Investigation: Why Ancient Jobs Differ

Imagine three ancient readers in about AD 200. One, in Judea, reads Job in Hebrew from a scroll, perhaps one of the copies like those left in the Qumran caves. Another, in a synagogue in Galilee, hears an Aramaic translation. A third, in Alexandria, reads Job in Greek. The third reader has a much shorter book: whole lines and passages, especially in the later chapters, simply are not there.

Around AD 240 the Christian scholar Origen noticed. In his great six-column Bible, the Hexapla, he compared the Greek with the Hebrew and filled in the missing lines from another Greek translation, by Theodotion, marking each addition with an asterisk (※). He wrote to Julius Africanus that "in Job there are many passages, sometimes three or four verses, sometimes fourteen or nineteen," missing from the Greek. Jerome later said the Greek lacked "seven or eight hundred lines."

Over time copyists dropped the asterisks. Most later Greek manuscripts, and the printed Septuagints that modern translations like Giguet's are based on, contain the filled-out text. The shorter Old Greek survives in a few manuscripts, in Origen's marked text as reconstructed by scholars, and in translations made before Origen, notably the Sahidic Coptic.

What you can check yourself

Open Job in the reader and compare the Hebrew (WLC), the Sahidic Coptic and the French of the Greek (Giguet). Giguet's Job has 1,068 verses filled, almost the full Hebrew count (1,070): it follows the filled-out Greek. The Coptic copy has 906, with gaps concentrated in chapters 21–42, especially the Elihu speeches. That pattern matches the scholarly description of the Old Greek. Some gaps may be damage in the Coptic manuscripts or in our digital copy; the reader marks them as missing, never as a proven Old Greek omission.

Why was the Greek shorter?

Two explanations. (1) The translator worked from a shorter Hebrew text. (2) The translator abridged a Hebrew text much like ours, condensing repetitive or obscure poetry, especially in the later chapters where the Hebrew is hardest. The NETS translator (C. Cox) and Maria Gorea (2021) describe the omissions as unevenly distributed and often consistent with deliberate condensing; most scholars favour abridgement, while evaluating each passage separately. The Qumran Hebrew fragments are close to the Masoretic text and include Elihu, which supports the existence of a full-length Hebrew Job before the Christian era.

The Aramaic Targum

11Q10 is one of the earliest translations of any biblical book. It ends at 42:11, and scholars debate whether that is due to damage or a shorter ending. Its reading of 42:6 is reported as "I am poured out and dissolved, and I shall become dust and ashes," very different from "I repent." Rabbinic tradition remembers that Rabban Gamaliel the Elder ordered an Aramaic Job to be hidden in a wall of the Temple Mount (Tosefta Shabbat 13:2), showing early unease about written Targums. The Targum is evidence of interpretation and, cautiously, of the Hebrew it translated.

Expansions as well as gaps

The Greek is shorter overall but adds some passages: the long speech of Job's wife (2:9) and the ending about resurrection and Jobab (42:17a–e). It also interprets: "the devil" (1:6), "angels" (38:7), "the dragon" (40:20). A difference between versions can be (a) a different Hebrew text, (b) a translator's choice, (c) a later scholarly supplement (Origen), or (d) a copyist's error. The site never labels all four as "scribal changes."

Still to verify

Exact Qumran verse ranges and readings (DJD; JOB-C04); the asterisked lines in Ziegler's edition and Gentry's study (JOB-C03); whether each Coptic gap is an Old Greek minus or damage.