Title: “You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello”: Farewell and Welcome Scenes in the Book of Tobit

Abstract: In this paper, I explore the ways in which scenes of departure and return to family and household in the Book of Tobit portray travel (5:17-6:1, 7:1-9, 10:7-13, 11:5-16). I argue that scenes in which Tobias and Sara depart from or arrive at household environments bear ritualistic significance, as these moments of separation from and reunion with family act as a means of protecting travellers on their journeys and, then, (re)integrating them upon arrival or return. These scenes depict prayers, blessings, feasts, and other acts of hospitality, all of which are intended to either safeguard the traveller in the liminal zone between the points of departure and arrival, or to bring them back from such liminality into the social realms of city and household. These scenes place characters within imagined communities and geographies, connecting ideas of near/far, safe/dangerous, known/unknown, even as travel displaces the characters and repositions them within social and spatial locations. The Book of Tobit is a particularly interesting case study, for travel in this story is also symbolic of the transition from youth to maturity. For Tobias, the risks of travel thus intersect with the dangers of childhood and the uncertainty of attaining adulthood in antiquity; for Sara, these uncertainties also include the liminality of marriage, and resulting risks of pregnancy and labour. In attending to moments of rupture and return in Tobias and Sara’s journeys between Nineveh and Ecbatana in Media, I place their story within real and imagined travel in the Second Temple period.