Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

"TOBIAS DAYS"—ORIGIN 435continence enjoined on the newly married could only bedisregarded if the husband had previously paid for the privilegea fee to some religious authority, came to be known as " TobiasDays."No searching, however diligent, of the Septuagint or ofour A. or R. Versions, nor (it seems) of the Aramaic text of thetale of Tobit sheds Hght on the origin of the custom or of theapplication of the name.The Vulgate, however, which the Roman Church adopts,sets forth the story of the abstinence of Tobias from Sara." Then Tobias exhorted the virgin, and said unto her : Sara,arise, and let us pray to God to-day, and to-morrrow, and thenext day : because for these three nights we are joined to God :and when the third night is over we will be in our wedlock.For we are the children of the Saints, and we must not bejoined together like the heathen who know not God." 1From this (apparently) soUtary and quite different versionsprang the custom of the " Tobias Days," and the jus primcenociis, of which the usual conception is " a monstrous fableborn of ignorance, prejudice, and confusion of ideas." 2The custom of continence for varying periods probablysprings from the common widespread belief (of which Tobitaffords a Semitic example) that demons He in wait to harmnewly-married couples, and from the hope that if allowed free^ Tobit, viii. 4 and 5 (Douai version). The fatuity of his reasoning,although with seven predecessors slain by the demon much must be pardonedto Tobias, is obvious, when we discover that the practice of deferring theconsummation of marriage for a certain time is older than Tobit and Christianity,and has been observed by heathen tribes, not on any ascetic principle,in many parts of the world. Hence, " we may reasonably infer that far frominstituting the rule and imposing it on the pagans, the Church, on the contrary,borrowed it (hke much else) from the heathen, and sought to give it a scripturalsanction by appeahng to the authority of the angel Raphael." Frazer. op.cit., I. 505.* The whole question is fully treated by J. G. Frazer, op. cit., vol. I., pp.485-530, and Adonis, Attis, and Osiris, 3rd ed., vol. I., pp. 57-60. Somewriters hold that the period of continence originated at an ancient time whenit was deemed advisable that the deflowering should be effected by a god orhis representatives—in Israel the Sacred Men—so that the woman shouldreceive strength to bear children to her husband. For the practice they relyon Hosea iv. 14, and for the deferment to the seventh night on Gen. xxix.27, and in the correction of the reading-in Judges, xiv. 18, from " before thesun went down " to " before he went into her chamber." The evidence tomy mind is far from convincing.