The New Testament contains quotes from, and allusions to, other literature. Some sources identify as many as 132 such influences. A question sometimes raised is whether Deuterocanonical books have influenced the New Testament.Part 1, the list of Old Testament Apocrypha (Deuterocanonical books), is good, except that 7Q2 is written in Greek, not Hebrew. I would also add the chapters in Esther and Daniel not found in the Masoretic Text.[...]
Part 2 gives a few examples of supposed influences from the Book of Tobit on the New Testament. Only one looks interesting to me.
- 2A:Matthew 7:12 and Tobit 4:15—These are just two generic versions of the Golden Rule. And they are rather different. The first is the positive expression and the second the negative one. There is no indication of influence here.
- 2C: Acts 10:31 and Tobit 4:10—These are just rather two different expressions of the undisputed view that almsgiving is good. Again, no indication of influence.
- 2B: Matthew 22:25–26 and Tobit 7:11—I had never noticed the similarity to these two stories. Both are about a woman who was married seven times, but all seven husbands predeceased her without producing children. But there are problems with positing influence.
In Jesus' parable the woman marries seven brothers in succession. All die without fathering children. If one had fathered children with her, he would have fulfilled the Levirate obligation. Would that mean that he would be her husband in the afterlife? Or would that be the first husband, who now officially had children? I don't know. But then the woman herself dies, leaving the question open.
In Tobit, Sarah marries seven husbands who die without giving her children. But there is no indication they were brothers. The Levirate obligation does not enter the situation. Then she marries Tobias, the eighth husband, and they have sons together (14:3, 12). That would seem to confirm him as her husband in the afterlife, at least by the assumed rule in Jesus' story (which Jesus himself disputes).
I conclude, therefore, that Jesus was not alluding to the story in Tobit. The presence of the eighth husband who gave the woman children would have spoiled the point he wanted to make.
It sounds as though the idea of a woman who married seven husbands in a row who all died leaving her childless was some kind of motif or meme in this period and that Tobit and Jesus both used it for different purposes.
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