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-morrow, and the next 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 be joined together like the heathen who know not God.”[1075]
From this (apparently) solitary and quite different version sprang the custom of the “Tobias Days,” and the jus primæ noctis, of which the usual conception is “a monstrous fable born of ignorance, prejudice, and confusion of ideas.”[1076]
The custom of continence for varying periods probably springs from the common widespread belief (of which Tobit affords a Semitic example) that demons lie in wait to harm newly-married couples, and from the hope that if allowed free scope for making love to the bride their jealous wrath might be appeased, or the danger, at any rate, minimised. The alternative to appeasement was deception of the demon; whence women sometimes disguised themselves as men, and even wore false beards!
We find, on returning from this semi-folklore excursion, Prof. Langdon asserting that in Sumero-Babylonian religion each individual is guarded by a divine spirit or god.[1077] He is called the “Man’s God,” and the man is defined, in a religious sense, as a “Son of God.” But this term applies to no females.
This can hardly be attributed to accident, for our sources of information mention hundreds, even thousands, of men bewitched, and by demonic force abandoned by their indwelling gods, but never a woman. Women not infrequently figure as causing the condition of tabu, but never as having fallen to the powers of devils, or witches, or as being under the protection of a personal god. They never appear in the private penitential psalms.
But when we recall the high position occupied by women, not only in Babylonian society, but also in the eye of the civil law, which regarded their rights, as often as not, equal to those of men, and that women are often found as priestesses of religious orders, Langdon’s statements, resting on recent discoveries, create grounds for surprise.
To explain the anomaly he conjectures that when the texts refer to sinners, penitents, or sufferers, the title “son of his god” applies in all probability also to women.
The book of Tobit, whether Persian in its source or Aramaic in its original text, furnishes an example of demonic possession of a woman, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
The Jewish conception of demonic possession resembles, indeed probably descends from, the Babylonian. The “seven devils” of Matt. xii. 45, Luke xi. 26, and viii. 2, simply reflect the evil spirits, called in a famous incantation The Seven, who play no small part in Babylonian mythology.[1078]
The N.T. confines the instances of evil spirits possessing mankind—more frequently in the psychical rather than in the physical sense—to the Gospels and the Acts, which illustrate demonic possession of women by (inter alias) the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xvi. 22) and Mary Magdalene, “from whom seven devils had gone out” (Luke viii. 2).[1079]