schismatics was broken by Macarius, for there was no cup there at all; how should there be? Where there was neither Lord's house nor any the belonging to the Church, nay, it was not the time of the celebration of the mysteries). Now such a person is the notorious Ischyras, who was never appointed to his office by the Church, and when Alexander admitted the Presbyters that had been ordained by Meletius, he was not even numbered among them; and therefore did not receive ordination even from that quarter.
Date: 335 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... But to this first terminus ante quem we can now add a second, even more precise one— that is, the sending of Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 on the occasion of Easter in 367. In this letter the patriarch makes a clear distinction between the biblical books, truly “inspired by God,” to be read by the faithful, and “the so-called apocrypha,” which are but “an invention of heretics,” to be proscribed. To the first category belong not only the writings “that have been canonized” (i.e., the “twenty-two books of the Old Testament” and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, listed at §§ 17–18), but also the books “appointed to be read,” that is, the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint (the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit), to which Athanasius adds the Teaching of the Apostles (most probably, the Didache) and the Shepherd of Hermas. As for the second group, in spite of the intentionally generic tone he uses, the reference Athanasius makes to the different writings attributed to Enoch, Moses, or Isaiah, written with the purpose of “deceiving the simple folk” (§ 21), seems to perfectly apply to 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Ascension of Isaiah, the three most significant pseudepigrapha translated into Ethiopic. If these texts, apparently popular among Egyptian monks, were officially forbidden by the inflexible bishop of Alexandria in 367, it is difficult to imagine that they would still have been sent to Aksum or elsewhere for translation after that date ..."
Pierluigi Piovanelli, “Ethiopic,” in A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission, ed. Alexander Kulik, Gabriele Boccaccini, Lorenzo DiTommaso, David Hamidović, and Michael E. Stone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 35–47.
* 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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