Tobit and Tobias

The Book of Tobit tells of Tobit, a pious Israelite exiled in Nineveh who is blinded by bird droppings, and his son Tobias. Tobias sets out for Media to collect money, accompanied by a young man named Azarias. On the way he catches a fish, and his companion tells him to keep its heart, liver and gall.

In Media Tobias marries Sarah, whose seven previous husbands were killed on their wedding night by the demon Asmodeus. Burning the fish's heart and liver drives the demon away. Back home, the gall cures Tobit's blindness. Then the companion reveals that he is Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, and that he never ate or drank with them; they saw only a vision (Tobit 12:19).

The book is found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and among the Apocrypha in older Protestant editions; fragments in Aramaic and Hebrew were found at Qumran. Scholars read it as a Jewish novella with folk-tale elements, probably written between about 225 and 175 BCE, not as history.