Tracing the Tobiads
The Fragmentary History of a Once Powerful Dynasty
In the Jordan alley, about 18 kilometers east of Amman, is the ruin of a large Hellenist palace. Dating from the 2nd century BCE, though with some chambers that were cut into the nearby rock a couple of centuries earlier, it is known as the Qasr-al-Abd, or Castle of the Servant. Its original name was Tyros.
The palace and surrounding estate were originally the home of an unusually powerful Jewish family. Known as the Tobiads, their ancestry can be traced back to the last books of the Bible. Only fragments of their story have survived, but the little that is known provides valuable information on the history of those ancient times.
The names of a couple of the family’s possible ancestors are mentioned in the books of Isaiah (7,6) and Zechariah (6,9) though the first Tobiad to be described in any detail appears in the biblical book of Nehemiah (2,10). Set in the middle of the 5th century BCE, the book is more of a history than a religious text, describing the efforts of the Nehemiah, leader of those Jews who had returned to Israel after the Babylonian exile, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. The rebuilding did not go smoothly, many of the local people resented the return of the exiles and opposed their work, both physically and politically.
One of their opponents was Tobiah, the man who gave the Tobiads their family name. He is described in Nehemiah (2.10) as an Ammonite, suggesting that at this time the Tobiads were already living on their Tyros estate close to Amman (the biblical Rabat Ammon). As the book continues, we discover he was a well-connected member of the Jewish, aristocratic land-owning faction who felt economically and politically threatened by the reconstruction of Jerusalem. Tobiah accused Nehemiah of rebelling against the king, wrote letters demanding that he stopped work and generally did whatever he could to make his life miserable. He failed to prevent the reconstruction however, and when the building work was finished, he took advantage of Nehemiah’s absence from the city to present himself as a leader of the revived Jerusalem community, by taking up residence in the rebuilt Temple. When Nehemiah returned he had him thrown out.
Tracing the Tobiads was not easy for historians. The trail goes cold for the next 150 years, but it is apparent that the family remained rich and powerful, because when the Tobiads are eventually mentioned again, they were still living in their palace at Tyros.
This time they were mentioned in a papyrus document written by an envoy of the Egyptian king’s chief minister, who was travelling through Palestine and Transjordan in 259 BCE. The envoy’s name was Zenon and he wrote about his visit to Tyros which seems to be not only the Tobiads’ palace but also their military camp. Zenon sold grain to the Tobiad chieftain and bought animals and slaves from him. Zenon, who wrote in Greek, records the chieftain’s name as Toubias.
After these early mentions the Tobiads become a little more interesting, thanks mainly to Josephus, the Jewish-Roman historian. I have mentioned Josephus’s unreliability before and he has come in for much criticism from modern scholars in his treatment of the Tobiads too, chiefly over his chronology. But the basic outline of Josephus’s story seems coherent, if somewhat exaggerated. It gives us a sense of who the Tobiads were and the surprising degree of power they had in a largely overlooked period in Jewish history.
Josephus begins his account by telling his readers that the High Priest, Onias, had refused to pay Jerusalem’s annual tribute to the regional despot, Ptolemy, King of Egypt. Ptolemy threatened reprisals but Onias would not budge. Wishing to avert an Egyptian invasion, the Tobiad Joseph, son of yet another Tobiah and Onias’s nephew on his mother’s side, intervened. He told Onias he would go to Alexandria himself to pay the tribute.
Joseph borrowed as much money as he could and set off for Alexandria. As he journeyed, he met some wealthy men also travelling to Alexandria. They were on their way to bid for that year’s tax farming contract, the right to collect taxes on behalf of the king and earn themselves a hefty commission. They mocked Joseph for his shabby dress and impoverished appearance. Angered, Joseph decided to show them what he was capable of.
Joseph was smart and personable, and he knew how to use these skills to best effect. When he reached Alexandria he charmed the king and queen, won invitations to dinner with them and was invited to sit with them in the royal chariot. Once he had the king’s ear he told him that the other men bidding for the tax farming contract had formed a cartel and were colluding in a fraud. He said that he would bid twice as much as they had and, since he had no money of his own to put up as security against the contract, he asked the king if he would act as his guarantor. Amused at Joseph’s chutzpah, the king agreed.
Joseph returned home with an army of 2,000 soldiers to help him with the tax collection. Josephus described him as just and prudent, but we might think of other adjectives to describe him. His first port of call on his tax collecting round was Ashkelon. When the inhabitants of the town refused to pay him, he set the soldiers upon them, killing several men. He had less trouble after that.
Joseph had seven sons from his first marriage, and another younger son named Hyrcanus who, according to Josephus, was the daughter of Joseph’s niece. When he grew old he asked his seven sons to travel to Alexandria to join in the celebrations for the birth of an Egyptian prince. When the seven sons refused to go, Hyrcanus, as duplicitous as his father, volunteered in their place. Joseph had money in Alexandria, left in the charge of his steward, a man named Arian. When Hyrcanus arrived Arian offered him ten talents so that he could buy the king’s new son a gift. Hyrcanus spurned the offer and demanded one thousand talents. Arian refused and Hyrcanus had him thrown into prison. He then took the thousand talents and bribed the king with it, receiving Joseph’s tax farming contract in return and cutting his father and brothers out of the deal..
When Joseph’s seven older sons heard what Hyrcanus had done, they vowed vengeance. Joseph himself does not seem to have become involved in the fight that broke out and Hyrcanus managed to escape, killing two of his brothers in the process. According to Josephus, Hyrcanus fled across the river Jordan and settled in Tyros where he built the palace of Qasr-al-Abd. Archaeological evidence and the Zenon papyrus have shown that this is wrong, the Tobiads were at Tyros long before Hyrcanus, though it is entirely possible that he carried out renovations and improvements to the palace and its grounds.
Hyrcanus is the last of the Tobiads to be discussed in any detail in the ancient sources. He makes a brief appearance in the Second Book of the Maccabees where he is described as a very important and wealthy man who has money deposited in the Temple. The First Book of the Maccabees obliquely refers to him by describing the fate of the people of the land of Tob, these were presumably the peasants and servants living on the Tobiad estate. They were attacked by the Greeks in the wake of the Hasmonean revolt, the Jewish victory celebrated at Hanukkah. And that is the last that is heard of the Tobiads.
It is only because of Josephus and the palace at Qasr-al-Abd that the story of the Tobiads is known. Whether there were other mighty clans in ancient Israelite history, or whether the Tobiads were the only one, can only be conjectured. There have been other periods when a powerful family has dominated a Jewish community. But none have a history quite like the Tobiads.