The Book of Job. By S. R. Driver, D.D. (The
Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d. net.)—This is an eminently practical little volume. It is not to a large degree critical. The Elihu speeches are indeed definitely assigned to a later time than the rest of the Book. Otherwise Canon Driver takes the Book as it stands, and explains, as he puts it himself, "not the original Hebrew, but the Revised Version." He gives a conjecture as to the date, which he supposes to be somewhere "in the century which began with the return from Babylon." This is about seven centuries later than the theory commonly accepted half-a-century ago, by which Job was supposed to be an historical personage who " flourished " some time before Moses. The ordinary reader will find Canon Driver's method most helpful. The Revised Version contains sundry archaisms—" daysman," for instance—and it relegates to the margin some renderings which might well have stood in the text. Doubt- less a considerable amount of difficulty will remain ; but the introduction, setting forth the general purpose and meaning of the Book, and the continuous annotation will be found most useful. When we consider the very small compass within which Canon Driver has contrived to put all this mass of information, we feel that we cannot speak too highly of this contribution to the study of the Bible.--We may mention along with this, The Original Poem of Job, by E. J. Dillon (T. Fisher Unwin, 5s. net). Dr. Dillon's theory is that by applying a metrical test to the Book of Job, as it stands in our Bibles, we may reduce it to the "Original Poem." This theory we cannot undertake to examine. The common opinion among Semitic scholars is that Hebrew verse is not governed by rules so strict that a test of this kind can be profitably applied. If we found a spondee in any of the even feet of a Greek iambic verse, or in any foot of the pure iambic verse of the Altera iam teritur of Horace, we should say without hesita- tion,—This is corrupt. Is there anything that answers to this certainty in the criticism of Hebrew poetry ?
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