Читать книгу Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament - T. K. Cheyne - Страница 17

More precise definitions of the purpose of Job depend on the acceptance of a critical analysis of the book. Some suggestions on this subject have been already given to facilitate the due comprehension of the poem. I must now offer the reader a connected sketch of the possible or probable stages of its growth. This, if it bears being tested, will perhaps reveal the special purpose of the several parts, and above all of that most precious portion—the Colloquies of Job and his friends. (Compare below, Chap. XII.)

I. The narrative which forms the Prologue is based upon a traditional story which represented Job as hurled from the height of happiness into an abyss of misery, but preserving a devout serenity in the midst of trouble. It is impossible to feel sure that this Prologue is by the same author as the following Colloquies. It stands in no very close connection with them; ‘the Satan’ in particular (an omission which struck William Blake^[86]), is not heard of again in the book; and there is abundant evidence of the liking of the pre-Exile writers for a tasteful narrative style. It is not a wild conjecture that the first two chapters originally formed the principal part of a prose book of Job, comparable to the ‘books’ once current of Elijah, and perhaps one may add of Balaam and of Daniel—a book free from any speculations of the ‘wise men’ and in no sense a māshāl or gnomic poem, but supplying in its own way a high and adequate solution of the great problem of the suffering of the righteous. The writer of this Prologue, whether he also wrote the Colloquies or not, firmly believed that the calamities which sometimes fell on the innocent were both for the glory of God and of human nature. It was possible, he said, to continue in one’s integrity, though no earthly advantage accrued from it. If the Prologue once formed part of a distinct prose ‘book’ of Job, one can hardly suppose that the same author wrote the Epilogue; for while the Colloquies do contain hints of Job’s typical character (as to some extent a representative of humanity), the Prologue does not, and it is only the typical or allegorical interpretation which makes the Epilogue tolerable. In fact, the Epilogue must, as it seems to me, have been written, if not by the author of the Colloquies, yet by some one who had this work before him. The prose ‘book’ of Job, if it existed, and if it originated in Judah, cannot have been written before the Chaldæan period. This period and no other explains the moral purpose of the ‘book,’ precisely as the age of the despotic Louis XIV. is the only one which suits the debate on the disinterested love of God with which the name of Fénelon is inseparably connected. The Chaldæan period, however, we must remember, did not begin with the Captivity, but with the appearance of the Babylonian power on the horizon of Palestine. We must not therefore too hastily assume that the Book of Job is a monument of the Babylonian Captivity, true as I myself believe this hypothesis to be.

We are, however, of course not confined to this hypothesis of a prose ‘book’ of Job. The author of the Colloquies may have been equally fitted to be a writer of narrative, and may have felt that the solution mentioned above, although the highest, was not the only one admissible. We may therefore conceive of him as following up the solution offered in the Prologue by a ventilation of the great moral problem before himself and his fellow ‘wise men.’ He throws the subject open as it were to general discussion, and invests all the worthiest speculations of his time in the same flowing poetical dress, that no fragment of truth contained in them may be lost. He himself is far from absolutely rejecting any of them; he only seems to deny that the ideas of the three representative sages can be applied at once, as they apply them, to the case of one like Job.

[Böttcher, however, regards Job as the work of one principal and several subordinate writers. It was occasioned, he thinks, by a conversation on the sufferings of innocent men, at that time so frequent (i.e. in the reign of Manasseh). See his Achrenlese, p. 68.]

II. The completion or publication of the colloquies revealed (or seemed to reveal) sundry imperfections in the original mode of treating the subject. Some other ‘wise men,’ therefore (or possibly, except in the case of III., the author himself), inserted passages in the poem with the view of qualifying or supplementing its statements. These were merely laid in, without being welded with the rest of the book. The first in order of these additions is chap. xxviii., which cannot be brought into a logical connection with the chapters among which it is placed, in spite of the causal particle ‘for’ prefixed to it (‘For there is a vein’). It is possible, indeed, that it has been extracted from some other work. The hypothesis of insertion (or, if used without implying illicit tampering with the text, ‘interpolation’) is confirmed by the occurrence of ‘Adonai’ in ver. 28, which is contrary to the custom of the author of Job, and by its highly rhetorical character. If the passage was written with a view to the Book of Job, we must suppose the author to have been dissatisfied with the original argument, and to have sought a solution for the problem in the inscrutableness of the divine wisdom. Zophar, it is true, had originally alluded to this attribute, but with a more confined object. According to him, God, being all-wise, can detect sins invisible to mortal eyes (xi. 6):—it is needless to draw out the wide difference between this slender inference and the large theory which appears to be suggested in chap. xxviii.

III. One of the less progressive ‘wise men’ was scandalised at the irreverent statements of Job and dissatisfied with the three friends’ mode of dealing with them (xxxii. 2, 3). Hence the speeches of Elihu, the most generally recognised of all the inserted portions (chaps. xxxii.-xxxvii.) The author partly imitates the speeches of Jehovah.

IV. In another inserted passage (ch. xxxviii.-xl. 14, xlii. 1-6), the Almighty is represented as chastising the presumption of Job, and showing forth the supreme wisdom by contrast with Job’s unwisdom. It is clear that the copy in which it was inserted was without the speeches of Elihu, for the opening words of Jehovah (xxxviii. 2) clearly have reference to the last discourse of Job, which they must have been intended to follow. The effect of this fine passage is much impaired by the interposition of the speeches of Elihu.

V. The description of the behémoth and the leviathan (xl. 15-24, xli.) seems also to be a later insertion, and somewhat more recent than the speeches of Jehovah. It is a ‘purple patch,’ and the appendix last mentioned gains by its removal.

VI. An editor appended the epilogue. He must have had the prologue before him, but took no pains to bring his own work into harmony with it, except in the one point which he could not help adopting, namely the vast riches of his hero. He agreed with Job’s friends on the grand question of retribution, though he would not sanction their line of argument. Job’s doubts, according to him, contained more faith than their uncharitable dogmatism.

Can we feel grateful to this writer? He has at any rate relieved the strain upon the imagination of the reader, and possibly, if we assume him to be distinct from the author of the Prologue, carried out an unfulfilled intention of that author (note the words in i. 12, ‘only upon himself put not forth thy hand’). But he did so in a prosaic spirit, and made a sad concession to a low view of providential dealings. He has also, I think, caused much misunderstanding of the object of the book. Thus we find Dr. Ginsburg saying,^[87]

The Book of Job ... only confirms the old opinion that the righteous are visibly rewarded here, inasmuch as it represents their calamities as transitory, and Job himself as restored to double his original wealth and happiness in this life.

Against which I enter a respectful protest.

The view here adopted of the gradual growth of the book seems important for its right comprehension. In its present form, it seems like a very confused theodicy, designed to justify God against the charge of bringing misfortune upon innocent persons. But when the disturbing elements are removed, we see that the book is simply an expression of the conflicting thoughts of an earnest, warm-hearted man on the great question of suffering. He protests, it is true, against the rigour and uncharitableness of the traditional orthodox belief, but is far more aspiring to solve the problem theoretically. This is one chief point in which he differs from his interpolators (if the word may be used), who mostly appear to have had some favourite theory (or partial view of truth) to advocate.