Egyptian Influence Upon Book of Job

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

The “strong Egyptian influences” in the Book of Job, as most emphatically argued back in 1921, by the Rev. G. Knight in Nile and Jordan, but not really developed much since - at least so far as I am aware - become rather intriguing in light of the (admittedly rather incredible) view expressed in “The Testament of Job” that the holy man was a king of Egypt.

Less incredible would it be to imagine that Job had, during the course of his long life, held some sort of official position in Egypt. 

 

Introduction

 

I had quoted the Rev. Knight in an old article, “Job: Arabian Sheikh or Israelite Sage?”, regarding the historical confusion associated with the mysterious Book of Job:

 

It is apparent from reading old and new commentaries on the Book of Job …that, after all this time, the holy man has still not been firmly located to any specific historical era. Job comes across as being, like Melchizedek, profoundly mysterious; someone who just appears 'out of nowhere', without a known beginning. The Rev. Frank Knight summed it up when, referring to the book's historical details, he wrote …:

 

The authorship, date, and place of composition of the Book of Job constitute some of the most keenly contested and most uncertain problems in Biblical Criticism. There is perhaps no book in the Canon of Scripture to which more diverse dates have been assigned. Every period of Jewish history, from BC 1400 to BC 150, has had its advocates as that to which this mysterious and magnificent poem must be relegated, and this criticism ranges over 1200 years of uncertainty.

 

In this article I shall be attempting to narrow down dramatically that "1200" year period "of uncertainty", to a specific era, using a combination of Syrian legends about Job and the Book of Tobit.

[End of quote]

 

Since then, I have written fairly extensively on Job, my key article regarding his identity and era being:

 

Job's Life and Times

 

https://www.academia.edu/3787850/Jobs_Life_and_Times

 

in which the long-lived Job is located firmly to the neo-Assyrian era (C8th-C7th’s BC).

Such an historical anchoring of the person, Job, was long overdue because biblical scholars have not been able to decide if Moses, or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or someone during the Babylonian Exile, or even an author in the Greek Age in Palestine, might have written the book. With the person Job now located to the C8th-C7th’s BC, as I think, then Moses, Solomon and Isaiah, for a start, can be erased from the list of possible authors of the book about the holy man Job.

Basically I, in this present article, wish to recall the marvellous evidences of Rev. Knight (he calls them “watermarks”) for the Egyptian influences in the Book of Job, which important contribution does not seem to be freely accessible on the Net.

Though I must immediately disagree with his view that (p. 380) Job’s home of “Uz cannot have been in the Hauran (in which nevertheless there are still a number of legends associated with the name of Job …. Uz was regarded as lying near Egypt …”.).

I have argued in the above article that the Hauran valley in Bashan (Transjordan) was indeed the home of Job; though he had also lived in Nineveh and other places during his very long and much-travelled life. And he may have served Assyria as an official in Egypt as well.

Apart from this small matter of geography, there is little else of the Rev. Knight’s article with which I would disagree. Though not everything that he attributes specifically to Egypt would be the sole boast of that nation, but may also be common to other countries.

I now reproduce his fine Egyptological arguments, adding occasional comments or clarifications where I think that these might be necessary.

Nile and Jordan

 

Itemising Stock

 

P. 381: “When we read that Job’s substance was 7,000 sheep, and 3,000 camels, and 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 she-asses, and a very great household [Job 1:3], we are reminded of the very careful methods adopted by the Egyptians to estimate and record the amount of their farm-stock. In one inscription where herdsmen are represented as on their way to render to their master an exact enumeration of the cattle over which they have had charge, we find the figure 834 placed in hieroglyphic over the oxen, 220 over the cows, 3,234 over the goats, 760 over the asses, and 974 over the sheep …. Thus we find that the practice of precise enumeration of stock was a well-recognized Egyptian custom, and although the figures for Job’s farm-stead are given in round numbers, the same principle is seen at work”.

 

Comment: Enumeration of stock is probably, though, not a purely Egyptian practice, as it was apparently done by the Mesopotamians as well. The Assyrians, for instance, were very precise record keepers.

 

The Egyptian Boil

 

P. 381: “The name applied to the malady from which Job is said to have suffered affords another evidence of Egyptian influence. Satan smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown [Job 2:7]. It is the Hebrew word sh’hin …, which is not only used to describe the boils of the sixth Egyptian plague [Exodus 9:9], but is distinctively indicated in Deuteronomy as being an Egyptian disease. The Lord shall smite thee with the (sh’hin) botch (or boil) of Egypt; [Deuteronomy 28:7] and again The Lord shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs with a sore boil (sh’hin) whereof thou canst not be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the crown of thy head [Deuteronomy 28:35]. The word sh’hin is pure Egyptian. It means an abscess, and we find it used in the celebrated Papyrus Ebers [xxxviii], the well-known medical treatise of the XVIIIth Dynasty, about B.C. 1450 [now revised to c. 950 BC], wherein are prescribed certain remedies for what was acknowledged to be a disease common in the Nile Valley …. [It is used to describe Hezekiah’s boil, Isa. 3:21]”.

 

“Lucky” and Unlucky” Days

 

Pp. 381-382: “When we pass to the third chapter we find reference to “lucky’ and “unlucky” days of birth quite in the Egyptian style. Doubtless the idea was current in most ancient nations, but in Egypt it attained special prominence, and Egyptian astrologers were famed for their skill in diagnosing the relative merits and demerits of certain days. In regard to the day of his own birth Job exclaims Let that day be darkness, let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it [Job 3:1-6]. Then in his curse he continued Lo, let that night be barren: let no joyful voice come therein: let them curse it that curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up leviathan [Job 3:7, 8]. Here we come in contact with the favourite Egyptian notion of a vast serpent or dragon which was believed to have the power of causing eclipses of the sun, or moon, by enveloping these orbs within its folds and swallowing them up. Magicians were understood to be able to excite this demon from its lair, and to urge it to its dread work [Davidson, Job, p. 20]. It is the same vast leviathan to whom Job in a later chapter again makes reference: He stirreth up the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab: by his spirit the heavens are garnished: his hand hath pierced the swift serpent [Job 26:12, 13]. Here while Job describes Jehovah’s might and sovereignty over this dragon, at the same time it is evident that he admits the existence of this mythological conception. The belief in the power of this serpent was widespread in Egypt. The legend of the misery of Ra, the Sun-god, through a bite inflicted by a serpent belongs to the same cycle of thought …”.

 

Dream and Spectre of Eliphaz [Job’s would-be consoler]

 

P. 382: “It is remarkable to find on an ostrakon discovered in 1888 at Elephantine by Erman an inscription in Aramaic … describing a dream and the apparition of a spectre in language closely similar to that of Eliphaz. Eliphaz said When deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof, a form was before mine eyes: there was silence, and I heard a voice [4:13-16]. The description on the ostrakon is “Now behold, I saw in my first dream, and from that time I was excited and wandering: a spectre appeared, and said to me “Hail!””

 

“Houses of clay”

 

“It is likely that the author of Job had before him the spectacle of the ordinary mud huts of the poorer classes in Egypt when he wrote Behold, he putteth no trust in his servants, and his angels he chargeth with folly: how much more them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed like the moth! [Job 4: 18, 19]. The houses of the Egyptian fellahin were always made of Nile mud, and any extra high inundation of the river, or a sudden downpour of rain, or the impact of a hailstorm with strong wind, would cause them to dissolve and disappear. The expression is paralleled by another later on: He hath dwelt in houses which no man would inhabit, which were ready to become heaps [Job 15:28]. The huts of the dwellers in the Mesopotamian Valley were of entirely different material. Osiers, willows, and a wooden framework entered into their composition: but the poor cultivator of the soil of Egypt had merely the mud of the Nile wherewith to erect his home. The houses were so frail that Job declared thy could be dug through by nocturnal robbers In the dark they dig through houses [Job 24:6]”.

 

Snaring with a net

 

“We find another Egyptian reference in Job’s taunt Yea, ye would cast (lots) upon the fatherless [Job 6:27]. The true meaning would rather seem to be Ye let fall the net upon the fatherless, in allusion to the favourite Egyptian methods of snaring birds by enticing them within a certain space, and then causing a net to collapse and pin them to the ground”.

 

Military service

 

“Once more, in Job’s complaint Is there not a warfare to man upon the earth? [Job 7:1] we come upon a reference to a feature of Egyptian social life. Every Egyptian soldier, whether on duty or not, was allowed a certain portion of land, free from all charge and tribute. But he was liable to be called on, when any emergency arose, to take up arms, and march wherever his military services were required. Hence we find Job enquiring “Hath not man a soldiership to serve upon earth?” …”.

 

Archery

 

Pp. 382-383: “Again, when Job complains to God, Why hast Thou set me as a mark for Thee? [Job 7:20] he is seemingly alluding to what was a favourite sport with Egyptian ladies and gentlemen – the shooting with bows and arrows at a target, as is shown frequently on the monuments. He protests that God seems to be using him as a target in this way in grim and cruel sport”.

 

The Scourge

 

P. 383: “When Job remarks, If the scourge slay suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent [Job 9:23] he is referring to the terrible instrument of torture which is so often seen in the hand of the Pharaohs as a symbol of their powers to execute justice and punishment. Cases were not infrequent where accused or condemned persons died suddenly under the lash. The expression is thoroughly consonant with Egyptian customs. Similarly with a further remark, Let him take his rod away from me [Job 9:34]; for beating with the rod, or the bastinado, was a very firmly implanted Egyptian punishment”.

 

Papyrus plant

 

“A further evidence of acquaintance with Egypt is seen in Bildad’s question, Can the rush grow up without mire? Can the flag grow without water? [Job 8:11]. The Hebrew word for rush – gomeh … is rightly translated by the LXX [papyros], for, as Driver admits [Book of Job, p. 22], it refers to the papyrus plant which was such a well-known feature of Nilotic vegetation. Similarly the word flag … akhu … is the recognized technical expression for the luscious “reed-grass” which borders the great Egyptian river …. It is the same word as is used to describe the meadowland in which the seven lean kine of Pharaoh’s dream were feeding [Genesis 41: 2, 18]. So well known were the general characteristics of this “reed-grass” that Bildad could use it as a simile to enforce his point: whilst it is yet in its greenness and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb [Job 8:12]. The illustration would be pointless in a land like Babylonia where neither papyrus nor reed-grass grew, but it is entirely appropriate in the mouth of a resident in the Nile Valley”.

 

Postrunner

 

“A similar reference to the papyrus is found in the next chapter, where Job says, My days are swifter than a postrunner, they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships [Job 9:25, 26]. The system of posts established by Darius I throughout the length and breadth of the Persian Empire was maintained with regularity under the succeeding monarchs ….The like of these postal arrangements had never before been seen, and only by means of this effective organization, whereby all the far-flung provinces of the loosely assorted empire were closely connected with Susa, was any control exercised over a realm which stretched from Ethiopia to India. The expression swifter than a postrunner suggests the posts on horseback, riding on swift steeds that were used in the King’s service, bred of the stud [Esther 8:10], which in the time of Xerxes carried the edicts of the King to the utmost realms of his domain. Job’s simile is therefore most suitable to the Persian period”.

 

Comment: Probably the Assyrian kings, such as Ashurbanipal had already developed a swift messenger system throughout the empire.

 

Egyptian papyrus canoes

 

Pp. 383-384: “The swift ships, again, do not refer to great sea craft which to an observer on shore rapidly diminish in size as they disappear beneath the far horizon. Driver … translates the phrase “they shoot by like skiffs of reed”. Not a few writers of antiquity, as Theophrastus … Lucan … Pliny… and others, speak of the light Egyptian canoes, formed of papyrus, in which the natives of the Nile were accustomed to dart down the rapid current with remarkable velocity, like a Red Indian in a Canadian cataract, using merely a single paddle to propel their frail craft …. Similarly, Isaiah speaks of the Ethiopians sending ambassadors by the sea (i.e. the Nile) even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters [Isaiah 18:2]. The conception of the swiftness and brevity of human life, as symbolized by these fragile and rapidly moving boats, was entirely natural and appropriate to one who had lived in Egypt, and who had seen how precipitate was the descent of these tiny skiffs. But of what force could such an illustration be to a resident in Babylonia where vessels of an entirely different construction were used – wooden frames covered with skins and coated with bitumen, or inflated pigskins formed into a raft which descended the slow-moving Euphrates with infinite leisureliness? …. Again, how could such an illustration appeal to dwellers in Palestine where there are no rivers capable of being navigated by vessels of this description, and where papyrus boats were unknown? Or still more, what point could there be in the simile to residents in Arabia, where there are no streams at all, but merely vas stretches of sandy desert varied by a few oases? The reference, however, is thoroughly Egyptian, and testifies to the “Egypticity” of the book”.

 

Egyptian agricultural methods

 

P. 384: “The author of Job, again, shows intimate acquaintance with Egyptian methods of agriculture. He speaks of the wicked as being cut off as the tops of the ears of corn [Job 24:24] with reference to the Egyptian practice of cutting the straw of the standing wheat not at the base of the stalk, but at he top, close under the ears. He is also acquainted with the use of the Egyptian threshing machine: He spreadeth as it were a threshing wain upon the mire [Job 41:30]. These agricultural features were purely Nilotic, and were entirely unfamiliar to dwellers in Chaldean lands”.

 

Rahab

 

Pp. 384-385: “In the expression used by Job, God will not withdraw his anger: the helpers of Rahab do stoop under Him [Job 9:13], we recognize another Egyptian reference, or at least one which, by transference to the soil of Egypt, became Nilotic. The Babylonian Creation-epos, which in its origin goes back to a very remote antiquity, describes the victory of Marduk the Creator over Tiamat, the primeval sea-dragon, and her eleven “helpers” ….The myth crossed from Babylonia to Egypt either as part of the original theological furniture carried from Chaldea by the primitive immigrants into the Nile Valley: ….or through the gradual infiltration of Semito-Babylonian conceptions in the course of the centuries subsequent to the establishment of the Dynastic Egyptians …. In any case, we find in historic times the epithet “Rahab” thought of first as a furious sea monster in the Red Sea, and latterly applied wholly to Egypt herself. Thus, He stirreth up the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab [Job 26:12]: again, Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon [Isaiah 51:9], where the reference is to the Egyptians typified as a sea-monster who were drowned in the Red Sea at the Exodus: and again, Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain [Psalm 89:10], which in all likelihood refers to Egypt, just as in the 74^th Psalm we read, Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons (or sea-monsters) in the waters: Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces: Thou gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness [Psalm 74:13, 14], where the reference again seems to be to the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Isaiah similarly poured his sarcastic scorn on the boastfulness and unreliability of the Pharaoh, Egypt helpeth in vain and to no purpose, therefore have I called her “Rahab that sitteth still” [Isaiah 30:7]. And the Psalmist, thinking of Ezekiel’s description of Egypt as a great mythological monster lying hid in the waters [Ezekiel 29:3], gives the Nilotes the actual name of “Rahab”, I will make mention of Rahab as among them that know me [Psalm 87:4]. Putting all these passages together we surely cannot fail to discover traces of Egyptian colouring when in Job we find references to this primeval monster ….

 

Pillars of Heaven

 

P. 385: “In the expression of Job, The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke [Job 26:11], we are once again in contact with another Egyptian conception. The view current in the Nile Valley in ancient times was that the heavens were supported on pillars”.

 

Doubling

 

“Still a further Egyptianism is seen in the phrase which in the A.V. reads, Oh that God would show thee the secrets of wisdom that they are double to that which is [Job 11:6]. Herz ….has pointed out that the alterations suggested by Merx, Cheyne, Bickell, Beer and others, on the phrase “that they are double” …. are quite unnecessary …. These critics maintain that to assert that God is merely doubly wise, and no more than that, is against Hebrew usage. But in Egypt as applied to Ra the expression was quite common. “Hail to thee, Ra Harmakhis, Khepera, who art self-begotten, twice beautiful” …. Similarly, Thoth is called “twice-great” …. It is quit possible, therefore, that in using the language he does, the author of Job may have been adapting to his own purposes a recognized Egyptian mode of magnifying the greatness of the deity”.

 

Thieves Prospering

 

“Again, in Job’s remark The tents of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, into whose hand God bringeth abundantly [Job 12:6], we have an allusion to the extraordinary Egyptian practice that thieves, burglars, and night prowlers were under the protection of the Government, and therefore enjoyed security from punishment. Professional thieves registered themselves with their chief, and if anything was stolen, the aggrieved party applied to the chief who, on payment of one quarter of their value, restored to the owner his purloined goods. The chiefs even had a fixed remuneration from Government as if they were heads of police …”.

 

Hierarchy

 

“When, once more, Job speaks of counsellors being led away spoiled, and judges [Job 12:17] made fools, he refers to the outstanding feature of Egyptian civilization, wherein their judicial dignitaries occupied such an important place in official life. When he adds, He looseth the bonds of kings [Job 12:18], he refers to the royal sash or apron, which was part of the regal equipment of the Pharaohs, and which was usually richly ornamented, emblazoned with the royal name, and tied on with straps …. It is to be observed also that next to the King, Job places the priests [Job 12:19] who are led away spoiled. This is in strict accordance with Egyptian custom which ranked the hierarchy of the temples as coming immediately after the Pharaoh himself. Only third in precedence came the princes [Job 12:21]”.

 

Pyramids and mastabas

 

P. 386: “Turning now to the eschatological views of the book, we come across many indications of the author’s familiarity with Egyptian conceptions. Job mourns, Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly … for now should I have lien down and been quiet: I should have slept: then had I been at rest: with Kings and counsellors of the earth, which built up waste places for themselves, or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver [Job 3:11-15]. The word for waste places, Driver … admits may quite legitimately be rendered “pyramids” in which Egypt’s mighty dead were entombed amid the sands of the desert: while by “houses” may be intended the “mastabas” of the nobles, in which were stored many articles of gold and silver for the benefit of the soul of the dead magnate in the world of shades. The author thus seems to have had intimate acquaintance with the practice of royal entombing in pyramids as maintained by the monarchs of the early Dynasties; while modern exploration has discovered many an underground “house” in which the mummy case of some great Court official was placed, surrounded with the richest furniture and most lavish gold ornaments that wealth could procure. As we have seen, the amount of gold and silver found in the subterranean burial chambers of the XVIIIth and subsequent Dynasties is bewildering and amazing”.

 

Sheol

 

“The description of the life of the soul in Sheol given by Job is strikingly paralleled by the references on Egyptian monuments to the state of the dead in Amenti, the Egyptian underworld. Job says, There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest: there the prisoners are at ease together: they hear not the voice of the taskmaster: the small and the great are there [Job 3:17-19]. It is remarkable that this expression, unique in the Old Testament, is to be found in an Egyptian papyrus …. A woman in Amenti is represented as describing to her husband on earth what she finds in the lower world. She says “As to the god who is here ‘Death Absolute’ is his name. He calleth on all, and all men come to obey him, trembling with fear before him. With him is no respect for gods or men; by him great ones are as little ones”.

In the Lay of the Harper, a poem in praise of death to which reference has already been made …, we find the same expressions. The poet speaks of “the land of Eternity, the just and fair, where terrors are not, wrangling is its abhorrence, not does any one gird himself against his fellows. In that land, free from foes, all our kinsmen rest. The children of millions of millions come thither every one, for none may tarry in the land of Egypt, none there is that does not pass yonder. The span of earthly things is as a dream, but a fair welcome awaits him who has reached the West”. …

But not only that. There is a curious misreading of this verse in the Septuagint which bears a strong Egyptian colouring. The Hebrew word for prisoners is … asîrim [Job 3:18]. But the Egyptian translators were puzzled with the idea that there should be prisoners in Sheol. They therefore interpreted the word as the plural of Osiris, in accordance with the ancient Nilotic belief that every good person at death became an Osiris. The LXX Version accordingly here reads [aiwnioi], the “immortals” …. Though the Version of the Alexandrian scribes is much later than the time of the actual composition of Job, it is nevertheless interesting to note in it the resuscitation here of an ancient religious conception of the Egyptians”.

 

The Cruel Lot of Prisoners

 

P. 387: “When Job asks, Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul: which long for death, but it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures, which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? [Job 3:20, 22] he was giving a marvellously close description of the miserable lot of Egyptian convicts condemned to labour in the gold mines. Diodorus … tells us that great numbers of poor wretches were sent by the Kings of Egypt into the mines where they perished in a short time. They were bound in fetters, and compelled to work day and night without intermission: they had barbarian soldiers set over them, whose language they could not understand, and with whom they could not therefore intrigue to be set at liberty: their task-masters drove them to their endless toil with curses and blows: with scarcely a rag of clothing, and practically starved, they were given no rest, but were kept at their labour with whips till they fell down and died: and every one who saw their intolerable anguish pitied them for their misery, and recognized how easily the captives longed for death as a treasure of more value than the gold for which they were compelled to dig. The passage is a lifelike portrait of the unspeakable wretchedness of these Egyptian convicts, and is evidently drawn by one who had studied their misery at first hand”.

 

More on Sheol

 

Pp. 387-388: “The view of Sheol throughout the Book of Job is homogeneous. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his home, neither shall his place know him any more [Job 7:9, 10]: I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness [Job 10:21, 22] ... Man lieth down and riseth not, till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep [Job 14:10] … If I look for Sheol as mine house, if I have spread my couch in the darkness … where then is my hope? … it shall go down to the bars of Sheol when once there is rest in the dust [Job 17:13, 16]. Comparing these views of the underworld with what the wife of Pasherenptah says to her living husband, the similarity of belief between the Egyptian creed and that of Job is at once manifest. “As to Amenti”, she says, “it is the land of heavy slumber and of darkness, an abode of sorrow for those who dwell there. They sleep in their forms: they wake not any more to see their brethren: they recognize not their father and their mother. Everyone on earth enjoys the water of life, but thirst is by me. The water cometh to him who remaineth on earth, but I thirst for the water which is by me. I know not where I am since I came into this spot: I weep for the water which passes by me. I weep for the breeze on the brink of the stream that through it my heart may be refreshed in its sorrow”. Salmond [The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 1895, p. 64] … has admirably summed up the Egyptian view of Amenti in these words, “To the Egyptian living in a land in which brilliant light and smiling skies made the joy of life, nothing was more suggestive of unrelieved loss and woe than an existence on which the sun could never shine: and no figure is oftener applied to the final fate of the condemned than that of exclusion from the light, banishment into utter darkness … Amenti was the land of heavy slumber, darkness, and sorrow: the water of life was for those who tarried on earth” …”.

 

Book of the Dead

 

Pp. 388-389: “Amongst no nation of antiquity was a sense of the inevitableness of death more developed than amongst the Egyptians. No sooner was a child born than his future tomb was begun to be prepared: and all through his career the thought of impending death was kept in the forefront. The great repository of Egyptian thought regarding what lies beyond the present life is contained in the celebrated Book of the Dead, or “Per-em-hru”, “The Coming Forth by Day” …. The work consist of many religious compositions of varying dates, commencing from the so-called “Pyramid Texts” of the tombs of Unas of the Vth Dynasty, and of Pepi I, Pepi II, Teta, and Merenra of the VIth Dynasty about B.C. 4400-4000 [comment: these dates now need to be lowered considerably on the time scale]. But even these inscriptions, remote in date as they are, must represent views vastly older, for in the time of the VIth Dynasty the scribes had already forgotten the real meaning of certain passages …. The “Pyramid Texts” continued in use as late as A.D. 200. During the XVIIIth Dynasty, however (i.e. from B.C. 1700 to 1400) [comment: these dates now need to be lowered considerably on the time scale], the priests of Amen at Thebes brought out a new collection of Texts dealing with the underworld, which forms the famous Theban Recension of the “Book of the Dead”. Under the XXVIth Dynasty, when the hegemony of Egypt had passed from Thebes to Sais, the priests of the temple of Neith issued a final edition of the same work which made its appearance about B.C. 600. The best copy, however, of this ancient composition is that known as the Papyrus Aní, bought by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1888, a magnificent new edition and translation of which appeared in 1913 bought out by Wallis Budge …. He gives the date B.C 1450 to Ani, the learned scribe who piously collected in this papyrus all the ideas, conceptions, beliefs, and faiths of the Egyptians in regard to the future of the soul after death, the nature of the gods, and the funeral ceremonies appropriate to one who has died.

Between this thesaurus of Egyptian views as to the underworld and the Book of Job there are not a few close correspondences. If we read in the Papyrus Aní “Thou knowest not when thou wilt die: death cometh to meet the babe at his mother’s breast, even as he meeteth the old man who hath finished his course”, we find Job also saying Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble: he cometh forth like a flower and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not [Job 14:12]. Similarly in a chapter of the Book of the Dead found inscribed on the linen mummy wrappings of Thothmes [Thutmose] III, these words occur: “Homage to thee, O my father Osiris: Thy flesh suffered no decay: there were no worms in thee, Thou didst not crumble away: Thou didst not wither away: Thou didst not become corruption and worms: I myself (Thothmes) am Khepera (i.e, the Rising Sun, a type of a dead body bursting into life again in a new and glorified form): I shall possess my flesh for ever: I shall not decay: I shall not crumble away: I shall not wither away: I shall not become corruption”, i.e., as Osiris, the Holy One, had not seen corruption, nor his body remained in Amenti, so the devout follower of Osiris would similarly escape corruption and obtain immortality.

Not only is this a remarkable parallel to the statement of Psalm 16, My flesh shall dwell in safety, for Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption [Psalm 16:9, 10], but it is significantly in close correspondence with two utterances by Job: If I have said to corruption ‘Thou are my father’, to the worm ‘Thou art my mother and my sister’, where then is my hope? [Job 17:14, 15] and But I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth, and after my skin hath been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another [Job 19:25-27]. The great anxiety of the ancient Egyptians was to arrest the process of physical decay in the case of those that had died, for the physical body (Khat) was considered necessary for the enjoyment of the soul (Ka) in the underworld. But what is specially noteworthy is the thought in the minds of both the ancient Egyptians and of Job that death does not end all, but that there is immortality beyond the grave for those who, in the one case, follow Osiris, and, in the other case, are attached to God: and further, that there is a body to be tenanted by the soul, after life on earth has ceased. In presence of the clear statements of the Pyramid Texts and the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead, it is impossible to assert that the immortality, or at least the survival, of the soul after death was not believed in 4,000 [sic] years before Christ. That we should find references in the Book of Job to this belief need not surprise us, for conceptions akin to those attributed to Job were current in Egypt millenniums before the Christian era.

But further: nothing is more characteristic of Egyptian beliefs as to the future judgment of the soul than the scene described in the Book of the Dead, wherein the heart is weighed in the great balance which the ibis-headed Thoth reads and records. The heart was deposited in one scale-pan, the feather of Maat (Truth) in the other. Sins were supposed to weigh down the scale wherein the heart lay. The heart required to be light, if it was to pass the bar of judgment successfully …. In the tomb of Menna, for example, while Horus tests the tongue of the weighing machine to see if Menna’s heart in the scale-pan balances equally with Maat, Menna appeals to his heart to stand by him, and not to bear witness against him in this dread day of trial …. “Pleasant”, he says, “it is for thee, pleasant the hearing on the day of weighing of words”. It is remarkable that this is the very phraseology employed by Job: Doth not the Almighty see my ways and number all my steps? If I have walked with vanity, and my foot hath hasted to deceit, let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity [Job 31:4-6]. It is akin to the idea to which he had given earlier utterance, O that my vexation were but weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! [Job 6:1]. It would seem as if the author of Job had read the Book of the Dead, knew its contents, and was familiar with the scene of the weighting of actions in the underworld”.

 

Comment: Of course it would need to be determined chronologically if Job were dependent upon the Book of the Dead, or whether this particular section had been introduced into the Book of the Dead only as a result of Job’s famous trials – hence a late recension - since Job may have spent much time in Egypt.

Regarding the “Negative Confession”, in the next section, for instance, I have argued in my Job article above that Job had in fact received these moral maxims from his Israelite father, Tobit (who may not have had so much to do with Egypt).

 

Negative confession

 

Pp. 389-392: “For, still more, the Egyptian belief was that the dead man, when he appeared before Osiris for Judgment, was introduced by the jackal-headed Anubis, and that at the dread tribunal he had to make a solemn protestation of innocence in the so-called “Negative Confession”. He has to deny that he had been guilty of committing any one of 36 specified crimes (in later recensions increased to 42) …. The sins repudiated are not always the same in the various versions, but the variations are not of much consequence. Yet what impresses us forcibly is the fact that Job immediately before, and immediately after, he makes this request that his actions and heart might be weighed in God’s balance, also gives a catalogue of 36 sins which he too (like the Egyptian soul) repudiates, and which he denies having committed. Placing these two lists alongside each other, we see at once their fundamental similarity, and their temperamental, ethical, and racial differences …”. [Comment: Knight’s charts here will have to be consulted in the original, as they are not conducive to blog formatting].

P. 392: “Towards the end of this remarkable “Negative Confession” on the part of Job, we hear him saying: O that I had one to hear me! (Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me) and that I had the indictment which mine adversary hath written! [Job 31:35]. The language is taken from the judicial practice of Egypt, according to which both the charge and the defence were laid before the court in writing …. Once more, therefore, we have here a watermark of Egyptian influence.

This close correspondence between Job’s apology for himself and the defence of the soul of an Egyptian before the bar of Osiris, is surely a token of some mutual dependence. That the author of Job was acquainted with the language of the Book of the Dead [or vice versa] seems evident. Yet what strikes us is the immeasurable superiority of the Biblical poem in its religious conceptions over the puerilities of the Egyptian composition, and the depth and intensity of the spiritual grasp of things in the Jewish writing in comparison with the shallow and superficial sense of wrong-doing in the Nilotic catalogue. There is nothing in the Egyptian Confession to correspond to Job’s manly and faithful introspection of his own heart, wherein he denies that he has inwardly lifted up himself when evil fell upon his enemy. It is here wherein we trace the subtle workings of God’s Holy Spirit which makes the distinction between an inspired and an uninspired piece of literature quite manifest and plain”.

 

Inscribed with an iron pen

 

Pp. 392-393: “Returning to the 19^th chapter, we find another allusion to Egyptian practices in Job’s exclamation – O that my words were now written! O that they were inscribed in a book! That with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! [Job 19: 23, 24]. It is a reference to methods of preserving records that were customary in the Nile Valley, but quite unknown in Mesopotamia where clay tablets and cylinders were in use. The only carvings on rocks known in the Lower Euphrates Valley are those executed by Gudea and by Naram-Sin at Telloh about B.C. 3500 [comment: this date will now need to be lowered significantly]: and a great stele of Hammurabi (about B.C. 2100 [comment: this date will now need to be lowered significantly]) which was discovered, not in Chaldea at all, but at Susa in Persia. The language of Job here is however quite appropriate in the mouth of one who was familiar with the literary methods followed by the dwellers on the Nile, where steles of stone covered with inscriptions were ubiquitous, and where rock sculptures were to be seen in all directions ….

It is remarkable that Zophar’s saying regarding the wicked man finds an exact illustration in the Egyptian monuments. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of brass shall strike him through. He draweth it forth, and it cometh out of his body: yea, the glittering point cometh out of his gall [Job 20:24]. In a lifelike painting on one of the tombs, a warrior is shown striking a fugitive soldier with the sharp point of his bow – not with the arrow, and the “glittering point” of it pierces his chest and comes out in the gall. It is almost as if the author of Job were describing this identical scene as he had studied it in a mural decoration …”.

 

Laying hand on mouth

 

P. 393: “When Job said to his “friend” to suffer him to speak, he used the expression, Lay your hands upon your mouth [Job 21:5]. It is the Egyptian mode of inculcating silence. The Greeks used the placing of the forefinger to the mouth as a symbol of silence, but the Egyptian method was to symbolize the action by placing the whole hand. This is shown in the well-known fowling scene, where a man, crouching down, orders silence by thus covering his mouth”.

 

Stately funerals

 

“There seems also to be a reference to the stately funeral scenes which Egypt loved to see carried out with the utmost dignity and importance in the case of a wealthy Theban grandee when we read Yet shall he be borne to the grave and shall keep watch over the tomb: the clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and all men shall draw after him, as there were innumerable before him [Job 21:32, 33]”.

 

Deity’s Chair of State

 

“When Job complains Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat! [Job 23:3] he is evidently thinking of God as he is frequently depicted in the Egyptian monuments. The deity is represented sitting in a chair of state, and the Pharaoh is shown approaching him on bended knee”.

 

Land of Ophir

 

“Another allusion to African influence is recognized in Eliphaz words, Lay thou thy treasure in the dust, and the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks, and the Almighty shall be thy treasure, and precious silver unto thee [Job 22:24, 25]. If, as is now generally believed, Ophir is to be located in Mashonaland opposite Madagascar … where the vast remans of the gold mines of Zimbabwe have recently been explored … it would seem that in this reference we have a further indication that our author was acquainted with Egyptian affairs, for the Mashonaland mines were worked seemingly by Nilotic enterprise. The word Ophir suggests Afr-ica [others have even suggested Peru]; and Carl Peters believes that the whole continent derived its name from its connection with the gold mines of Ophir …”.

 

Mining techniques

 

P. 394: “This intimate acquaintance with Egypt is further proved by the author’s famous description of mining as carried on in hi day: - [Job 28:1-11]

 

Surely there is a mine for silver

And a place for gold which they refine.

Iron is taken out of the earth

And brass is molten out of the stone.

Man setteth an end to darkness

And searcheth out to the furthest bound

The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death.

He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn:

They are forgotten by the foot that passeth by:

They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro.

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread:

And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire.

The stones therefore are the places of sapphires

And it hath dust of gold.

That path no bird of prey knoweth,

Neither hath the falcon’s eye seen it:

The proud beasts have not trodden it,

Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby.

He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock:

He overturneth the mountains by the roots.

He cutteth out channels among the rocks:

And his eye seeth every precious thing.

He bindeth the streams that they trickle not:

And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.

 

This description of the art of mining is so complete – embracing tunnelling through the rock with the aid of artificial light; construction of passages, shafts, and watercourses: utilization of ropes and ladders: and the application of water to separate the metal from the ore … - that one instinctively asks, where could the author have witnessed these remarkable operations? Nowhere in the Hauran (the traditional birthplace and residence of Job) are there such mines. Neither Edom nor Arabia are metalliferous countries. The turquoise and copper mines of Sinai do not at all correspond to the details of working here described. Neither in Palestine nor in Mesopotamia were there mines of this nature at all. But Egypt affords the exact locality of which we are in search”.

 

The Minerals

 

Pp. 394-395: “The minerals mentioned in the chapter are four in number. It is remarkable that the first named is not gold, but silver [Job 28:1]. In this we find another indication of Egyptian influence. In Egyptian inscriptions silver is always mentioned before gold, as being more rare and precious. Silver objects are much more infrequently found in tombs than those of gold. This practice of giving precedence to silver is obtained in spite of the fact that the laws of Menes in Egypt fixed the value of gold as two and a half times that of silver …. In Upper Egypt silver mines were worked in the mountains bordering the Red Sea …. The precious metal was extracted by means of shafts sunk deep in the ground exactly as Job describes ….

Gold is the second metal referred to. From the earliest times it was obtained by the Egyptians in abundance from Nubia … and from the rocky hills that line the Red Sea. The extraordinarily vivid account given of the mines of Agatharchides … of Cnidos (c. B.C. 170-100) and preserved by Diodorus [Diod., iii. 12] (which might well be a replica of Job’s description), was doubtless true of ancient days as well as of the times in which these authors lived. The gold mines of the Wady Hammamat were again and again worked by the Pharaohs, and yielded enormous quantities of the precious metal …. There were two processes known to the ancients for extracting gold from the matrix: one was by washing, described by Diodorus as being practised in Egypt: the other was by smelting, which was the custom in other lands …. It is very significant that it is the former method – the Egyptian one- which is suggested by the Hebrew word used here for “refine” [… zaqaq, cf. Isaiah 25:6 …]. The use of water in refining gold was, indeed, so thoroughly characteristic of Egypt, that when Ramses II had opened shafts at Akita, the mines had afterwards to be abandoned through want of water ….In books of the Old Testament written in the Exile, or under the influence of Babylonian civilization, the methods pursued in gold extraction are referred to by a totally different Hebrew word implying the application of fire. But the presence in this chapter of a word suggesting the use of water is another unnoticed indication of the Egyptian colouring of the Book of Job.

Iron is the third metal mentioned in this chapter [Job 28:2]. It is not found in Palestine except near the south of the Lebanon range … and near Beirût. It was scarce in Egypt, yet in the Wady Hammamat a rich deposit of hæmatite was worked by the early Nilotes …. In the Sinai Peninsula, which formed part of Egypt, iron was mined at Serabit-el-Khadem ….A fragment of unwrought iron has even been discovered in one of the air-shafts of Khufu’s Pyramid …, and Petrie has found fragments of iron along with bronze tools in a tomb of the VIth Dynasty. Egypt therefore was one of the very first countries in the world to mine and to use this metal.

Brass is the fourth of the metals mentioned [Job 28:2]. It really means copper, and no nation more systematically carried on copper mining than the Egyptians under the rule of the Pharaohs. The copper mines of Sinai as recently [sic] explored by Petrie amply testify to this …. Slag heaps where the ore was extracted from the matrix still abound, and for many centuries Egyptian miners laboured in Sinai under the protection of a garrison, and under the religious sanction of the holy temple of Serabit-el-Khadem”.

 

Lights in the darkness

 

Pp. 395-396: “Again, in the statement Man setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out to the furthest bound the stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death [Job 28:3], we have a reference to the fact that, in the gold mines near the Red Sea, the miners laboured with lights fixed on their foreheads, as Diodorus informs us … so that an end was set to darkness. It is remarkable also that, in the expression He cutteth out channels among the rocks [Job 28:10], the word for “channels” – Ye’or – is the technical Egyptian vocable for the “canals” by which surplus water that had accumulated in a mine was drawn off”.

 

Sapphires, glass, topaz

 

P. 396: “The chapter indeed is full of Egyptian references. The mention of sapphires [Job 28:6, 16] – by which in all likelihood lapis lazuli is meant – shows an Egyptian trait, for lapis-lazuli was a highly-prized product of the Nile Valley. The value of wisdom as compared with the gold of Ophir [Job 28:16] suggests another African allusion. The statement that glass cannot equal it [Job 28:17] … reminds us that, as far back as the Vth Dynasty, glass-blowers are depicted on the tomb of Ti at Sakkara, and on may other tombs of later centuries, such as those of the XIIth Dynasty at Beni-Hasan. The idea, started by Pliny …. that the Phoenicians were the first to discover the manufacture of glass by accident at the sands of the River Belus in Syria, is entirely unhistorical. Thousands of years earlier [sic] the Egyptians were acquainted with the art. The red coral [Job 28:18] for which Egypt was so famous, the author also alludes to. It was obtained from the Red Sea, and was much more highly prized than the species found in the Mediterranean, which were of little commercial vale. The coral was gathered by being broken off form the rocks on which it grew by long hooked poles, and then drawn out. It is noteworthy that the Hebrew word for price (… meshek) in the expression the price of wisdom literally means “a drawing out”, as if the author meant to say “the drawing-out of wisdom is above the drawing-out of coral” …. The mention of pearls [Job 28:18] ….in the same verse suggests a similar connection with the Red Sea and Egypt, while the topaz of Ethiopia [Job 28:19] … is equally Nilotic in its reference. It is the transparent serpentine of a greenish colour, obtained in Nubia, and highly prized in Egypt. By the Egyptian “watermarks” in this chapter alone, we might therefore easily determine that the author of Job was fully acquainted with the mining and other industries of the Nile Valley and the Red Sea littoral”.

 

Washed with milk

 

“When we pass to the 29^th chapter we are again in a atmosphere equally Egyptian. Here Job laments his present condition, and contrasts it most unfavourably with his former grandeur and state. Quite a number of Egyptian references throng the page.

To begin with, the patriarch sighs for the days when my steps were washed with butter [Job 29:6], or better, according to Gesenius, with milk. Now on a stele in the Egyptian Museum at Florence the words occur, “May Isis give you milk, so that you may wash your feet on the silver stone and the pavement of turquoise”. Wiedemann … has pointed out that while this expression – washing the feet in milk – in Job’s mouth seems to be merely a symbol of plenty and happiness, in Egypt it had a religious significance. Owing to the soiling of the feet by contact with the earth, the skin of the soles was removed after death, and the wound washed in milk, as if the deceased were still living. The “silver stone and the pavement of turquoise” in all likelihood formed the floor of the Hall of Justice”.

 

Rock pouring oil

 

P. 397: “It has further been thought by some … that when Job said the rock poured me out rivers of oil [Job 29:6], he was referring to the petroleum which was obtained from the oil-wells among he mountains of Egypt: but the allusion may possibly be to the ordinary presses for olive-oil which are made in rock-moulds, and which are common throughout the Orient”.

 

Ethical standards

 

“Immediately following this, Job outlines the good deeds he had done in the days of his prosperity in language which exactly suggests an Egyptian original. When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the eye saw me, it gave witness unto me: because I delivered the poor that cried, the fatherless also that had none to help him. The blessings of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I cased the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my justice was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and the cause of him that I knew not I searched out. I brake the jaws of the unrighteous and plucked the prey out of his teeth [Job 29:11-17]. The ethical standard here bears a remarkable resemblance to another detailed apologia found at Beni-Hasan in the tomb of the great governor Ameni, a high official under Senusert [Sesostris] of the XIIth Dynasty …. Here are his claims: “I never wronged the daughter of a poor man. I never oppressed a widow. I never hindered a herdsman. I never took men from their superintendent. There was not a pauper near me. In my time there was no one hungry. When famine came, I arose and cultivated the fields of my province to the boundary both north and south. I enabled its inhabitants to live by making provision. There was not a hungry man in my province. I gave to each widow the property of her husband. I did not favour the elder more than the younger in what I gave. In great rises of the Nile bringing prosperity, I did not exact arrears of rent” …. The coincidences are noteworthy … and as this form of self-justification was not unusual in Egypt, it would seem that the author of Job had adopted as a literary artifice a suggestion from what was a recognized Egyptian custom dating from remote antiquity …”.

 

The phoenix-bird

 

Pp. 397-398: “Job’s next expression is couched in phraseology thoroughly Egyptian. Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the phoenix-bird [Job 29:18], for so the word “sand” should be translated, according to a very ancient Jewish tradition, which is rendered likely by the parallelism between “nest” and “bird”. The LXX reads the passage “My age shall continue as the stem of a palm tree” … [phoinikos]. But the simile is really that of the phoenix. The famous mythical bird, the sacred Bennu, was revered at Heliopolis and at other spots in Egypt …. At Tell-el-Yahudiyah porcelain friezes have been discovered representing rows of figures of the fabled creature …. There were variations in the legend, but the popular form was to the effect that every 500 years the phoenix burned itself and its nest in the fire, and that from the ashes a new phoenix arose to exist for another half millennium …. It was a conception of extreme longevity that was thoroughly Egyptian, and there is every reason to believe that Job was employing Egyptian terminology in support of his hope for a long life …”.

 

Astronomical terms

 

Pp. 398-399: “When we turn next to the astronomical terms used in the book we find a new cycle of facts testifying to the influence of Egypt. Job refers to God as He who maketh the Bear (Heb. Ash), Orion (Heb. Kesil), and the Pleiades (Heb. Kimah), and the chambers of the south [Job 9:9]: and again, we read God’s answer to Job, Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades (Heb. Kimah), or loose the bands of Orion (Heb. Kesil)? Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth (R.Vm. “the signs of the Zodiac”) in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear (Heb. Ash) with her train? [Job 38: 31, 32]. The identification of these stars and constellations has given rise to a prolific controversy, and experts of the front rank are even yet not agreed as to which of the heavenly bodies are intended by the Hebrew words employed …. But what is of importance is to note that we must not be carried away with the idea that the only way in which the Hebrews could have become acquainted with the names of these constellations was through their contact with Babylonian astronomy during the Exile. Granted that by the time of the Exile the Chaldaeans had attained to a marvellous skill and proficiency in the knowledge of the heavens, and that they were the most learned of all observers of the stars, we have also to remember that in the earliest periods of Egyptian culture the heavens had similarly been mapped out by the natives of the Nile Valley, and that they too had given names to the various celestial bodies …. Sayce … has pointed out that by the time of the Dynastic Egyptians the worship of the stars themselves was practically past, for the stars had been identified with the official deities who had absorbed their individual attributes. The legends of Orion, the mighty hunter of the sky, take us back to the very dawn of Pharaonic history….

But it is of interest specially to note that the Dynastic Egyptians must have derived their primitive conceptions of stellar mythology from the Babylonians. If the Chaldaeans had their twelve signs of the Zodiac, so had the ancient Egyptians … and the names of several of the constellations in both nations were the same. In both we have Gemini, Aquarius, the Pleiades; in both, Orion is a giant and a hunter; while the “Bull of Heaven” with the Babylonians has its counterpart in the “Bull of Heaven” of the Pyramid Texts. Still more striking is the fact that the 36 Egyptians “decans” … the stars that watched for ten days each over the 360 days of the ancient Egyptian year, were exactly paralleled by the 36 Chadaean “councillor” stars, which similarly presided over the early Chaldaean year of 360 days …. These coincidences cannot be accidental. The Sumerian culture which underlay the Babylonian as akin to that of the early Egyptians … and in this community of astronomical beliefs, and in the homogeneity of their mapping out of the starry heavens into similar signs of the Zodiac, we trace another proof of the primitive derivation of Egyptian civilization from Babylon.

All this shows how easy it was for a resident in Egypt, such as the author of Job, to employ astronomical terms which by long use and wont were truly Nilotic, yet which in their remote origin were derived from Euphrates Valley…. That the Egyptians were experts in astronomy is well known. This observation of the heliacal rising of Sirius formed the basis of their calculations of the solar year”.

 

Comment: See my thesis:

 

Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar

 

https://www.academia.edu/2568413/Sothic_Star_Theory_of_the_Egyptian_Calendar

 

“Their temples in many cases were orientated with such admirable precision that exactly at the spring or autumn solstice a particular star shone into the furthest recesses of the dark shrine …. They could calculate eclipses; and their observations of planets and other heavenly bodies reveal a remarkable degree of astronomical skill. There was no necessity for the writer of Job to go to Babylon for the names of his constellations. Egypt possessed as full as knowledge of the starry skies as Chaldaea could furnish”.

 

Scarab signets

 

P. 399: “Still another Egyptian reference we can trace in the expression, It is changed as clay under the seal [Job 38:14]. It is an allusion to the practice of using scarabs as signets which can be traced to the earliest eras of Nilotic civilization …. Scarabs of various materials have been dug up in tens of thousands …. The idea intended by the writer to be brought out is that just as a dull uninteresting piece of clay becomes instinct with meaning when the scarab-seal impressed on it shows some person’s name or some hieroglyphic device, so when the dayspring comes, the dull drab face of Nature tales on an entirely new look, and all things stand forth as in a garment [Job 38:14]”.

 

Natural history: animals and birds

 

Pp. 399-404: “When we now proceed to the natural history referred to in the Book, we are struck with its strong Egyptian colouring. While some of the animals and birds mentioned may not contribute much to the argument inasmuch as they are found in abundance in other lands; yet on the other hand their occurrence in Egypt is worth observing as an element in the line of substantiating the validity of my theory that the author of Job was a dweller in the Nile Valley and knew Egyptian life.

The asp … [Job 20:14, 16], to whose gall and poison reference is made by Zophar, from its venomousness has been identified by Tristram with the Egyptian cobra (Naja haje L.). It is usual to see a cobra on most Egyptian temples, chiselled over the door, on each side of a winged globe, and in the attitude of striking. No visitor to the Nile Valley could be unfamiliar with its aspect and deadliness. The lion [Job 38:39, 40] is frequently depicted in pre-dynastic figures and in later amulets. Thotmes [Thutmose] IV hunted lions in the neighbourhood of Memphis. Leontopolis was the centre of the cult of the lion, though sacred lions were kept in the temples in many other localities in Egypt …. The raven [Job 38:41] is a bird that was found in the Nile Valley. The wild goat of the rock [Job 39:1] is undoubtedly the ibex … which has for its habitat Mount Sinai, a recognized portion of the Egyptian Kingdom. Its Hebrew equivalent … ye-elim, occurs also in the 104^th Psalm [Ps. 104:18], and, as we have seen … Weigall has pointed out the remarkable affinities between this psalm and the “Hymn of the Sun” composed by Akhnaton”.

[Comment: Typically though Weigall, a conventional historian, would place Pharaoh Akhnaton of the 18^th Dynasty, chronologically centuries before King David; but according to our chronological revision, Akhnaton was actually influenced by King David, and not vice versa; the 18^th Dynasty being in fact a Davidic dynasty].

“The wild ass [Job 39:5] is a dweller in the deserts that flank Egypt, and when it is stated, Neither heareth he the shoutings of the driver, it is to be noted that the word for “driver” is “taskmaster” (… nagas), the same term as is employed in connection with the oppression of the Hebrews in Egypt [See Ex. 3:7; 5:6, 10, 13, 14].

The wild-ox [Job 39:9] was an animal famed for its size, and the prodigious length and strength of its horns. Reference is made to it frequently in Scripture as a creature of formidable dimensions, untamable, and of great ferocity {Numbers 23:28; 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalm 22:21, 29:6; 92:18 …]. Though hunted by the monarchs of Assyria, and chased by Caesar in Germany … it was found also in Egypt in large herds. A very fine scarab of Amenhotep III tells how the Pharaoh killed in Goshen in one day 56 of these great and savage oxen that were roaming over the country, and how after four days’ rest, by surrounding the herd with another cordon, 85 more of these wild beasts fell before his arrows and spear …. Our author shows his acquaintance with the ferocious animal when he asks the questions, Will the wild-ox be content to serve thee? Canst thou bind the wild-ox with his band in the furrow? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? [Job 39:9, 10, 11].

The ostrich [Job 39:13] is a bird of Nubia, and the popular facts of natural history … narrated abut her plumage, her egg-laying, her stupidity, and yet her matchless speed, are what might readily be gained by any observer in Egypt. The war-horse [Job 39:19], though probably introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos, became indispensable to the martial Pharaohs of the XVIIth, XVIIIth, XIXth, an XXth Dynasties, and numberless inscriptions of these periods depict the war chariots with their steeds, exactly as the author here describes them in this piece of word-painting. The hawk and the eagle [Job 39:26, 27] are represented on myriads of inscriptions, and indeed so peculiarly Egyptian were they reckoned to be that they were made emblems of the divinity of the Pharaohs. The hawk was identified with the worship of Horus, and the mummy hawk was the emblem of Sopdu, god of the East”.

 

Behemoth and Leviathan

 

Comment: Whilst the great St. Thomas Aquinas, in his ‘Exposition on the Book of Job’, had - coming from a European tradition - quite plausibly in his context identified the exotic creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan as, respectively the elephant and the whale (as well as, on another level, Satan and the demonic), Knight has far more satisfactorily, in his Egyptian context, identified these two creatures differently as we shall now find (he also double identifies them with the as demonic).

 

Now all these creatures thus far mentioned, while having a habitat in Egypt, had nevertheless a range in other countries, and therefore, as I have stated, little stress perhaps can be laid on their insertion here to prove an Egyptian origin to the book, except that no animal is mentioned which did not reside in the Nile Valley. But the book closes with an elaborate description of two animals, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, which are acknowledged by all to be Egyptian, and as to whose African habitat there can be no question.

 

Behemoth [Job 40:15-24] undoubtedly refers to the hippopotamus. The very name is seemingly Egyptian – p-ehe-mau, “ox of the water” …. All the description here of its habits suits the Nile. He lieth under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed, and the fen: the lotus trees cover him with their shadow: the willows of the brook compass him about [Job 40:21, 22]. The allusion to the lotus, the favourite, beloved, and sacrosanct plant of the Egyptians, is peculiarly Nilotic …. A reference to the annual inundation of the Delta is seen in If the river overflow, he trembleth not; he is confident though a Jordan swell even to his mouth, that is, even if a steam as impetuous as the Jordan were to overtake him. The hippopotamus is of course unknown in the Jordan itself. In the Chapel of Senbi I … a nomarch of the time of Amenemhat [Amenemes] I (XIIth Dynasty), there is shown a fine group of hippopotami, who bellow and display their gleaming white tusks at the intruding sportsman as he skims over the water in his frail canoe. As the hippopotamus is an animal entirely confined to Africa, it is difficult to see how a dweller in Central Arabia, or in Babylonia (localities which have been advocated as the scene of the authorship of the book) could have given such an accurate and full description of its characteristics as we find here. But all is natural if the author was acquainted with the Nile Valley.

By the leviathan of the 41^st chapter the crocodile is unquestionably meant: and in the 34 verses devoted to the description of this vast saurian we have the testimony of an eye-witness who had often observed the habits of the animal in the Nile …. It is true that crocodiles are to be found elsewhere, particularly in the so-called Crocodile River in Palestine. Both Strabo and Pliny give this name to the small Zerka River which falls into the Mediterranean a little south of Caesarea. A 13^th century tract states that crocodiles were introduced here from Egypt by a rich man of Caesarea, in order that his brother might be devoured by them …. But it has also been asserted … that an Egyptian colony transported crocodiles to the spot about B.C. 400 for purposes of worship …. During the succeeding centuries a few survivals have been seen, but only on the rarest occasions …. The extreme rarity of the animal in Palestine, imported in a probability from Egypt, could never have allowed its habits to be so well known to the residents in Canaan that the author of Job could have spoken of them as he did. It is in Egypt, where the crocodile was so thoroughly at home that one of the border lakes (on the line of the present Suez Canal) was actually called Lake Timsah, the “Crocodile Lake”, and where the city of Crocodilopolis in the Fayum was wholly given over to the worship of this creature, that we must look for the habitat of this huge saurian.

The whole details of the habits of the crocodile are so brilliantly depicted that we feel instinctively that the author was describing the animal from first-hand knowledge. He was acquainted with the fact that Egyptian conjurers were accustomed to play with the crocodile with immunity from danger by arts which were kept secret from the uninitiated: Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens [Job 41:5] When he says, His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning [Job 41:18], he is reminding us that the Egyptians employed the eye of the crocodile to denote the rising sun, inasmuch as it is the streaming red eyes of the amphibian which first become visible when the creature rises out of the water ….

But the most recent theory about the hippopotamus and the crocodile in these chapters is one which at least is deserving of very careful discussion. Briefly it is, that the description of these vast creatures refers not to the actual animals, but to mythological animals which they embody. Professor Cobern says … “Modern archaeology has proved that, in the time of Job, the crocodile and hippopotamus were, in contemporary religious literature, constantly associated with the thought of a future world. These animals are mentioned hundreds of times in the religious texts of Egypt, and in no single instance, I think, are they mentioned because of their zoological importance, but always because of their demonic character. At least six chapters of the Book of the Dead are given up to magic texts which shall protect the deceased from the dreaded crocodile, as he fights his way trough the underworld. In many other chapters, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus his closest ally, are referred to when incantations are used against the foes of Osiris, and this is equally true in other ancient sacred books of the Egyptians”.

This assertion is capable of ample corroboration. Daressy … has collected a list of no fewer than 12 hippopotamus goddesses who presided over the months of the year. According to Egyptian beliefs, a dead man after death commenced a long journey. Starting from Abydos, he endured great privations of hunger and thirst, and by the help of magical formulae he passed through swarms of fierce crocodiles that infested the streams …. At last he reached the bar of Osiris in the lower world, and went though the examination to which I have already referred …. If he were acquitted, he passed to the plains of Alu, situated in the north-eastern portion of the sky, where the gods dwelt …. But if he was condemned, he was handed over to be devoured by Ta-urt, the female hippopotamus deity, who had stood waiting at the feet of Thoth …. This fearsome creature was sometimes represented under a composite character. She was shown as “a crocodile in the foreparts, in the midst a lion, and behind a hippopotamus” …. The crocodilo-hippopotamus god of vengeance on the guilty meets us everywhere in Egyptian inscriptions and literature …. Legge has shown how there are scattered through the museums of Europe at least 50 ivory wands, mostly from Thebes, which all show either a female hippopotamus erect on her hind-legs, standing as depicted in the Book of the Dead, or the crocodile and hippopotamus combined in one grim mythological figure …. The hippopotamus with a crocodile on her back is also to be seen as a constellation figure on the ceiling of the Ramesseum at Thebes …. In the recently discovered tomb at Marissa in Palestine, a Ptolemaic sepulchre has paintings showing not only a hippopotamus, but a crocodile with an ibis on its back, the ibis being most intimately connected with the Egyptian myth of the Osirian resurrection, since Osiris escaped from Set on the back of an ibis …. In Egyptian mythology, the hippopotamus and crocodile were representatives of Set, the god of the underworld, of evil, and death …. They were the most dreaded enemies of order and resurrection life.

Professor Cobern, in summing up the evidence, urges that the whole aim of the Book of Job is a passionate defence of the doctrine of immortality after death. He analyses the book in this light, and shows the gradual rise of the argument until in the 39^th chapter the author reaches the vindication of Jehovah’s might over all forces of the earth, the sea, and the sky. One thing more requires to be done, to exhibit God’s power to rule Sheol and the sinister creatures that dwell there, as easily as easily as He guides the stars, and gives instinct to brute beasts on earth. Thus in chapters 40 and 41 we find behemoth and leviathan, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, introduced as the fearsome representatives of the powers of the lower world, and the Lord is seen, as the book closes, triumphant over them as well …. Cobern remarks, “If in this final crisis of the Job argument, these creatures are to be catalogued zoologically, then not only does this ancient poem, so praised by Ruskin and Coleridge and Shakespeare, close with the most trivial and superfluous anticlimax known in literature, but by using these well-known religious symbols with a meaning unknown to that age, the author must have designedly confused his readers” …. He points out that these two creatures are constantly linked together in the texts and vignettes, and that, with the serpent, they continued to be the ordinary representatives of the powers of evil and death far into Christian times, not only in Egypt, but in Algeria, Italy, Phoenicia, Persia, Greece, and Palestine. The Metternich Stele shows Horus stamping on two crocodiles, and grasping in his hands other emblems of the powers of darkness. In the mysteries of Isis the goddess wears at her girdle two crocodile heads. In the Eleusinian Mysteries and in those of Mithra, the devouring monster of the Judgment has crocodilo-hippopotamus features. “The influence of the Egyptian representations of the crocodile as a symbol of evil extended over all the civilized world, and can be seen in Egypt and Palestine to this day. In ancient Alexandria Christ was represented in triumph standing on a crocodile … and in many old Coptic Cathedrals in Cairo very ancient pictures of the Baptism are similarly painted, while above hundreds of Moslem doors he crocodile is hung as a demon charm”. The theory that these creatures in Job – the hippopotamus and the crocodile – represent mythological conceptions current in Egypt, is full of interest, and ought to receive very careful consideration.

 

Summing it all up

 

Pp. 404-405: “To sum up: when we look at all these Egyptian “watermarks” in Job, it surely is exceedingly difficult to believe that the book could have been composed by a Jew who lived during the Exile in the remote valley of the Euphrates. That one who was so intimately acquainted with life as it was lived in the Nile Valley should be able to write this book in Babylon in the midst of an entirely different civilization, in a completely altered environment, and in a region where everything suggested Chaldaean symbols, institutions, and conceptions, seems to me to raise a problem tenfold more difficult to solve. This was a work of art indeed – to employ Egyptian metaphors, illustrations, and similes; to speak of Egyptian vegetation, Egyptian boats, Egyptian mining operations, Egyptian conceptions of the dead, Egyptian pyramids, Egyptian animals and birds, Egyptian mythology; to show acquaintance with Egyptian language and literature, and while composing this great poem in Babylon, in a civilization in almost every particular alien from that of Egypt, never for an instant to betray the secret that his surroundings were in the Euphrates Valley instead of in that of the Nile! How much more natural to believe that the author wrote either in Egypt itself, or from a close personal knowledge of what he had seen in that land!

The same argument applies to Hauran where there linger many legends as to Job’s residence in that region …. At Ashtaroth Karnaim the traditional dwelling of Job is shown. “Job’s Stone”, a monolith of basalt against which the patriarch is said to have leaned in his misery, is pointed out to travellers …. “Job’s Spring” gushes forth at the foot of the hill where Uz is said to have been built: its waters feed “Job’s Bath”, which is reckoned to have medicinal properties …. A little to the south is “Job’s Tomb”: … and, until recently, a “Job’s Monastery” was a spot to which the devout repaired …. But granting the prevalence of a Job tradition here, how could a dweller in this trans-Jordanic region evidence such a close acquaintance with the institutions of Egypt?”

 

Comment: My argument would be that Job, during his very long life, had lived in various places, including Nineveh, Egypt, and indeed the Hauran, the source of so many Jobian legends. The Book of Job may have been written during, or very shortly after, Job’s long initial sojourn in the land of Egypt.

 

“Lastly, there is Central Arabia, or which Margoliouth puts in a strong plea …. He advocates the Central Arabian theory by never mentioning Egypt at all, and by ignoring absolutely every reference to, and suggestion of, its influence! But again, we may ask, is not Central Arabia a place equally difficult to think of as a locality in which this book, so deeply tinged with Egyptian feeling, could have been conceived?

I believe, therefore, that this poem was composed by some gifted Hebrew who had long dwelt in, and had far travelled through, the Nile Valley. He had gone up the river as far as Thebes, and possibly even to Nubia. He had seen the gold mines of the Wady Hammamat between Coptos and Kosseir: he had read the inscriptions in many of the ancient tombs. He had explored Sinai and knew the turquoise mines there. He was familiar with Edom which formed a part of the Egyptian realm. He was a man versed in mythology, folklore, and the demotic beliefs of the country-people. Yet for all that he was a true Jew, with a Jew’s passion for righteousness, and with a lofty conception of the supremacy of Jehovah over all other gods, supernal and infernal.

What then may we gather to be the probable date of Job? From one point of view there is no reason why it should not be relegated to a period much earlier than that assigned to it by most modern critics. The main argument for a late date is the author’s outlook on life, his reasoned moralizing on the inequalities and sorrows of mankind, his weighing of the problem of evil, suffering, and pain, all betoken a state of mind so mature that it cannot have existed at an early period. To this it may be replied that the problem of evil, and questioning regarding the seeming injustices in life, have been present to the minds of men at all times, and have never been confined to any one period. We have only to turn to the Instructions of Kegemni … The Proverbs of Ptah-hotep …and the Instruction of Amenemhat I … to see specimens of Hochma [Hebrew: ‘Wisdom’] literature which bear a family resemblance to some of the features of the Book of Job. That the ideas of Job are not too lofty to suit an early age is evidenced also by the magnificent Hymn to the Sun by Akhnaton [actually based on a Psalm of King David].

But on the other hand, there is such an exquisite finish to the poem of Job, the problems are debated with such marvellous incisiveness and literary power, the philosophy of the book is in some respects so akin to that of the rest of the Jewish Hochma literature, and there is to be found in many particulars so close an affinity between Job and Isaiah [whom we believe were actual contemporaries], that the possibilities are the other way. What we need to find is some period wherein a Jew who was resident in Egypt should have reason to write a book full of profound moralizings on the mystery of God’s Providence in relation to the tragedies and upheavals in a man’s life. That period we discover after the destruction of Jerusalem when a great migration of Jews into Egypt took place: and especially a little later when the XXVIIth Dynasty, which was entirely a Persian one, linked Egypt with the Euphrates Valley, and allowed opportunities of interchange of ideas”.

“In this way we can account for the introduction into the Book of the Persian conception of Satan, a conception which had been carried from Susa to Memphis by the ordinary channels of interchange which subsisted in the great Persian Empire that stretched from Nubia to the borders of India. It may well be, therefore, that it is to this period of Persian dominance in Egypt – the period from Cambyses to Ochus – that we must relegate the composition of this great drama. But whether it was written in the lower plains of the Delta, or amongst the colony of Jews at Elephantine, or by the author after he had returned to Palestine at the close of years of travel and residence in the Nile Valley [a likely scenario, we think], there is not sufficient evidence to determine”.