The Book of Tobit – a scientific commentary on the text

8 because she was given to seven husbands, but Asmodeus, the evil spirit, killed them before they were with her as a wife. They said to her: Aren’t you ashamed that you strangled your husbands? You already had seven, but you didn’t call yourself by the name of any of them. ("Sacred" 7. "Critics note," writes Leo Taxil in the "Funny Bible", p. 368, "that never before have the Jews ever mentioned any devil, demon or devil: evil spirits originate from Persia, where the people believed in the existence of two equally powerful gods: Ormuzd – the god of good and Ahriman – the god of evil. Each of them commands a whole army of good or evil spirits. The Jews were only imitators. They borrowed their religion from their neighbors or enslavers, and they borrowed not only rituals, but also religious traditions. The Book of Tobit makes one think that the evil spirit Asmodeus was in love with Sarah and was jealous of her. This is quite consistent with the ancient teaching about spirits, angels and gods. "Most likely, someone once inspired Sarah fear of sexual intercourse, perhaps she had previously, for some reason, been afraid of some man, most likely her first husband, perhaps he showed violent actions towards her, and then, due to obsessive states, in a fit of temporary madness, she constantly strangled her husbands . Obsessive states are painful disorders in which, according to the Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov, there are overly stable ideas and feelings that do not correspond to generally accepted human relations, and therefore lead him into difficult, difficult collisions with nature, other people, and himself. In obsessive states, obsessive ideas, images, feelings and actions are of a violent nature; they arise against the will of the sick person; the pathophysiological basis of obsessive states is the pathological inertia of nervous processes. In ancient times, it was believed that such conditions were caused by evil spirits, in this case, Asmodeus – from Hebrew "Ashmedai" – "tempter", an evil spirit, a destroyer of marriages. Also mentioned in the Talmud as the prince of demons and in the apocrypha. The image of Asmodeus was borrowed by the Jews from the Persian religion).