CHAPTER XIII.
IS JOB A HEBRÆO-ARABIC POEM?
That the Book of Job is not as deeply penetrated with the
spirit of revelation, nor even as distinctly Israelitish a production,
as most of the Old Testament writings, requires no
argument. May we venture to go further, and infer from
various phenomena that, not merely the artistic form of the
māshāl, but the thoughts and even the language of Job
came in a greater or less degree from a foreign source? The
question has been answered in the affirmative (as in the case
of the words of Agur in Prov. xxx., and those of Lemuel
in chap. xxxi.) by some early as well as some more modern
writers. This view has been supposed to be implied in the
Greek postscript to the Septuagint version[1] (strongly redolent
of Jewish Midrash), which contains the statement, [Greek: outos
hermêneuetai ek tês Syriakês biblou], but though Origen
appears so to have understood,[2] it is more probable that [Greek: outos]
merely refers to the postscript (Zunz; Frankl). Ibn Ezra,
however, on independent grounds does express the opinion
(commenting on Job ii. 11) that the Book of Job is a translation;
he ascribes to the translator the words in xxxviii. 1
- ↑ There is a doubt whether the Septuagint postscript or the statement of the Egyptian Jew (?) Aristeas (as given by Eusebius from Alexander Polyhistor in Præf. Evang. l. ix.) be the earlier. The ordinary view is that Aristeas had the Septuagint Job before him; Freudenthal, however, infers from the strange description of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in Sept. Job ii. 11 (taken verbally from Aristeas) that the reverse was the case, and that the fragment of Aristeas is only a condensed extract from the prologue and epilogue of the Book of Job (Freudenthal, Hellenistische Studien, 139, 140; Grätz, Monatsschrift, 1877, p. 91). This inference in turn suggests Grätz' hypothesis that the Septuagint Job is a work of the first century A.D. (see note at end of Chap. XV.)
- ↑ Opera, Delarue, ii. 851, ap. Delitzsch, Iob, p. 603.
