Book of Job
probably dependent upon Tobit
Part Two:
Job not ‘oldest book of the Bible’
by
Damien F. Mackey
“I proposed long ago that Job actually lived during the Biblical ice age .... I consider the book of Job to be the oldest book
of the Bible, written no
more than 700 years
after the Noahic flood …”.
Dr
Bernard E. Northrup
“Most Bible scholars agree that Job is probably the oldest
book of the Bible. The timeframe of Job is probably somewhere between
Noah and Moses since it does not refer to Israel, the Old Testament law or any
reference to God’s covenant with Abraham”.
agapegeek
“The Book of Job is full
of fascinating paradoxes: despite it's being the oldest book of the Bible
(Job 19:23), it is very badly
known ...”.
Gerard
Gertoux
“Job is probably the oldest book
in the Bible. … contains some of
the most difficult and archaic Hebrew in the Bible. Even the
name Job is known to be an ancient name. …. Job probably dates back to the time
of the patriarchs, around 2100-1700BC”.
Rob Buckingham
Certainly it is true that many,
if not necessarily (as above): “Most
Bible scholars agree that Job is [or] probably [is] the oldest book of the
Bible”.
Despite all that, there is
still a great degree of uncertainty about it as I wrote in my article:
Book of Job a Puzzle to Scholars
“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”.
And if, as I concluded in Part One of this series:
https://www.academia.edu/36193236/Book_of_Job_probably_dependent_upon_Tobit the Book of Tobit would have pre-dated Job,
then the Book of Job must be quite a late product - later than 700 BC
(conventional dating), at least, given that: “Tobit …. Date Written:
300-200 BC. Date of Narrative: c. 700 BC” (Catholic News Agency).
Whilst
my own estimation would be a date much closer to 700 BC than to 300 BC, the essential
point here is that the Book of Job, post-dating 700 BC, could not possibly be
“the oldest book of the Bible”.
Genesis
itself, for instance, I believe to be far, far earlier. See e.g. my:
Structure of the Book of Genesis
The prophet Job was, according
to my article:
Job's Life and Times
the same as Tobias, the son of
Tobit, the family being Naphtalian Israelite exiles in Nineveh during the C8th
BC (conventional dating). This is at last a most solid biographical anchor for
the otherwise mysterious Job, yet few appear to have taken it up. One reason is
probably because the Book of Tobit is not yet accepted as canonical by Jews and
Protestants (and the average Catholic is not very Old Testament minded).
However, the following is encouraging:
… it could
be hypothesized that some ancient Jewish rabbinic scholars considered Tobit to
be historical. Midrash Bereishit Rabbah, an aggadic commentary on the Book of Genesis compiled circa 400–600
AD, includes a truncated Aramaic version of Tobit. Tobit
was also considered part of the Septuagint (the Greek
translation/interpretation of the Hebrew Bible).[8] In more contemporary times, a number of Jews in Israel have sought to
reclaim Tobit as part of the canon.[16]
An important historical clue may
be that holy Job’s camels were taken by a band of “Chaldeans” (Job 1:17): “The Chaldeans
formed three companies [Heb: רָאשִׁ֑ים], raided the
camels, captured the servants, and killed them with swords”. For, the
long-lived Tobias endured into the Chaldean era.
For
my condensing of the neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian eras, see e.g. my:
Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus
Added to this piece of evidence,
I have previously written: “… I would suggest that the Book of Job drew heavily
upon the Book of Tobit, the events in which historically, at least (leaving
aside the matter of dates of composition), preceded the events as narrated in
the Book of Job. This prompted me to write in:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and
Tobit. Part Two: Tobit's Dog and 'Argus' in Homer
“Though historically, the
events described in the Book of Tobit would have pre-dated those narrated in
the Book of Job, with Job, who is Tobias, now being an old man. So there may be
good reason to think, instead, that the Book of Job was likely dependent upon
Tobit”.
In this article, “Similarities to the Odyssey”, I
included eight points of “similar motifs and
common literary structures between the books of Tobit and of Job: as listed by JiSeong J. Kwon in Meaning
and Context in Job and Tobit (JSOT; 2018 Forthcoming): https://www.academia.edu/34905218/Meaning_and_Context_in_Job_and_Tobit_JSOT_2018_Forthcoming_
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