Category:Tobiads (subject)

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The Tobiads were an influential Israelite family that from their estate at Iraq al-Amir in Transjordan played an important political and economic role in the Persian and Greek Period.

This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

Overview

The Persian Period

Among those who tried to "intimidate" Nehemiah and sabotage the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem, Tobiah emerges as an even more insidious enemy than Sanballat (Neh 2:10,19-20; 4:1-5; 6:1-19). Nehemiah derogatorily labels him as "the Ammonite subject" (2:10,19) but the Tobiads were an Israelite family with a respectable Jahwist name; they only lived in the old Ammonite region, in Transjordan, where they had a rich estate. Because of their wealth, they could boast an impressive credit of connections in Jerusalem, consolidated by matrimonial ties with prominent Jewish nobles (6:18), including the Zadokite family (13:1).

The Tobiads were part of that class of landowners who had risen to power in Judah during the exilic period. The control the "nobles of Judah" exerted on the Judean economy as money lenders was the major obstacle to the Zadokite power. The loyalty of priests and levites had to be anchored to a mechanism of economical autonomy, in which the Temple, not the landowners, was the center of Jewish economy through the collection of tithes. Nehemiah was determined to avoid any compromise and hit the economical interests of the "nobles of Judah" by forcing them to remit all previous debts and forbidding them from the taking of interest (Neh 5:1-13). It is no surprise that "the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah's letters came to them. For many in Judah were bound to oath to him... And Tobiah sent letter to intimidate me"--as Nehemiah complains (6:17-19). "Tobiah was a leading representative of the native Jews who had remained in the land and thus of particular danger to Nehemiah's plans."

Nehemiah prevailed and imposed a system of tithe that for the first time included also the assistant levites (Neh 9:38--10:39). In so doing he reached a double goal; to reward those Levites who accepted the new order, and to free them from the economical dependence on the landowners.

It was enough for Nehemiah to leave Jerusalem for a few years, however, and at his return, with great disappointment, he found Tobiah being allotted in the Temple by the high priest Eliashib "a large room, where they had previously put... the tithes... for the levites and the contributions for the priests" (Neh 13:4-9). Tobiah's countermove had been to take control of the Temple's treasure, so nullifying the effects of Nehemiah's economical reforms. Controlling the treasure Tobiah could disrupt the social bloc that Nehemiah had build around the Zadokite power. That the point was the economical status of the assistant "levites" is proved by the fact that they were the ones to suffer the most from the change. While the priests could survive thanks to the emoluments associated with the sacrifices, the levites and singers, deprived of their source of income, "had gone back to their fields" (13:10), where they were once again at the mercy of the landowners. Nehemiah reacted with timeliness and energy. He cast the Tobiads out of the Temple and restored the tithes to the Temple staff (Neh 13:8-9,11-14). He won the day but the struggle was yet far from over. Unlike the Sanballats, the powerful Tobiads remained a cumbersome presence in Judah, too strong and powerful to be destroyed. The tradition of Ezra does not recognize them full membership in the new religious community, yet still could not get rid of them completely. "The descendants of Tobiah" are listed among those returned exiles who "could not prove their ancestral houses or their descent, whether they belonged to Israel" (Neh 7:61-62). The limbo in which the Tobiads were confined did not prevent them from playing an important political role in Jewish society, which was only to increase in Hellenistic times.

The Ptolemaic Period

The beginnings of Ptolomaic rule were not so easy for the Jerusalem priesthood; they resulted initially in a decreasing influence for the Zadokites. The Ptolomies were much less interested in religious affairs than their Persian predecessors, who often used priestly aristocracies to pursue their political goals. For a priestly class who had greatly benefited from the support of Persian kings, the end of monarchic interference in religious affairs was not necessarily a blessing.

Even most importantly, the office of governor disappeared and was replaced by a system of tax farming. It was now the highest bidders who could purchase the right to collect taxes in royal auctions (Ant 12:169). It was a very expensive job, not only to get but also to keep. Presents and bribes had to be offered frequently to the king and his officials to strengthen personal relations and exclude rivals. But at the end it was also a very lucrative job. There were no actual limitations to the extent tax farmers could exploit the local population on behalf of the king and for their own profit.

The system enhanced the power of the wealthiest families in the various districts of the Ptolemaic kingdom. They had the money and the skill to serve as local instruments of the king's exploitative policy, at the expenses of the small farmers. The gap between the few and the many, between the city and the countryside deepened. Judah was no exception.

In the long run the Jerusalem high priesthood would greatly benefit from the system but in the short term the power vacuum was filled by those who had the actual economical power to collect taxes in the region, and in the first half of the third century BCE these ones did not happen to be the Zadokite high priests. When between 260 and 258 BCE, a Ptolemaic officer, Zenon, visited Judah in an official mission, it is certainly striking to see how he ignored the Jerusalem priesthood and dispatched all his business outside Jerusalem with a certain Tobiah, who was manifestly the one in charge of the political, economical and military affairs of the region on behalf of the Ptolomies (see Zenon Papyri). Tobiah headed a military colony in Transjordan with a garrison of Macedonian and Judean troops. The friendly tone of his correspondence and the liberality of gifts he exchanges with both the king and his finance minister are clearest indications of Tobiah's power and wealth.

Tobiah was a descendant of that "Tobiah the Ammonite" whose influence in Jewish society Nehemiah and Ezra struggled to minimize (Neh 7:61-62; 13:4-9). From the turmoil of the early Hellenistic period, the Tobiads reemerged as the wealthiest family and therefore de facto as the civil rulers of the region.

Josephus confirms that over the third century BCE, the Tobiads not only continued to prosper but their influence increased. Although his narrative (Ant 12:154-236) is based largely on tales and romance, it appears clear that the Tobiads consolidated their power as the tax farmers and civil rulers for the region.

The most significant development was that the Zadokites themselves fell into the sphere of influence of the Tobiads. The Tobiads were now strong enough to renew their political and family ties with the Zadokites. According to Josephus, Tobiah married a sister of the high priest Onias II (Ant 12:160); their son Joseph would play a very important role in the second half of the third century as tax collector in Judah.

While Tobiah had maintained the traditional center in Transjordan, Joseph made Jerusalem the center of his political and economical activity. Thank to their wealth and their political and economic relations with the Ptolemaic court, the Tobiads made Jerusalem share the booming Hellenistic economy and turned it into an international city, whose importance was now for the first time acknowledged by classical authors.

It is difficult not to relate the Book of Tobit to the powerful family recorded by Zenon and Josephus. As J.T. Milik fully acknowledged, the document functioned has a legitimization of their association to the high priesthood of Jerusalem. The book of Tobit overturned the verdict of the tradition of Ezra and marked the recognition of the genealogy "of the descendants of Tobiah" as an exiled family from the tribe of Naphtali. The claims of the Tobiads were finally vindicated; "the ancestral descent," which they "could not prove," was now acknowledged, although by means of a special status.

The merging of Tobiads and Zadokites went with so little opposition that by the end of the century the ups and downs of the two families appear to be inextricably joined. It was an astonishing comeback for the heirs of that Tobiah who was dismissed by Nehemiah, but also the opening of a new chapter in the history of the Zadokite priesthood. The Zadokites reemerged from their merging with the Tobiads as part of the Hellenistic establishment, no longer as the target of their polemical arrows. The Tobiads patronized the Zadokites but also launched them into business and political affairs. Unlike their predecessors, the last generations of Zadokite high priests would be directly involved in the political arena.

The Seleucid Period

At the end of the 3rd century BCE, the Jewish society divided between a pro-Ptolemaic and a pro-Seleucid party. This time, however, the civil strife was complicated by the fact that the split was not, like one century before, between the Tobiads and the Zadokites but within the Tobiad-Zadokite family with some members siding with the Ptolemies and others with the Seleucids. "The elder brothers made war on Hircanus... and the population was divided into two camps. And the majority fought on the side of the elder brother, as did the high priest Simon [II]" (Ant 12:228).

The pro-Seleucid party eventually prevailed and the position of the high priest Simon II, who had chosen the winning side, greatly benefited from the transition of power. Antiochus III did not fail to show his gratitude to the Jerusalem priestly class (Josephus, Ant 12:145-146). According to Josephus, the king not only "let all of that nation live according to the laws of their own country," but granted a series of provisions that sanctioned the authority of the Zadokites within the Jewish society. Antiochus III treated the high priest Simon II not as much as a religious leader, but as a sort of secular prince, having the authority not only to collect the tithes for the Temple but also the tributes and taxes owed to the king and to retain part of them.

These financial concessions and economical restrictions were a blow for the Tobiads, as they gave to the high priesthood actual control over the economy of the region. During the Ptolemaic period, the Tobiads had forced the Zadokites to merge by marriage. Now it was the Zadokites who turned the merging to their own advantage. Even in the darkest period of their submission, the Zadokites had retained what they had as their most precious belonging and the Tobiads could neither have nor take away from them--religious authority and control of the Temple. In order to subdue the Zadokites, the Tobiads had to share what they had and the Zadokites lacked--economical and political power and richness. Josephus recognizes that credit goes to the Tobiads, and in particular to "Hyrcanus's father, Joseph," for "bringing the Jews out of the state of poverty and meanness, to one that was more splendid" (Ant 12:224). Thanks to their relation with the Tobiads, by the time the Seleucids took over the Ptolemies, the Jerusalem priesthood had become a political and economical power that could no longer be ignored by the king, as the story of Heliodorus' mission (2 Macc 3:7-40), behind its legendary traits, amply demonstrates.

Members of the Tobiads continued to play an important role in the dynastic conflicts that soon torn apart the House of Zadok. The Tobiads of Jerusalem were leaders of the Hellenistic party that first supported Jason over his brother Onias III, and then favored the appointment of the non-Zadokite Menelaus.

Jason fled to "the country of the Ammonites" (4:26), where he could count on the protection of the Tobiads of Transjordan. When in 169 BCE "a false rumor arose that Antiochus was dead" (2 Macc 5:5), Jason made an attempt to regain the power. He entered Jerusalem by force and, with Menelaus besieged in the citadel, began slaughtering his enemies (2 Macc 5:5-6). As Antiochus was not dead, Jason's attempt was doomed to fail. This time, the Tobiads of Transjordan could no longer offer protection from the king's wrath; the expansion of the Nabateans had put an end to their power in the region.

The situation did not develop better for the Tobiads in Jerusalem. Josephus openly blames Menelaus and the sons of Tobias for asking the king to support by law their decision to abolish the Zadokite Torah (Ant XII 240). The Maccabean revolt will definitively put an end to the political and economical influence of the Tobiads.