Is Job the OLDEST Book in the Bible?

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Judas_Thaddeus

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I here ever so often that the Book of Job is the OLDEST book in the Bible, is that truly so?

If such is the case, I then ask again to double check: Is the Book of Job older even than the Torah?
 
Yes.

EDIT: So as not to let you feel incomplete with my one-word answer, (:rolleyes:) I will say more.

Job lived before Abraham, and thus all the other books of the bible must have been written after his death.

However, if your question is more about the order with which the books were written, I do not know. I daresay it is possible other books were written before Job was written, but Job himself lived before any of them.
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
I here ever so often that the Book of Job is the OLDEST book in the Bible, is that truly so?

If such is the case, I then ask again to double check: Is the Book of Job older even than the Torah?
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Hi Judas:

My Interpreters Commentary on the bible dates Job at 6th-3rd centuries BC (p. 239) , and my Jerome Biblical Commentary sets it more likely at the first half of that time frame around 600-450 BC (p. 512). Jerome gives the date of Hosea at about 750 BC, (p. 253), Amos “probably before 750” BC (p. 245) and Nahum (around 650 BC) (p. 293). As for the Pentateuch/Torah, dating that depends on the time periods you assign to the Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomic (D) and Priestly (P) contributions; the J-narratives appear to have been codified about 10th century BC, the E-narrative post 922 BC, the D-narrative in the first half of the 7th century BC, and the P-narrative around 500 BC (p. 3-4).

I don’t know if this is useful, but there’s a simplified wiki on “Dating The Bible” which may be of some help here, because this is an enormously complicated problem (little bits of books and traditions and narratives spring up everywhere, and it is tortuously difficult to assign hard and fast dates to any of this stuff). It is here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible

There is a lot of controversy about this, and scholars have been haggling over this for centuries. But it seems clear the Biblical Scholars would say that Job is not the oldest book of the Bible, it being predated by much of the Pentateuch and several other Old Testament books.

Jacques
 
dshix said:
Job lived before Abraham, and thus all the other books of the bible must have been written after his death.

However, if your question is more about the order with which the books were written, I do not know. I daresay it is possible other books were written before Job was written, but Job himself lived before any of them.
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The context itself of the introductory parts of the book suggest so, I agree!

I sincerely don’t if it’s the oldest though. The entire dialogue that is delivered throughout dozens of chapters might suggest it was not too far after his life, as the detail of extensive discussions like that one can be easily lost with time. Not that I don’t think some things were added to it, but if we are to consider the core authentic, it may be older than the Torah. 👍
 
NAB seems to suggest it may have been composed between the 7th and 5th centuries BC.
 
This is from the Navarre Bible (Wisdom Books):

The dating of the book is something else we cannot be sure of. The prose passages set Job in patriarchal times when the head of the household was responsible for his family and relatives and offered sacrifices on their behalf, since there were neither priests nor temple. For these reasons, ancient rabbinical tradition (with some exceptions) puts the date of composition back in the twentieth century B.C. However, the earliest Christian commentators and many Church Fathers were of the view that the book could not have been written earlier than the reign of Solomon.
In Modern times, scholars have identified clues which would seem to suggest a more recent date, between the seventh and fourth century B.C., probably during the Persian period (fifth-fourth centuries B.C.). That was the time when, after the Jews’ experience of exile in Babylon, they pondered deeply over the problem of pain and suffering: how could God allow an innocent person or an innocent people, the people of Israel, to undergo such a traumatic experience? Besides, it was in that period that the use of Aramaic became widespread–and it was, moreover, the time when wisdom literature flourished. Also, the figure of Satan as a supernatural “tempter” may owe something to Persian influences (cf. Zech 3:1).
 
I’m not sure how old the book of Job is but I heard he wasn’t Jewish. He is from the land of Uz (not the same as Oz :)). So it illustrates how other people can have a relationship with God even if they weren’t Jews. We tend to focus on the Jews as God’s chosen people and forget about the rest of the people.

Also, I heard that the Talmud says that Job was around during the days of Moses. So he wouldn’t be pre Abraham.
 
According to my sources, when the great Babylonian exile occurred starting in 597 BCE, several of the learned Israelites carried with them various scrolls and letters from their private collections. There was, at that time, nothing sacred about any of those writings, and they were not regarded as being precious. In writing the Books of the OT Bible, there was nothing to stop scribes from changing the words in those documents when transcribing them. Since much of the Hebrew liturgy was based on oral tradition and scrolls of questionable accuracy, who knows what the original stories were, especially when many of the original scrolls were lost? Ezekiel was supposed to have eaten some of them. The Books of the OT were copied over and over by scribe after scribe, and there really was not an official version of the OT until the Rabbis of the time of Jesus began to try to standardize the Bible. By that time the Greek Septuagint version had already been produced. The final edition of the official canon of the Old Testament was not set down until well into the Midrash and Talmudic era.
 
nmgauss said:
According to my sources, when the great Babylonian exile occurred starting in 597 BCE, several of the learned Israelites carried with them various scrolls and letters from their private collections. There was, at that time, nothing sacred about any of those writings, and they were not regarded as being precious. In writing the Books of the OT Bible, there was nothing to stop scribes from changing the words in those documents when transcribing them. Since much of the Hebrew liturgy was based on oral tradition and scrolls of questionable accuracy, who knows what the original stories were, especially when many of the original scrolls were lost? Ezekiel was supposed to have eaten some of them. The Books of the OT were copied over and over by scribe after scribe, and there really was not an official version of the OT until the Rabbis of the time of Jesus began to try to standardize the Bible. By that time the Greek Septuagint version had already been produced. The final edition of the official canon of the Old Testament was not set down until well into the Midrash and Talmudic era.
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In A.D. 73, Josephus took the Holy Books from the destroyed temple in Jerusalem, which filled up a wagon, and had them transported to Rome. That Torah probably forms the basis of the modern Old Testament.
 
kentuckyliz said:
Exodus 15 is one of the oldest bits of the Bible.
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Jewish and Christian tradition viewed Moses as the author of Exodus and the entire Pentateuch, but by the end of the 19th century the increasing awareness of the discrepancies, inconsistencies, repetitions and other features of the Pentateuch had led scholars to abandon this idea. According to current thinking, a first draft (the Yahwist) was probably written in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian exile; this was supplemented and completed as a post-Exilic final edition (the Priestly source) at the very end of the 6th century or during the 5th century, and further adjustments and minor revisions continued down to the end of the 4th century.

Meyers, Carol (2005). Exodus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521002912.

Johnstone, William D (2003). “Exodus”. In James D. G. Dunn, John William Rogerson. Eerdmans Bible Commentary. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802837110.

Kugler, Robert; Hartin, Patrick (2009). An Introduction to the Bible. Eerdmans. ISBN 9780802846365
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
I here ever so often that the Book of Job is the OLDEST book in the Bible, is that truly so?

If such is the case, I then ask again to double check: Is the Book of Job older even than the Torah?
Click to expand...
According to the visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich, Job was an ancestor of Abraham. So it would be a very old book. She also claims the story was changed by Moses, and then by Solomon; to include there wisdom in the story. Job was written into being a Edomite, but was from a different land entirely. So there could hypothetically be different versions of the Job story laying in the sands of the Middle East!😉

tanbooks.benedictpress.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage/product_id/610
 
The_Serpent said:
According to the visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich, Job was an ancestor of Abraham. So it would be a very old book. She also claims the story was changed by Moses, and then by Solomon; to include there wisdom in the story. Job was written into being a Edomite, but was from a different land entirely. So there could hypothetically be different versions of the Job story laying in the sands of the Middle East!😉

tanbooks.benedictpress.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage/product_id/610
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This implies that the story of Job was necessarily a written text. Why couldn’t it be an oral tradition? The story of Job portrays a theme that could apply to anybody. It is a persuasive story about persistent faith in the face of hardship. This is an excellent theme to tell to an audience in a temple. It is timeless.
 
Job is a supplemental book. It is not one of the narrative books but supplements Genesis and is intended to be read and interpreted in light of the Book of Genesis.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
Job is a supplemental book. It is not one of the narrative books but supplements Genesis and is intended to be read and interpreted in light of the Book of Genesis.

-Tim-
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Actually the story of Job is an ancient folktale communicated orally through the centuries that predated the book of Genesis, which was part of the set of written narratives brought back by the exiled Yahwists from Babylonia after they began returning to Jerusalem in the year 538 BCE.
 
nmgauss said:
Actually the story of Job is an ancient folktale communicated orally through the centuries that predated the book of Genesis, which was part of the set of written narratives brought back by the exiled Yahwists from Babylonia after they began returning to Jerusalem in the year 538 BCE.
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I wasn’t talking about its origin. I was talking about its place in the canon of Scripture.

-Tim-
 
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