How Job Came to Us

Setting is not the same as date. The story is set in Uz, among "the men of the east," in a world of flocks, family sacrifice and long life that feels like Genesis. That setting tells us how the storyteller imagined Job's world, not when the book was written.

The book has no author's name. The Babylonian Talmud says "Moses wrote his own book, the portion of Balaam, and Job" (Bava Batra 14b), and records other opinions on Job's date. The Syriac Peshitta places Job after Deuteronomy in many manuscripts, and at Qumran one Job scroll was copied in the old Hebrew script otherwise used mostly for the Torah: two hints that some ancient readers linked Job with Moses.

Ezekiel (14:14, 20), in the early 6th century BC, names "Noah, Daniel, and Job" as proverbially righteous men. So a righteous-Job tradition was known by then. That does not prove the 42-chapter book existed in its present form; Ezekiel's "Daniel" may be the ancient Danel known from Ugarit, another figure of legend.

A. An uncertain landscape

Uz is linked with Aram (Genesis 10:23), Nahor's family (22:21) and Edom (Lamentations 4:21). Teman is Edomite; Buz is Arabian. The characters are outsiders to Israel's monarchy and temple. No inscription names Job or identifies his home; the atlas marks Uz as an uncertain region.

B. Who wrote it, and when?

Arguments for a date in the 6th–4th centuries BC: the developed idea of ha-satan (like Zechariah 3), many Aramaisms, possible dependence on Psalms and on Isaiah 40–55, and the theme of a righteous sufferer which fits the questions of the exile. Arguments for earlier: archaic poetic forms, the patriarchal setting, Ezekiel's reference. Some propose a pre-exilic prose folktale reshaped by a poet; others a single author using a deliberately old-fashioned frame; others several stages (dialogue, then Job 28, then Elihu). The vocabulary is so unusual (dozens of words occur nowhere else in the Bible) that dating by language is uncertain. Jerome said the Hebrew of Job was "slippery, like an eel: the tighter you hold it, the faster it slips away."

C. The oldest Hebrew

Hebrew fragments from Qumran: 2Q15, 4Q99 (4QJob-a), 4Q100 (4QJob-b) and 4Q101 (4QpaleoJob-c, in paleo-Hebrew script). They are small and fragmentary; there is no complete Qumran Job scroll. They show that Hebrew Job, including Elihu, was copied before AD 70, and that its text was close to the later Masoretic. Exact verse ranges and readings must be checked against the DJD editions (JOB-C04). The complete Hebrew text comes from the Aleppo Codex (c. 930) and the Leningrad Codex (1008), which uses the special poetic accents for Job 3:2–42:6.

D. Aramaic Job

11Q10 from Cave 11 is a substantial Aramaic translation of chapters 17–42; 4Q157 from Cave 4 preserves bits of chapters 3–5. They are translations and interpretations, evidence for how Job was read, and cautiously for its Hebrew. Rabbinic tradition remembers a Targum of Job hidden away at Gamaliel's command.

E. Greek Job

The Old Greek (perhaps 2nd–1st century BC) is about a sixth shorter and adds the wife's speech and the Jobab ending. Aristeas the Exegete, a Hellenistic Jewish writer (perhaps 2nd century BC), already knew the Jobab identification found in the Greek ending. Origen's Hexapla (c. 240) filled the gaps from Theodotion with asterisks. Critical edition: J. Ziegler, Göttingen (1982); English: NETS. The library's Greek (Giguet's French, 1872) follows the filled-out printed text.

F. Latin, Syriac, Coptic

The Old Latin was made from Greek. Jerome first revised Job from Origen's Greek with asterisks and obeli (that version survives), then translated it from Hebrew (the Vulgate). The Syriac Peshitta is from Hebrew. The Sahidic Coptic is from the pre-Origen Greek. Arabic and later versions followed. Each must be labelled by its base text; the reader never fills one tradition's gap with another's text.

G. Canon and reception

In Jewish Bibles Job is among the Writings (Ketuvim), usually with Psalms and Proverbs (the order varies: the Talmud lists Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs…). Christian Old Testaments place it first among the poetic and wisdom books. James 5:11 praises Job's endurance; 1 Corinthians 3:19 quotes Job 5:13. The Testament of Job (Greek, c. 1st century BC–1st century AD) retells his life. Gregory the Great's Moralia on Job (6th century) shaped medieval Christian reading. Jewish commentators from Saadia Gaon to Maimonides treated Job as philosophy of providence.

H. Why versions differ

Job's rare words, compressed poetry and hard syntax invited different vocalizations and translations; the Greek translator condensed; Origen supplemented; copyists erred; and interpreters, Jewish and Christian, read their hopes into ambiguous lines (14:14; 19:25–27; 42:6). A difference may be textual, translational or interpretive. The site labels each kind and never calls them all "scribal changes."

Where Job sits on the site's timeline

The site places Job in the Restoration era (539–400 BC), the period to which many scholars date the poem, while marking its story setting as undated. That placement is a judgement about the book's likely composition, not about Job's lifetime.

What we know, infer, and cannot yet verify

Known: the Masoretic text; Qumran Hebrew and Aramaic fragments; the shorter Old Greek and Origen's supplements; the Greek additions. Inferred: a long composition history, a 1st-millennium date for the poem. Not yet verified by the site: exact Qumran contents and readings (DJD), Ziegler's asterisked lines, the cuneiform parallels line by line, 11Q10's readings of 42:6 and its ending.