Job

William Blakes, Job Rebuked by his friends — Job Rebuked by his Friends

Though the Book of job is considerered by many to be the oldest Biblical Book, there are varying view points depending upon scholarship. This first one, from the Bible Gateway provides one of many summaries.

Introduction – tab is intro Commentary 1 Bible Gateway

Theme

This wisdom book ponders the question of whether God is a God of justice in the light of life’s perplexities, such as human suffering.

Overview

Probably the oldest book in the Bible, Job is the story of a good man who endures extreme suffering and wonders why. It’s an honest look at responding to life’s misery. But the main point of this book is the centrality of trusting God. The NIV Study Bible says Job shows that true, godly wisdom is to reverently love God more than all his gifts and to trust the wise goodness of God even though his ways are often beyond the power of human wisdom to fathom. Job is a profound, but painfully practical, drama that wrestles with deep troubles and concludes that righteous sufferers must trust in, acknowledge, serve, and submit to the omniscient and omnipotent Sovereign, realizing that some suffering is the result of unseen, spiritual conflicts between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan—between the power of light and the power of darkness. Even though God’s people may not always understand why God acts the way he does, they should rest in the assurance of knowing he understands.

Grouping

Writings (Hebrew); Poetic (Protestant); Wisdom (Catholic); Poetic and Didactic (Orthodox)…. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%201&version=NIV

The Jewish View >>> https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/MAGAZINE-who-really-wrote-the-book-of-job-1.5434183

Biblical books tend to be lengthy and presently I am not sure how to manage their expositions, with Surah 96:1-5, our previous post, I dealt only with those first 5 verses or ayah, ayat which were taught to Muhammad. I have provided the Contents links for the article about the Book of Job on Wikipedia.

Another view -Wikipedia

I believe I mentioned in the initial Bible Page, that there is a variety of literary Genre within the Scriptures and Job, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Proverbs belong to the genre of wisdom literature, sharing a perspective that they themselves call the “way of wisdom”.

Wisdom means both a way of thinking and a body of knowledge gained through such thinking, as well as the ability to apply it to life. It is attainable in part through human effort and in part as a gift from God, but never in its entirety – except by God. The three books share attitudes and assumptions but differ in their conclusions: Proverbs makes confident statements about the world and its workings that are flatly contradicted by Job and Ecclesiastes.Wisdom literature from Sumeria and Babylonia can be dated to the third millennium BCE. Several texts from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt offer parallels to Job, and while it is impossible to tell whether the author of Job was influenced by any of them, their existence suggests that he was the recipient of a long tradition of reflection on the existence of inexplicable suffering………(quote)

With the differing opinions regarding the written texts, as in whether they were written at the time or many years later also affects by whom we believe them to have been written. Whether fact or allegory, I have been taught that the Book is a Play in the form of Dialogue, no Biblical Book was ever written for the sake of it.

The character Job appears in the 6th-century BCE Book of Ezekiel (although the book has later additions) as a man of antiquity renowned for his righteousness, and the author of the Book of Job has apparently chosen this legendary hero for his parable. Rabbinic tradition ascribes it to Moses, but scholars generally agree that it was written between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, with the 6th century BCE as the most likely period for various reasons. The anonymous author was almost certainly an Israelite, although he has set his story outside Israel, in southern Edom or northern Arabia, and makes allusion to places as far apart as Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The language of Job stands out for its conservative spelling and for its exceptionally large number of words and forms not found elsewhere in the Bible. Many later scholars down to the 20th century looked for an Aramaic, Arabic or Edomite original, but a close analysis suggests that the foreign words and foreign-looking forms are literary affectations designed to lend authenticity to the book’s distant setting and give it a foreign flavor.

Job exists in a number of forms: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which underlies many modern Bible translations; the Greek Septuagint made in Egypt in the last centuries BCE; and Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls…….Please perouse the links for things which strike you as relevent.