By Archpriest Alexander Petrovsky
The literary similarities between the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song extend even to their outward form: identical thoughts are expressed by identical turns of phrase. Among such similarities, the following can be noted:
Babylonian Song
Book of Job
“My companions insulted me like a fool” (Part 1, p. 7).
“I became a laughingstock to my friend”
(12:4; 17:6)
“The day is sighs, the night is tears, the month is woe, the year is sorrow” (Part 1, pp. 10-11).
“I have inherited the months of vanity, and the nights of woe are assigned to me” (7:3); “the days of sorrow have compassed me” (30:16).
“I cried to my god for help, but he did not show me his” (Part 2, p. 4).
“I cried to you, but you did not listen to me” (30:20).
“I have not despised the words of the gods.”
“Why do you hide your face” (13:24)?
“Those who are alive at night are dead in the morning; they quickly go down into darkness” (Part 2, pp. 39-40).
“I have not departed from the commandment of his mouth” (23:12).
“He crushed my neck and the back of my head” (Part 2, p. 50).
“Between morning and evening they are torn apart; in a moment they go down to hell” (21:13).
“He pierced me with an arrow” (Part 2, p. 64).
“He seized me by the neck and shattered me” (16:12).
“All day long the persecutor pursues me, and at night he does not allow me to breathe” (Part 2, pp. 67-8).
“The arrows of the Almighty are within me.”
“The tomb is already open” (Part 2, p. 78).
“You pursue me” (10:16), “and do not let me catch my breath” (9:18).
“He has covered my eyes with the darkness of night” (Part 3, p. 49).
“The graves are before me” (17:1).
“He has put an end to the unhealthy sleep that disturbed my rest” (Part 3, pp. 44-5).
“And upon my eyelids is the shadow of death” (16:16).
“You frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions” (7:14).
The Book of Job and the Babel Song are also similar in lexical terms; Their language contains Arabic, Aramaic, and Ethiopic expressions.22
The Book of Job and the Babylonian Song are marked by similarities and identities. The latter extends to the external position of the sufferers, their self-awareness and consciousness, and suggests that both works describe the same event, but not two identical, homogeneous facts, as Landersdorfer asserts. In support of this understanding, he cites the difference in the names of the sufferers and the locales to which the action is confined in the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song.23 However, the replacement of Noah with Ut-Napishtim and Mount Ararat with Nizir does not prevent one from considering the Assyro-Babylonian legend and the biblical narrative that mention them as narrating the same event, i.e., the Great Flood. Accordingly, there is no reason to assert that the Book of The Biblical and Babylonian Songs speak of two identical facts, not of a single event, simply because in the former the sufferer is called Job, and the setting is the land of Uz, while in the latter he is given the name Subsi-mersi-Nergal, and the action is transferred to the borders of Babylonia. It is, of course, possible that cases of righteous people being struck by the same disease could have occurred in different countries. But the biblical and Babylonian accounts record not only the fact of illness, but also of healing from an incurable disease. Regarding the coincidence of our texts in this characteristic detail, Landersdorfer notes that the restoration of a suffering righteous person to his former well-being seems, under normal circumstances, an extremely unlikely phenomenon. 24 But if an isolated case is extremely unlikely, then its repetition is even more unlikely, and therefore Landersdorfer deprives himself of the right to assert that the restoration of a righteous person to his former well-being could have occurred in different countries. He sees another basis for his view in the differences in the characters’ self-awareness and the resulting disparate answers in our texts to the question of the cause of the righteous man’s suffering. Job is righteous in the full sense of the word: the consciousness of innocence and righteousness never leaves him throughout his illness. Consequently, the calamities that befall him bear the character of a test of his piety, in terms of steadfastness and truthfulness.
The Babylonian sufferer is also confident of his righteousness; but, says Landersdorfer, the question arises in him whether he may have sinned unconsciously, whether he may have incurred divine wrath and punishment by demanding divine honors for himself, due to his view of himself—the king, as God’s viceroy on earth. 26 Accordingly, the question of suffering is resolved in the song in the sense that it is a punishment for the mistakes made by the righteous, although not always recognized by them. The problem of evil receives a different treatment in it than in the book of Job. “The Lord,” asserts the latter, “by virtue of His unsearchable wisdom, with which He governs the universe, may have entirely different reasons for His visitations than those which a limited human mind is capable of discerning—special motives for inflicting upon the righteous one severe sufferings that do not bear the character of punishment for sin. “In the eyes of God,” says the Babylonian Song, “sins exist even where man does not notice them.”27 Job and Subsi-mersi-Nergal are two different persons; the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song are two different works.
Of course, Landersdorfer would not have expressed such a view on the solution to the problem of evil in the Babylonian Song if he had taken into account his earlier reflections on the same issue. “The theology of the flourishing era of Babylonian culture from the time of the first Babylonian dynasty sought,” he says, “and found a solution to the problem of evil in pushing it into an inaccessible distance by pointing to the unsearchable decrees of God and the inadequacy of human knowledge.”28 As is evident from the cited passage, the problem of evil is resolved in accordance with the Book of Job. The Babylonian Song does not even think of asserting that disasters are sent for sins. But the issue is not only Landersdorfer’s self-contradiction, but the complete failure of his attempt to imbue Subsi-mersi-Nergal with a sense of sinfulness. Traces of this consciousness allegedly appear in the words of page 33 of Part 2 of the song: “I believed that this was pleasing to God.” Connected, according to Landersdorfer, only with the two preceding lines, which speak of the veneration of the king, they contain an indication of the sufferer’s indirect admission of an unconsciously committed sin—the appropriation of divine honors for himself as the deity’s viceroy on earth. 29 Before his illness, Subsi-mersi-Nergal believed that the king’s equality with God, through the rendering of divine veneration to him, was pleasing to God, but during his illness he dimly understood that this was a sin on his part. But such an understanding of the phrase: “I believed that this was pleasing to God,” is unacceptable from the point of view of the context. According to him, it is the conclusion of all the sufferer’s previous arguments about the causelessness of the punishment that befell him, stating that reality did not justify his belief in the godliness of his previous behavior. Therefore, if page 33 marked the emergence of the thought of sinfulness in Subsimersi-Nergal’s consciousness, then all the aforementioned forms of service to God, in which his piety was expressed, must have seemed sinful to him. The unnaturalness of such a conclusion is clear in itself and obvious to Landersdorfer. Hoping to avoid it, he links page 33 only to the two preceding ones, but fails to notice that even this artificially contrived outcome in no way eliminates the unnaturalness. Page 33 is linked to page 31: “I considered respect for the king equal to respect for God,” and page 32: “I taught the people respect for the palace.” The deification of the king might be considered a sin, but instilling in subjects a sense of respect for the palace, i.e., for royal authority, cannot be considered such. Yet, Landersdorfer’s view demands such an incredible conclusion.
On the other hand, if the assimilation of divine honors to the king was common during the period of the Babylonian Song—as is known from the history of King Gudea of Lagash, the second king of the Dungi Dynasty of Ur31, and is suggested by the Code of Gammurabi—then there is no reason to believe that Subsi-mersi-Nergal exalted himself above the views of his contemporaries and rejected it as sinful. At least, his concept of sin does not justify such a conclusion; according to the general Babylonian view, sins are considered to be ritual errors and irregularities: the avoidance of sacrifice, the failure to observe rituals (Part II, 12, p. 2). Finally, Landersdorfer’s view is also supported by the fact that, had Subsi-mersi-Nergal been conscious of his sinfulness, further complaints about the undeservedness of his sufferings would have been impossible, and yet they begin on page 48 of Part II of the Song.
Landersdorfer’s attempt to point out the essential difference in the self-awareness of Job and the sufferer of the Babylonian Song, and thereby prove that the texts under consideration refer to different persons, proves unsuccessful.
The Book of Job and the Babylonian Song are marked by features of mutual similarity, bordering on identity. Existing literature explains this in three ways: by the indirect influence of the Song on the Book of Job32, by their dependence on a single common source—tradition33, and, finally, by the fact that the texts describe identical, similar events34. The first explanation is unacceptable because indirect influence could not be accompanied by the aforementioned literary similarity between the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song.
The latter requires a direct correlation, which even proponents of pan-Babylonianism cannot accept. The last two explanations also fall apart, as they are not supported by the facts. Examples of descriptions of similar phenomena from the external and internal spheres of human life are the biblical psalms and Babylonian penitential hymns. As such, they bear features of undeniable similarity, but this similarity boils down to the fact that the expressions and images of a known hymn find their counterparts in the expressions and images of one or the other psalm. At the same time, among the Babylonian hymns, there is not a single one that could be equated with a specific psalm as a similar literary work. Independent descriptions of similar phenomena do not yield the same results as those found in the Babylonian Song and the Book of Job. It would be more straightforward and natural to see the reasons for the similarities observed between these monuments in their dependence on a single common source—tradition. However, a comparison of the Assyro-Babylonian legend of the Great Flood, which arose on this basis, with the corresponding biblical narrative suggests that tradition is far from guaranteeing similarity, much less identity. Nor could it have existed in the present case. Before becoming known to the author of the Book of Job, the tradition of the suffering righteous man must have existed from the time of Hammurabi until the ninth–eighth centuries, or more than a millennium.
A period more than sufficient for not only distortion but also complete oblivion.
Unable to accept the existing explanations for the similarities between the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song, we would like to see the reason for the observed identity in the fact that the Song and the narrative found in the Book of Job originated among the same people—the Arabs.
And first of all, as for Job’s story, it undoubtedly took place in Arabia, where he is identified in the book that bears his name. Job is “the most illustrious of the sons of the east” (1:3), referring to the peoples who inhabited the blessed, rocky, and deserted Arabia. As a resident of this region, Job counts among his friends two Arabs—Baldad and Zophar. The former, nicknamed Shuchit, is a descendant of Shuah, Abraham’s son by Keturah (Genesis 25:2). The second text of the LXX is called the Minean, and the Mineans are one of the Arab tribes. Job is also an Arab in his religious and moral views, set forth in chapter 31 of his book. These latter are nothing other than a repetition of the Ten Commandments of the religion of Abraham, which was and still is professed by non-Muslim Arabs.36
The Babylonian Song, as is evident from the above data, is a work of the First Babylonian Dynasty.
According to the research of Gomel and other scholars,37 it was of Arabic origin, and contract tablets from the same era indicate that its subjects were Semites, Arabs. As a relic of the Arab domination of Babylonia, the Babylonian Song still retains some expressions, according to scholars, that are Arabic. Martin considers the following expressions to be such: nagâru = Arabic nagara – to dig, to excavate; ha-as-pu = ap. сhasiphun – a well carved into a rock; zarâpu=ap. vàrapha – to flow (about tears); a-la-his from alahu=ap. alacha – to become sour, to acidify; nabâhu=ap. naphaha – to inflate; sil-la-tum=ap. sàllaton – skin; sa-ba-ris=ap. sàbara – to take; in-ni-ip-ta from napâtu=ap. nàphata – to speak incomprehensibly; tu-pu-us-ta-sa=ap. taphisa – to become dirty; urùdu=ap. vùrudum – jugular vein; upat-tin=phátana – to excite, to incite to rebellion; qin-nu-u=ap. kunnatun – the top of the mountain; u-ma-si=ap. hàmisa – to be strong, robust; gar-bu=ap. jarabun – leprosy; garsu(n), ga-ra-se=ap. garacha – to injure a bone.
Indirect evidence of the Arabic origin of the song, and in any case a direct indication of its difference from Babylonian works proper, is the presence in it of a discourse, unusual for the latter, on weakness and inconstancy – the frailty of man and the vicissitudes of his fate – as well as the absence of the repentance for sins38 observed in Babylonian penitential hymns, which underlies the persistent request for pardon.
Being the work of one people, a description of an event of the same order, the Babylonian Song and the narrative underlying the Book of Job could not help but be similar. But of the entire content of the modern Book of Job, the Babylonian Song repeats only that part of the sufferer’s speech in which he depicts his external, difficult and internal, tormenting state. Job desired to see these speeches written down (19:23). And if our monuments reproduce them with striking similarity, even in literary terms, then such a phenomenon serves as clear evidence of the fulfillment of Job’s wish.
A recording of the main content of his speeches undoubtedly existed and formed the basis of the Book of Job and the Babylonian Song. Only by accepting this assumption does their similarity become understandable. In particular, the existence of an Arabic transcription of the sufferer’s speeches eliminates the unfounded assumption that the author of the Book of Job deliberately embellished his speech with Arabic expressions.
Since the time of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the narrative of Job, as well as the entire content of his book, has repeatedly been presented in biblical literature as poetic fiction. According to one of the book’s most recent scholars, Royer, its author, a contemporary of the Judean king Josiah, transfers the action to deep antiquity and an alien, non-Jewish setting so as not to shake the people’s faith in the theory of earthly worldviews with his discussions of divine injustice. 39 The Babel Song puts an end to this kind of speculation. It confirms the historical authenticity of the biblical narrative, which presents Job as a Semite Arab and places his life in patriarchal times, and also leaves no doubt about the existence of a record of the sufferer’s speeches.
* * *
Notes:
22. See Philaret. The Origin of the Book of Job. Pp. 175–7. Kyiv. 1872. Martin. Op. cit. Pg. 123.
23. Op. cit. S. 104–8.
24. Landersdorfer. Op. S. 117.
25. Ibid. S. 112–113. 115.
26. Ibid. S. 111. Landersdorfer repeats Jastrow’s view in this case. Op. Cit. B. II. Kap. XVIII. S. 126.
27. Landersdorfer. Op. cit. S. 116.
28. Ibid. S. 73.
29. Landersdorfer. Op. cit. P. 67.
30. In connection with all that has gone before, p. 33 has, says Landersdorfer, the following meaning: “My guilt, for which I am so severely punished, consists in the fact that I conscientiously fulfilled the religious duties of a private individual and head of state. But we have no right to put such caustic irony into the mouth of a Babylonian ruler; it would not correspond to the purpose of a didactic work.” Op. cit. P. 67.
31. It is known of Gudea that he erected a statue for himself, placed it in the temple, and ordered sacrifices to be made to it. The name of the “god” Gudea is already found in monuments of the Second and Third Dynasties of Ur. Jastrow. Op. cit. B. Kap. IX. P. 170. Likewise, Dungi, who declared himself a god during his lifetime, established a cult for himself. B. A. Turaev. Op. cit. P. 96. In the introduction to his “code of laws,” Gammurabi calls himself “the brother of Zamamas.” The Babylonian “sun god.” Gressmann. Op. cit. S. 142; cp. S. 171.
32. Jastrow. A Babylonian Parallel to Hiob. Journal of Biblical Literature. 1906. XXV. P. 135 ff.
33. Fruhstorfer. An assyrisch-babylonisches Gedicht und das biblische Buch Job. Zeitschrift für catholische Theologie. 1907. IV Quartalheft. S. 762.
34. Landersdorfer. Op. cit. S. 111 ff.
35. The 9th–8th centuries are the earliest date for the writing of the book. Job, established on the basis of certain features of its Aramaic language. As Furst rightly notes, Aramaic words appear in the book of Job in Jewish clothing, i.e., they have Hebrew forms. Such are primarily the verbs. The verb שּׂוּט – “flew with speed,” “rushed” – is considered to be borrowed from Aramaic. In verse 26 of chapter 9 of the book of Job, the third person singular imperfectum שׂוּטי is substituted from it – a purely Hebrew form, instead of the Aramaic שּׂוּטיְ (cf. םוּקיְ – Dan. 6:20; 7:24: בוּתיְ Dan. 4:31). The third person feminine singular of the same tense צוּדתָ – runs (41:14) is also formed precisely from the Chaldean verb ץוּד ; the Aramaic form would be ץוּדתְ . The third person plural form piel from שׁקַלָ – gather the late harvest sounds in verse 6 of chapter 24 וּשׁקֵּלַיְ instead of the Aramaic ןוּשׁקְּלַיְ ֽ (cf. זוּלבְּקַיֹוִ – Dan. 7:18). The 3rd person feminine singular. The perfectum number from the Chaldean verb םנַעָ – mourned has the form חמָּנְעָֽ in verse 25 of chapter 30, the Aramaic ending was ת_. Finally, instead of the Aramaic לםֻּטְתִּוַ in verse 17 of chapter 14 there is the Hebrew second person masculine imperfectum of the form Qal לפֹּטְתִּוַ, from לפָטַ – covered (cf. םשֻׁרְתּ Dan. 6:9). Hebrew endings are also found in Chaldean nouns in the book of Job. Thus, the word רדֶסֶ – “row” – is used in the plural as םירִדָסְ , i.e., with the ending -םיִ instead of the Aramaic ןיִ .
Judging by the examples given, at the time the Book of Job was written, Aramaic forms not only failed to displace Hebrew ones, but were themselves replaced by the latter. And since we encounter a similar phenomenon in Senjiri inscriptions of the 9th–8th centuries—their Aramaic speech was unable to overcome Canaanite and succumbed to its assimilating influence—the Book of Job can be considered a work of the same era.
36. Delitzsch. Bibliographical Commentary on the Poetic Books of the Old Testament. II B. The Book of Job. S. 377. 1864.
37. Hommel. The Altisraelite Experience. S. 88 ff. B. A. Turaev. Op. cit. p. 150, pr. 2. Priest V. I. Zykov. The Biblical Patriarch Abraham. P. 107. 1914.
38.Landersdorfer. Op. cit. S. 60–1.
39. Royer. The Eschatology of the Books of Job and the Study of the Vorexilischen Prophetie. Biblische Studien. 1901. VI B. S. 66.
Source in Russian: Petrovsky A.V. The Book of Job and the Babylonian Song of the Suffering Righteous Man // Christian Reading. 1916. No. 4. P. 377-393.
