D&D Bible History-Tobit

Getting into roleplaying games and D&D ruins your life.
Jack Chick and Patricia Pulling and Rona Jaffe and all those other Satanic Panic luminaries were right. They just didn't have the specifics of how quite right.


Once you start playing, your frame of reference changes. Pretty much everything you encounter suddenly becomes quantifiable as a level or ability score. When you start Game Mastering, you begin to analyze things in terms or how you might relate them in a game. Every stupid History Channel "documentary" becomes inspiration, especially the entirely made-up ones.
Pretty soon, you look back over things you were taught to take seriously, which other people take seriously, and it has all become questionable. Everything is up for debate because you have seen it all shown in a fictional context, in a game nonetheless.
Exercise in fiction teaches you the possible range of fiction, and how it seeps into everyday life. You begin to guard very strictly the borders between the Definitely Real, The Possibly Real and the Definitely Fictional

After thinking like this for long enough, you become such an opinionated Crystal Fortress Wizard that you are unfit for polite society. Your loved ones are embarrassed by your dinner conversation and dread going out to eat at nice places.
Wizards who live in crystal fortresses know they shouldn't cast magic missile, and they have to keep a lot to themselves. Pretty soon find they themselves compulsively writing stuff like this to keep their sanity:

Dungeons & Dragons Bible History- The Book of Tobit

"Tobit"is my very favorite bible story. It is set in the 8th century BCE when the Hebrews were under the Babylonian Captivity (purple part of the map below). Its first few chapters are told from the perspective of the eponymous Tobit, who claims descent from the tribe of Naphtali. (one of the twelve tribes of Israel)
Tobit begins by telling about how the tribe of Naphtali was deported to Nineveh. In the Hebrew perspective, Nineveh was like the New Jersey of the Ancient Middle East. But if the conservative Hebrews disliked it, that means it was probably a pretty happening place where people knew about things like astronomy and how to safely prepare pork.
Tobit complains about how all his fellow tribesmen (except for him) went to eating non-kosher foods and worshiping the golden calf of Baal, which was the popular deity in Nineveh at the time.

But Tobit was righteous and spent a lot of time and money in Jerusalem, tithing to the priesthood and all that. So Jehova blessed him with a sweet gig as a merchant, and Tobit lent a large sum of money to a cousin in Media (orange part of the map). This money comes up later in the story.

Tobit was also in the habit of burying the corpses of strangers, but only so long as they were Jewish corpses. He thought of this as a sort of charity, and not that weird at all. This got him in trouble with the local king Sennacherib (who was responsible for the preponderance of Jewish corpses in the first place.) Tobit and his wife Anna, and son Tobias, skipped town. Eventually, Sennacherib was deposed by his sons and Tobit was able to come back to Nineveh. Which is curious since he disliked the place so much.

One night, after burying corpses outside the city walls (again.) Tobit fell asleep in the open air and a sparrow shat in his eyes. This made Tobit blind and doomed him to poverty. Whether the blindness or the poverty was less pleasant to him is up for debate. Tobit prayed to Jehovah for death or deliverance, whichever Jehovah was feeling up for.

Meanwhile, In Ecbatana in Media, there was this Jewish homegirl, named Sarah, daughter of Raguel, also of the tribe of Naphtali. And she had problems of her own.
The Demon Asmodeus (Persian name; Aeshma-Daeva) was in love with Sarah. And Sarah had been married seven times, but every single time, before she could consummate the wedding, Asmodeus would pop up and kill the dude! Imagine how frustrated Sarah must have felt. So she also prayed to Jehova for deliverance. And Jehovah decided to knock out two birds with one stone.

Tobit was feeling the icy hand of death upon him, and he decided to tell his son Tobias about the money that Gabael in Media still owed. Tobit also gave a speech about the importance of Charity, and that Tobias should not marry a foreigner, but only a woman also of the tribe of Naphtali. Not even another tribe of Judah was good enough for Tobit. He was really serious about keeping the old line going.

Tobit told Tobias to find a guide to accompany him on the road to Media. Except Jehovah had already sent the angel Raphael to go in disguise and guide Tobias. Tobias met Raphael and brougth him back home to meet Tobit. Then Tobit decides to ask the angel what his name and tribe are. it is getting pretty clear by now that this whole Tribe thing is a big deal to Tobit.
So Raphael lies and says that his name is Azarias and that he also Naphtali. In Tobit's mind, these are the only necessary credentials, so Tobias and the Angel go off to Media together.

The Party camped by the banks of the Tigris. When Tobias went to wash himself, he encountered a giant fish and was nearly eaten. The Angel Raphael then told Tobias to get the fish. And Tobias was cool with this suggestion. There was an exciting combat which ended when Tobias grappled the giant fish and threw it onto land.
Raphael/Azarias instructed Tobias to cut open the fish and remove it s liver, heart and gall. The next day, Raphael explained that these organs are, in fact, spell components; useful for repelling demons and curing blindness of all things.

The party stopped in Ecbatana at the dwelling of Sarah and her family. Ancient people were pretty big on hospitality as a rule. And when they found out that they were all related, naturally, everyone decided that Tobias and Sarah should get married. Tobias was a little hesitant because he had heard about the 7 previous husbands. But Raphael told him to be cool and remember the spell components.

So Raguel and his wife Edna lead Tobias into Sarah's chamber (in a tent?) Then Raguel snuck off to dig a grave for Tobias, just in case. Meanwhile, Tobias burns the fish heart and fish liver in a brazier and the smoke is sufficient to drive Asmodeus back to Egypt (presumably where demons come from.) Tobias and Sarah then safely consummate their marriage.
Raguel then fills the grave back up and throws a wedding-feast which lasts a fortnight. Raphael the Angel goes alone to collect the debt.
As soon as he could politely disengage himself, Tobias returned to Nineveh with his new wife and bags of money in-tow. Tobias then used the fish-gall as a poultice for his father's eyes, restoring his sight.
And Tobit gave praise to Jehovah and they all lived happily ever after because they were rich again.

So there you have it, the Book of Tobit, only roughly paraphrased. But what are we supposed to take from it? This book is often referenced for its lessons on charity or filial devotion. Except, in context, This so-called charity is restricted to members of the same race/religion (The Hebrews are a race defined by their religion,) And this "filial devotion" is more like glorified nepotism and incest.

One almost wonders if Tobit was intended as a parody or a satire. The tribe of Naphtali comes of as a morbid, usurious, incestuous and treacherous bunch. Once could hardly write a more crassly anti-Semitic smear on purpose. But I fear that this writing really was in earnest, and represents the actual values of the author. And who can really say this is an incorrect ideology? From a certain, very brutally true perspective, a bloodline is the only truly important part of a human. Offspring extend your mortality. The measure of an organisms success it largely the extent to which is spreads and preserves its own genetic code. If you were like Abraham, and your goal was to have descendants more numerous than the stars (Genesis 26:4), it would only make sense to have a code of morality which takes this bloody principle to its core: Nepotism, incest and genocide would become your virtues. Tolerance, assimilation and miscegenation would become a sin to you.
Note that there aren't a lot of self-proclaimed Babylonians around any more.
On the other hand, if you believe that all of humanity is the same family, and that you are, in fact, your brother's keeper, your values become something; perhaps not the opposite of Tobit's. But they will be more expansive at least.

Warring gods and their cults, race wars, demons and angels, sorcery, sex and monstrous fish. With no adjustment, the Old Testament makes for a campaign setting more intense than most people would even like to have at their tables. I look forward to continuing the D&D bible history series. No one's mythology is off the table to an acute Crystal Fortress Wizard.


Until next time, I should totally have named this blog Crystal Fortress Wizard.