years before most emphatically declared that no living man was capable of translating a single section. Mr. Birch would not have allowed such a promise to be made if he were not perfectly able to fulfil it. There is no doubt that when his translation appears, many passages of it may call forth the objections of competent critics, but the discussion will certainly not turn upon its general accuracy, and even scholars much inferior to Mr. Birch may be enabled through his labours to correct oversights or inaccuracies of detail. ART. IV.-An Essay upon the Date of the Book of Job. Apparent TH hopeless the sub ject. HERE are some controversies which have lasted so long, that it looks like a mixture of foolishness and ness of of presumption to say anything with a view to settling them. The question, at what time Job lived, is a question which to many readers will doubtless appear to involve a controversy of this nature. This is not the question upon which it is proposed directly to enter here: the question we are about to discuss is, at what time the Book of Job was written, and not at what time the man Job lived. If, in discussing the former question, we do anything towards settling the latter, it must be remem bered that it will only be done incidentally. Of course, the greater approximations we make to knowing the date of an author, the better position shall we be in for understanding the drift of his book, the circumstances to which he makes his characters allude, the anachronisms he would be guilty of if he put into their mouths things later than the age he intended them to belong to, and the unfitness of quotations taken from authors who lived long after the date he meant to represent. Still the questions are two questions: the age of the author is one thing, and of his hero (so to call him) is another. But even our attempt to decide the age of the author of the Book of Job will seem to many readers to involve an interminable question. Surely, it will be thought, the data upon which such a decision can be founded have been so long before the world, that, if any really reliable decision could be formed, it must long ago have been discovered. the age A man who pretends to come to a conclusion upon such a subject, must, it will be urged, be either foolish or presumptuous. I. Bearing of critical science upon the question. it insisted upon. 2. Nevertheless, as there are people who have dis- Critical cussed the Book of Job without possessing even the com- nature of monest knowledge of Hebrew, it does not seem absurd to express a conviction, that as in other cases, so in this, folly and presumption admit of degrees: the conclusions here come to are at least results from the study of the original Hebrew. The question, when the author lived, must be of some weight in deciding the drift and intention of the Book. And this question is a purely critical question, as much as the question when Galen, or Athenæus, or Lucian lived. It must be decided, if it can be decided at all, by a study of the original texts, the phraseology employed, the events alluded to, or the authors quoted in either of these cases A critical question, in fact, is a question to be decided by the observation of certain phenomena; and although a man who has some of the cognitions requisite for observing those phenomena may easily overrate his powers, it seems quite certain that the man who has none of them must be as a blind man arguing about colour. A critical question is to a great degree parallel with any scientific question: as utter ignorance of chemistry disqualifies a man from discussing a mineralogical question, so does utter ignorance of Hebrew disqualify a man from discussing the date (or consequently the drift) of the book before us. But directly we begin to regard the question as a critical or a scientific question, it will appear possible for a person possessed of limited attainments in Hebrew to observe and to group phenomena which have not struck others. It is no more presumptuous, in such a case, to think one sees a critical matter in a new light, than it is to think that one sees a scientific matter in a new light. Men of greater critical, or greater scientific powers, may prove that light to be an ignis fatuus; but they will hardly accuse one of sheer folly and presumption, if they find one not wholly ignorant of the data upon which alone a conclusion can be arrived at. 3. But it is with criticism as with other sciences: ex- Extranetraneous prepossessions and a desire of ulterior results ous prewarp the mind, and the scientific man is often condemned posses sions this use of it. by unscientific judges. A jury of critics too is not the only against tribunal before which an aimer at criticism must expect to have his merits tried. Yet in a case like the present it is surely clear, that, until we have decided, as well as we can, the purely critical question, "when did the author of this book live", we are not at all in a fair position for drawing any ulterior conclusions from the contents of the book. To take a parallel case, a writer on liturgical antiquities might draw certain ulterior conclusions from the works known as the Clementines or the Areopagitica; it is his business to do so. But it is not his business, nor the business of any science but that of criticism, to determine at what period those books were probably composed. Criticism must hand over to other sciences conclusions which they may or may not see fit to use; but criticism must come at those conclusions by its own principles, much as chemistry, or geology, or astronomy come to conclusions about matter, or the Deluge, or the cælum empyræum. Whether the adept in any other science likes these conclusions or not, is nothing to the critic; he has no infallible principles to go by; he gives the results of a human science in a certain stage of advancement, which results posterity may possibly overthrow. But he, as a critic, has a right to see that criticism has fair play, has a right to see that his conclusions are not set aside simply and solely on the strength of prepossessions extraneous to his own science. To put the matter in an English way, he may claim at least to be tried by his peers. Apparent 4. Prepossessions of this sort are sometimes local. In origin of this part of the world, the dominant opinion about the them to Book of Job perhaps is, in spite of a few learned disbe found claimers, that both the person of Job and the author of the book are of remote and patriarchal antiquity. The probable source of this opinion is to be found in an addition made to the end of the book by the Greek version, commonly called the Septuagint. From this source the opinion flooded' all such commentators as had no knowledge at all, or a very slender one, of the original Hebrew. To identify Job and Jobab as the Septuagint does, is to practise upon the ignorance of a person who knows nothing of Hebrew letters or etymologies. Yet this is the remotest date to which that opinion can be referred. But as that version bears throughout the book the most un 1 See Pererius in Genes., p. 859. drian version. mistakeable marks of critical inaccuracy, a critic, as such, cannot attach any weight to an historical opinion which it incidentally expresses. Neither will it in his eyes be of any avail to say, that unless the Alexandrian translator had some clear tradition to that effect, he never would have identified Job and Jobab. Because the critic will reply, in the that while he does see positive inaccurateness through- Alexanout the version, he does not know what particular object the author of that part of the Greek version might have had for making such a statement; but that he is sure that the original was (what a critic would call) tampered with by such persons in other cases, to suit an Alexandrian public, e.g., when "angel of the great council" is put for "counsellor, mighty God". It should, however, be observed, that this apparently continued to be an Alexandrian view, if Ecclesiasticus does not give Job a place among Jewish saints. On Tobias, see below, §. 38. But it is strictly within the province of criticism to point out how men, who believed the Septuagint inspired, would adopt and propagate an opinion on a mere historical question, noways authorized by the original. We ought, says Aristotle, not only to point out the true, but the origin of the false view; for, to do this, contributes to the confirmation of the true. A critic, as such, must go by the 'Hebrew reality', as even the Fathers call it: to discuss the nature and extent of different kinds of inspiration is a thing entirely out of his province. alone 5. Let us then proceed to the question with a firm conviction, that truth by whatever source it be arrived at can never ultimately clash with truth. But let us remember also another sage remark of the Stagyrite, that we must not expect mathematical demonstrations where nothing but moral certainty is to be had. If, on the one Moral hand, it is as absurd to go to uncritical ages or extra- certainty neous sciences for an opinion upon a purely critical ques- possible tion, as to consult the College of Surgeons about a dis- in the puted will: on the other, it is also absurd to quarrel with case. criticism, because its results are not absolute certainties. In the case before us, perhaps, every single proof which is advanced admits of being combated, if a person will persist in looking at them singly, and isolating them; their strength lies in their combined force. Yet, though all men have heard, when children, of the old man and the bundle of sticks, many men, when grown old, forget to apply the lesson which it teaches, and to reflect that General likeli Jewish items weak in themselves, may yet, when taken together, be incapable of being broken. The state of opinion then among us, in regard to the book before us, forms a local prepossession against a person who attempts to handle the matter critically, strong enough, it is conceived, to justify this prelude to what we have to offer. 6. In treating this question, men have sometimes indulged by far too much in considering what might have hood of a been, to the neglect of what is likely to have been. origin. "Job might have talked pure Hebrew in the days of Melchizedek", would be a statement of which this remark would hold good. But this is not likely: and here we mean to rule our course by what seems likely. Now there is not (it is believed) one atom of trustworthy evidence that any nation but the Jewish nation ever spoke or wrote in the Jews' language, as it is called in Isaias, xxxvi. Himjaritic, Palmyrene, Abyssinian, Babylonish, Punic, and even Etruscan,' inscriptions have attracted the notice of Semitic scholars. Of all the Semitic dialects, none probably came so near to the Hebrew as the Punic (see Mover's Punisch. T. im Plautus, p. 5; Opferwesen der Karthager, p. 16; and Renan. Hist. des L. Semit., p. 178; Augustin c. lit. Petil., ii. §. 239, Punicæ linguæ consona alia Hebræa permulta, et pene omnia). Yet, if both Punic and Hebrew were the offspring of an earlier Canaanitish language, the Punic we have contains abundant marks of having become so distinct from Hebrew, that it is probable that an unlearned Jew would not have understood it. And this will seem truer, if we reflect that, on viewing cognate languages from a distance, either of time or of linguistic character, we are apt to overrate similarities and to underrate dissimilarities, so that Hebrew and Syriac, for example, appear to us far more alike than they would to an Arab or an Ethiopian. But even supposing that some unknown tribe might have written and spoken as beautiful Hebrew as that in which the book of Job is Illustra composed, still the likely thing is, that a book written in good Hebrew is the work of a Jew. If we could draw from the bottom of the Mediterranean a Greek MS., tions of it: up 2 Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibliog. p. 120, laughs at Stickel's essay, Das Etruskische, etc.: here it is alluded to as usefully bringing together various specimens of the rare Semitic forms, even if it be ein höchst unglückliches Versuch. See also Zeit. der deutsche morgenl. Gesells., xiii. p. 289. |