The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have
hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book;
it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the
vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and
struggling against the pressure. It is a highly wrought composition,
between willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows man,
as he sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable
of being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the
person of whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often
impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems
determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself
the hard duty of contentment.
I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former
part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ but without knowing at that time what I
have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be
collected, the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.
I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and
Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job
carries no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius
of the composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that
it has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that
the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented
under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name
is mentioned in the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in “the
Bible” (by which be always means the Old Testament alone) the word
Satan occurs also in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action
there ascribed to Satan is in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah
(“Essay on Dreams”). In these places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6,
Satan means “adversary,” and is so translated (A.S. version) in 2
Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25. As a proper name, with the
article, Satan appears in the Old Testament only in Job and in Zech.
iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage in Zechariah has been
questioned, and it may be that in finding the proper name of Satan in
Job alone, Paine was following some opinion met with in one of the
authorities whose comments are condensed in his paragraph. –
Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that the two
convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of those whom
the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed
Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case.
It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the
production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far
from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to
objects of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a
different cast to any thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The
astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not
Hebrew names, and it does not appear from any thing that is to be
found in the Bible that the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that
they studied it, they had no translation of those names into their
own language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem.
[Paine’s Jewish critic, David Levi, fastened on this slip (“Detence
of the Old Testament,” 1797, p. 152). In the original the names are
Ash (Arcturus), Kesil’ (Orion), Kimah’ (Pleiades), though the
identifications of the constellations in the A.S.V. have been
questioned. – Editor.]
That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile
nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not
a matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is
there said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother
taught him. This verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that
follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and
this Lemuel was not one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of
some other country, and consequently a Gentile. The Jews however have
adopted his proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the
author of the book of Job was, nor how they came by the book, and as
it differs in character from the Hebrew writings, and stands totally
unconnected with every other book and chapter in the Bible before it
and after it, it has all the circumstantial evidence of being
originally a book of the Gentiles. [The prayer known by the name of
Agur’s Prayer, in Proverbs xxx., – immediately preceding the
proverbs of Lemuel, – and which is the only sensible,
well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible, has much the
appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles. The name of
Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is introduced,
together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same manner, and
nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced
in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, “The words of
Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:” here the word prophecy is
used with the same application it has in the following chapter of
Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur
is in the 8th and 9th verses, “Remove far from me vanity and lies;
give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient
for me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or
lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” This
has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never
prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but
victory, vengeance, or riches. – Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1,
the word “prophecy” in these verses is translated “oracle” or
“burden” (marg.) in the revised version. – The prayer of Agur was
quoted by Paine in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772. –
Editor.]
The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible
chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how
to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical
circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine its
place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of
these men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and,
therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of B.C. 1520, which is
during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have
just as much authority and no more than I should have for saying it
was a thousand years before that period. The probability however is,
that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the only one
that can be read without indignation or disgust.
We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called)
was before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to
calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is
from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens.
But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral
people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but
of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have
been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and
images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but
it does not follow from this that they worshipped them any more than
we do.