THE DOMESTIC MICRO-APOCALYPSE: APOCALYPTIC GRAMMAR AND FUNCTIONAL INVERSION IN THE BOOK OF TOBIT

Abstract

The Book of Tobit brings together angelic mediation, the demonic personification of evil, conflict between heavenly agents and hostile forces, and the expectation of restoration, yet it presents no vision, no heavenly journey and no seer. Measured by its motifs it approaches the apocalyptic world; measured by its form it departs from it. This article shifts the question from generic membership to function and argues that Tobit inverts the operation that defines the apocalypse as a genre. Whereas the apocalypse employs celestial mediation to make the invisible world visible, Tobit employs the same grammar to make the visible world legible, that is, the ordinary life of a Jewish family in the diaspora. The aim is to demonstrate this inversion and the transfer from the family microcosm to the national macrocosm. Through a comparative reading of Tobit alongside the apocalyptic corpus of Second Temple Judaism, the study examines Raphael's mediation under the key of concealment and retroactive disclosure, the action of Asmodeus in the bridal chamber as cosmic conflict lowered to domestic scale, and the passage from the restored household to the restored city in the song of Tobit 13. The angel does not communicate cosmic mysteries but acts within the house under an assumed name and declares at the end what he had been doing, so that revelation bears upon everyday life already lived. It concludes that the restored family operates as a micro-apocalypse and that the resolution of the domestic conflict warrants, in narrative terms, the restoration of Israel.