michaelrobin writes:
It is my understanding in that JOB, is the oldest biblical text.
This is perhaps what I mean by "Bible Study" not being very in-depth.
If you assume that each book of the Bible was written by its namesake (which is a stretch to begin with), and the the Torah was written by Moses, yes, Job would be the oldest... story-wise.
However, it's actually among the
newest books of the old testament. How do we know? Writing style, for one. That particular kind of poetic argument just isn't found in the earliest Hebrew literature, nor are multiple points of view. For two, subject matter. The book exists to debate the Wisdom Movement. No Wisdom Movement, no book of Job: it
can't come before Jeremiah, etc.
The oldest (unmodified) books of the bible are likely some of the minor prophets. I personally suspect some of the source material for the Torah might be that old, but it was compiled (and redacted) quite a while later.
You might be interested to study the structure of a
Hebrew Bible. It divides its text into canonization periods. The Torah is obviously placed first, and afterward comes Judges, Samuel/Kings, the major prophets and the minor prophets, in a section called Nevi'im ("prophets"), which was canonized next. Job falls in the last section, Kethuvim ("writings") which are assorted writings that were under debate, and added most recently. There's even some thought that it was not added until
after the time of Christ, as he refers to "the Law (torah) and the Prophets (nevi'im)" but not the third section. He mentions once "and the Psalms" which may be the third section in some form, or perhaps strictly just the Psalms.
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