The Old Testament among its so-called teaching books has a non-interesting work called the Book of Job. The name is given to her by the name of the main character, a pious righteous man and a faithful servant of God.
Book structure
To understand what the main character is, you must first understand the work. The story of the misfortunes that the biblical character Job undergoes is divided into a prologue, a main part, and an epilogue.
The prologue describes the blessed life of the righteous, his prosperity in spiritual and material terms. The main part tells of how the long-suffering Job suffers the grief that befell him as a result of a dispute between Satan and God. By itself, this part is divided into three sections: the conversations of Job with friends, the words of Elius and the speech of the Most High. The epilogue closes the circle and talks about restoring justice and restoring the welfare of the prophet.
Narrative Canvas
The story begins with the fact that Satan came to the meeting of the sons of God and began to provoke God to take away his blessing from the righteous and sinless Job in order to check whether he would remain faithful to the Most High in grief. As a result, God succumbs to provocation and gives his servant into the hands of the devil with one condition - not to kill him. In the future, the biblical character of Job experiences a series of upheavals: all his sons and daughters die at a time, he loses all his wealth and property, and he is severely ill with leprosy. To console and support him, three friends come to him. Most of the book is just their speeches and Job's answers to them, in which they jointly try to establish the reasons why such disasters fell on the righteous. They believe that Job the long-suffering is guilty of some grave sin, because in their opinion, God would have saved the innocent from unnecessary torment. But the prophet stubbornly declares his integrity and, humble under the authority of God, blessing his name, nevertheless calls him to account. In the end, God appears and condemns the wrongdoing of both Job himself and his friends. The Lord arranges a court and asks questions to the protagonist, to which he is not able to answer. And yet, in conclusion, God praises the faithfulness and patience of his servant, heals him of the disease and multiplies the lost property more than ever. But he accuses his friends of slandering himself and orders them to ask Job to pray for them in order to avert the punishment for saying "not so true" about him. This ends the story.
The historicity of the book
Religious figures of Judaism and Christianity until the twentieth century for the most part believed that the history of the biblical Job is historically reliable. Those who claimed the legendary nature of the events described in the book, as well as those who denied the very existence of this prophet, were usually compared with heretics. This happened, for example, with Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. But the development of biblical studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries led to the fact that the scales began to lean on the other side. Today, many serious Bible scholars believe that the story of the biblical Job is a parable, a pedagogical poem, and not a story about the life of a real person.
Job's life time and book writing time
It’s worth saying right away that all attempts to establish the time when the biblical character Job lived were doomed to failure. Firstly, he was the head of a nomadic tribe, of which there were many in the Middle East, and was not tied by the story of the book to any cities and monarchist dynasties. Secondly, most likely, Job is a long-suffering - a collective image. He is probably not even of purely Jewish descent, because in the Bible he is mentioned as a person without a pedigree, who has neither a father nor a mother. Meanwhile, Jews always mentioned the genealogy when they talked about people (whether they are living people or biblical characters) who raise their origin to Abraham - the progenitor of the Jews. Therefore, it is most logical to assume that the book is based on a Middle Eastern pagan legend, creatively crafted by a Jewish author.
But regarding the writing of this poem in the form in which it entered the canon of the Bible, certain assumptions can be made. Based on an internal analysis of the text, language, structure, the presence of Aramaic influence and late creed, it can be more or less confidently assumed that the middle of the first millennium BC is the time when the literary hero Job was “born”. The Bible of the Jews at that time was codified and seriously revised. Probably, at the same time, for pedagogical purposes, the narrative of the suffering righteous was introduced into it.
Book authorship
The question of who owes its origin to the biblical character Job is not easy to solve. On the one hand, the book is included in the Jewish canon of the Scriptures, and on the other, all its characters among people are not Jews. Job's wife is an Arabian, friends are also representatives of various non-Jewish Semitic peoples. Plus, the language of the book is very strongly Arabized, which allows us to make two assumptions: either the author was an Arab, or a Jew living in an Arabian environment.
In church tradition, the author was considered different people - Moses, Solomon, Jeremiah and other significant figures of the Old Testament. But there are no arguments in support of these hypotheses.
Interesting Book of Job Details
Bible readers periodically have questions about some strange creatures that inhabit the earth. An example of this is the famous leviathan. This is the story of the biblical Job, one of the few that mentions it, putting in the mouth of God a mention of a grandiose sea monster. Together with him, a certain hippo is mentioned. Most likely, we are talking about a mythical huge creature that is not subject to human power. The Lord tells Job that only the one who created it can stick his sword in it. Another interesting place is at the very beginning of the text, where Satan is spoken of as the son of God, one of his angels.
Conclusion
This book stands apart in the canon in its content and form. And although few doubted her canonical dignity, she is ambiguous on the most important issue - the issue of evil. Such strange images as a hippopotamus or leviathan have nothing to do with this. This is the story of the biblical Job that teaches believers that one cannot recognize the answer to the question about the cause of suffering. After all, God appears to challenge Job, but does not want to bear responsibility and does not give an answer, but simply crushes him with his authority and power, asking questions to which a person is powerless, as a result of which the hero simply "puts his hand on his mouth." The plot of the dispute itself does not receive development and outcome. Thus, it is not clear what and to whom God proved by guiding his most faithful servant through terrible suffering (including the death of ten innocent children of Job). Moreover, the actions of the Lord alone can hardly be called ethical in the modern sense of the word.