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[115] (strongly redolent
of Jewish Midrash), which contains the statement, οὗτος ἑρμηνεύεται ἐκ
τῆς Συριακῆς βίβλου, but though Origen appears so to have
understood,[116] it is more probable that οὗτος 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
containing the sacred name Jehovah. The increased study of Arabic in the
17th century led several theologians of eminence to the same conclusion.
Spanheim, for instance, thought that Job and his friends wrote down the
history and the colloquies in Arabic, after the happy turn in the
fortunes of the sufferer, and that some inspired Israelitish writer, in
the age of Solomon, gave this work a Hebrew dress. Albert Schultens, in
the preface to his _Liber Jobi_ (1737), is at the pains to discuss this
theory, which he rejects on two main grounds, (1) the disparagement to
our magnificent Book of Job involved in calling it a translation, and
(2) that in those primitive and, according to him, pre-Mosaic times, the
Hebrew and Arabic languages cannot have been so different (!) as
Spanheim from his point of view imagines. Elsewhere he expresses his own
opinion shortly thus,[117] ‘Linguam quâ liber Jobi conscriptus est,
genuinum illius temporis Arabismum esse.’ He actually imagines that Job
and his friends extemporised the Colloquies we have before us, referring
to the amazing faculty of improvisation still possessed by the Arabs—a
view scarcely worthier than that of Spanheim, for, as Martineau remarks
in another connection, Who ever improvised a great poem or a great
sermon? Both these great scholars have fallen into the error of
confounding the poet with his hero and the use of poetic and didactic
fiction with deliberate fraud. One cannot be severe upon this error, for
it has survived among ourselves in Prof. S. Lee’s great work (1837),
where our Book of Job is actually traced back through Jethro to Job
himself. The only form however in which a critic of our day could
discuss the question mentioned above would be this, Is it in some degree
probable that the author of _Job_ was a Hebrew who had passed some time
with the Arabic- and Aramaic-speaking peoples bordering on the land of
Israel?
On grounds independent of Eichhorn and Dean Plumptre, the former of whom
combines his theory with that of a pre-Mosaic, and the latter with that
of a Solomonic date of _Job_, I think that we may venture to reply in
the affirmative. These grounds have reference (1) to the ideas of _Job_,
(2) to its vocabulary.
(1) I am well aware that the argument from the ideas of _Job_ cannot
claim a strong degree of cogency. It is possible to account for the
conceptions of the author from the natural progress of the
(divinely-guided) moral and religious history of Israel, and those who
believe (I do not myself) that Psalms xvii., xxxvii., xlix., lxxiii.,
are Palestinian works of earlier date than _Job_ will have a ready
argument in favour of a purely native origin of the latter book. Still
it seems to me that we can still better account for the author’s point
of view by supposing that he was in sympathy with an intellectual
movement going on outside Israel. The doctrine of retribution in the
present life, which he finds inadequate, is common to the friends and to
the religion which has in all ages been that of the genuine Arab—the
so-called _dīn Ibrāhīm_ (or ‘religion of Abraham’). The Eloah and the
Shaddai of Job are the irresponsible Allah who has all power in heaven
and on earth, and before whom, when mysteries occur in human life which
the retribution-doctrine cannot solve, the Arab and every true Moslem
bows his head with settled, sad resignation. The morality alike of the
_dīn Ibrāhīm_, and of the religion of Mohammed (who professed to restore
it in its purity), is faulty precisely as the religion of the three
friends (and originally of Job himself) is faulty. The same conflict
which arose in the heart of Job arose in the midst of the Moslem world.
I refer to the dispute between the claimants of orthodoxy and the sect
of the Mo’tazilites (8th and 9th centuries); the latter, who were
worsted in the strife, viewed God as the absolutely Good, the former as
a despotic and revengeful tyrant.[118] May not this conflict have been
foreshadowed at an earlier time? Is not the difficulty which led to it a
constantly recurring one, so soon as reflection acquires a certain
degree of maturity? It may well have been felt among the Jews,
especially in the decline of the state, but it must also have been felt
among their neighbours, and freedom of speech has always, in historical
times, been an Arab characteristic. Putting aside the anachronism of
placing Job in the patriarchal age, does not the poet himself appear to
hint that it was so felt by the names and tribal origins of the speakers
in the great religious discussion?
(2) As to the Arabisms and Aramaisms of the language of _Job_ (see
Appendix). Jerome already says that his own translation follows none of
the ancients, but reproduces, now the words, now the sense, and now
both, ‘ex ipso hebraico arabicoque sermone et interdum syro.’ In the
17th and 18th centuries, De Dieu, Bochart, and above all Schultens made
it a first principle in the study of _Job_ to illustrate it from Aramaic
and especially Arabic. Schultens even describes the language as not so
much Hebrew, as Hebræo-Arabic, and says that it breathes the true and
unmixed genius of Arabia. This is every way an exaggeration, and yet,
after all reasonable deductions, our poem will stand out from the Old
Testament volume by its foreign linguistic affinities. It is not enough
to say that the Arabisms and Aramaisms have from the first formed part
of the Hebrew vocabulary, and were previously employed only because the
subjects of the other books did not call for their use. Unless a more
thorough study of Assyrian should prove that the Arabism (for of these I
am chiefly thinking) belonged to northern as well as to southern
Semitic, it will surely be more natural to suppose that the author of
_Job_ replenished his vocabulary from Arabic sources. There is not a
little in the phraseology of _Job_ which is still as obscure as in the
days of Ibn Ezra, but which receives, or may yet receive, illustration
from the stores of written and spoken Arabic.[119]
May we not, in short, conjecture that the poem of Job is a grand attempt
to renovate and enrich the Hebrew language?[120] If so, the experiment
can hardly have been made before the great subversion of Hebrew
traditions at the Babylonian captivity. Residence in a foreign land
produces a marked effect on one’s language. Recollect too that our
author was a literary man. Internal evidence converges to show that Job
belonged to that great literary movement among the wise men,
philosophers, or humanists, to which we shall have to refer Prov. i-ix.,
the Wisdom of Sirach, and the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Before leaving this subject, let us notice the parallels to descriptions
in the speeches of Jehovah in the Arabian poets, who show the same
attention to the striking phenomena of earth and sky as the author of
these speeches. The Arabian tone and colouring of the descriptions of
animals in _Job_ has been already remarked upon by Alfred von Kremer in
vol. ii. of his _Culturgeschichte des Orients_. Is it possible to
conceive that those sketches of the wild goat, the wild ass, and the
horse, were not written by one who was familiar with the sight? Or that
the author had not observed the habits of the ostrich, when he penned
his lines on the ostrich’s neglect of her eggs? Or that his interest in
astronomy was not deepened by the spectacle of a night-sky in Arabia? Or
that personal experience of caravan life did not inspire the touching
figure in vi. 15-20? And observation of the mines in the Sinaitic
peninsula[121] the fine description of xxviii. 1-10? It is possible that
some of these passages may be due to other travelled ‘wise men;’ but
this only increases the probability that the Hebrew movement was
strengthened by contact with similar movements abroad. The ‘wise men’
had certainly travelled far and wide among Arabic-speaking populations,
though nowhere perhaps were they so much at home as in Idumæa and its
neighbourhood. As M. Derenbourg remarks, ‘Les riantes oasis, au milieu
des contrées désolées, environnant la mer Morte, étaient la demeure des
sages et des rêveurs. Bien des siècles après l’auteur de Job, les
Esséniens et les Thérapeutes se plongeaient là dans la vie
contemplative, ou bien ils se livraient à une vie simple, active et
dégagée de tout souci mondain. Encore un peu plus tard cette contrée
devint probablement le berceau de la kabbale ou du mysticisme juif.’
Footnote 115:
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.)
Footnote 116:
_Opera_, Delarue, ii. 851, _ap._ Delitzsch, _Iob_, p. 603.
Footnote 117:
_Opera minora_ (Lugd. Bat. 1769), p. 497.
Footnote 118:
Kremer, _Herrschende Ideen des Islams_, p. 27 &c.; Kuenen, _Hibbert
Lectures_, p. 48 &c.
Footnote 119:
Prof. Socin once observed to me how useful spoken Arabic would be
found for this purpose.
Footnote 120:
Arabic literary history presents an example of literary experimenting
which will at once occur to the mind—the ‘Maqamas’ or Sessions of
Hariri.
Footnote 121:
On the mining passage see further p. 40. Stickel, however, though
inclining to the above view, thinks that it is still not quite
impossible that Palestinian mines are meant, comparing Edrisi’s
statements on the iron-mines of Phœnicia and the words of the
Deuteronomist in Deut. viii. 9. _Das Buch Hiob_, pp. 265-6.