Echi omerici nel libro di Tobia?

The return trip home of Tobit recalls the Odysseus νόστος to Ithaca, equally marked by dangers and adventures, and by the subjet of love and family. This biblical book is a historical-religious novel, but in its origin the literary genre of the folktale is found, enriched by didactic, edifying, and prophetic elements. This elementary narrative structure could go back to the Odyssey – archetype of the modern novel –, and particularly to the folktale of Odysseus. The hagiographer, therefore, could have re-elaborated in theological perspective this ancient story on Tobit taking up from biblical and extra-biblical tradition, to answer problems of the Israel of his time. The numerrous analogies of the themes (the journey in East, the dangers, the family feelings…) and of the narrative elements (the relation father-son, the dog, the intermediaries, the medicine…) confirms that the author got to know about the Odysseus νόστος; he based himself on the knowledge that his readers had of it, to outline the Tobit story on the journey scheme of the Greek hero. More than of a literary dependence or of an emulation, it was matter of a clever attempt of exploiting the fame of homerical tale, in order to confer authoritativeness to his story. In this way, he starts again from the Odysseus folktale to reviving the Jewish community’s hope of the eastern diaspora, resigned and uncertain about her destiny, making foreseen the return from the deportation like Tobit, who come back to Nineveh from Rages, happy of his marriage with Sarah.