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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Job: Who Influenced Whom?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: david.kimbrough AT charter.net
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Job: Who Influenced Whom?
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:25:53 -0700

On 11/06/2004 09:34, david.kimbrough AT charter.net wrote:

It is important to re-state what the debate is about.
QUESTION: Is there any evidence that the Sumerian Job-like poems of 1700 BC
were influenced by a pre-existing Hebrew poems?

ANSWER: No there is no evidence that any such Hebrew poems existed or that
any language existed at that time that might be called Hebrew.


I take that as a retreat from your earlier statement "Job is a Hebrew rendition of a much older poem".

AMPLIFICATION: It is impossible to prove a negative. It can never
demonstrated that Job was not written in 3,000 BC or 2,000 BC or 1,000 BC.
The fact that something cannot be disproven, proves nothing. I cannot
disprove the fact that there are little green men living on the far side of
the moon. That however is no argument that they actually are there.

It can be proven that Job was not written in 1,000 AD however. This is
because is evidence, in the form of the LXX and DSS, that in fact there were
written versions of Job around 100 BC, in both Greek and Hebrew


Not in Greek, I think, as the earliest direct evidence for most of the LXX is 4th century CE. But there is, if I remember correctly, evidence among the DSS of an Aramaic version of Job, but not of any other biblical book.

ADDITIONAL POINTS:
1) Job is said to own 3,000 camels. It is pretty well established that
camels were not domesticated too much before 1,000 BC. ...


This seems to be in dispute. See for example http://www.llamaweb.com/Camel/Info.html, which states that that dromedaries "were domesticated even earlier than the Bactrians, before 3000 B.C. in the Arabian penninsula". This information is taken from the book, Medicine and Surgery of South American Camelids (Llama, Alpaca, Vicuna, Guanaco) by Dr. Murray E. Fowler - so certainly not from a book supporting a conservative view of the Bible.

... Job is also presented as being a sedentary individual, not a migratory
shepherd as would be more appropriate to a Israelite of the patriarchal era.


Who says he is an Israelite? The text in fact more or less implies that he is not.

2) Job-like poems were an entire genre in Sumer and Babylon. One of the earlier ones (Ludlul BĂȘl Nimeqi) was written around 1700 BC. Now according to traditional chronologies, this is the period of Egyptian captivity for the Israelites. Now how could the Sumerians be copying Israelite poetry when they were enslaved in Goshen and Pi-Ramesses.

When was this Sumerian poem first written? All you know, approximately, is the date of surviving copy or copies. They could be a copy of something much earlier. Or for that matter the book of Job could have been circulating in Sumer for centuries.

...

5) The fact that the historical record is ?silent? as to the existence of a
Hebrew Job around does not prove that there was not one. It does prove there
is no evidence for one.


The historical record, if the Bible is excluded, is similarly silent on the existence of almost all Bible characters. Job is no different in this from most of the others. If we exclude the Bible as evidence, we can say there is no evidence for their existence. But there is no logical reason to exclude the Bible as evidence.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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