That this land cannot be either the Far East, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, or Media, as has been held by different scholars, is shown by Simpson, who says that “such surmises are, at the outset, negatived by the author’s ignorance of Eastern geography and his acceptance of the ordinary standards of Greek and Roman geographies. That the Tigris flowed between Nineveh and Media was an idea common among the Greeks; that Ecbatana was situated in a plain was a constant Western fallacy, and is repeated in Diodorus ii. 13, 6, in a passage dependent on Ctesias.”[389] Another, apparently small, point also suggests Egypt; it is said in vi. 3 that “a great fish leaped up out of the water, and would have swallowed the foot of the young man ...”; no ordinary fish would do this kind of thing, it points rather to a crocodile of the Nile, and this was probably in the writer’s mind; “this conjecture,” in the words of Robertson Smith, “is raised almost to certainty when we read in Kazwini i. 132 that the smell of the smoke of a crocodile’s liver cures epilepsy, and that its dung and gall cure leucoma, which was the cause of Tobit’s blindness. Very similar statements as to the medicinal virtues of the crocodile occur in Greek and Latin writers.”[390] Further, the sources utilized by the writer of the book suggest Egypt as the place of its origin; “only Egyptian Jews could need an antidote to the _Tractate of Khons_,” and this seems to have been one main purpose of the book.[391] Finally, if, as seems upon the whole probable, the book was originally written in Greek, a further reason for regarding Egypt as its original home is offered. Some scholars are strong advocates of a Semitic (Hebrew or Aramaic) original, but to give details of the reasons for either contention would involve technicalities which would be inappropriate here. It must suffice to say that the Greek as a whole does not read like a translation, whatever may be the case in isolated instances. If one reads the Greek of Ecclesiasticus, which is admittedly a translation, and compares it with that of the Book of Tobit, the difference is enormous, and forces one to believe that if Tobit was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, its Greek form must be not a translation, but a paraphrase.[392] It is, however, quite possible that the home of the writer was Palestine, and that for some reason or other he was compelled to spend some considerable time in Egypt. Ben-Sira’s grandson, who was evidently a native of Palestine, came into Egypt and continued there and issued his grandfather’s book in a Greek form while living there. On the supposition that the writer of Tobit was a native of Palestine sojourning in Egypt the Aramaic traits in his book could be explained in a quite natural way. VI. THE VALUE OF THE BOOK FOR NEW TESTAMENT STUDY