The chief point for consideration at this stage is the LXX version.
This probably d.itt'S from the early or middle portion of the 2nd ceuu B.C. The character of the translation is too free and loose to be of much service in the detailed criticism of the text, but it has been long known to scholars that the ori^-inal text of the LXX was much shorter than the Textus Keccptus now found in our MSS. In the time of Origen the current Gr. version was shorter than the lleb. by some 400 Unes, the omissions noted by Jerome amounting: to more than 700. Orijjen {Ep. ad .i/ric. § 4) tells U8 that, in the copies he used, as many as from three or four to sixteen or nineteen verees were lackinir in some
ftlaces, and he remedied the deficiencies by supplyintr the Greek rom Theodotion, obelizing all the passag'es thus added to the Or. text before him. Five MSS are extant presen'ing Origen'a marks, and in ISsy Oiasca published a Coptic tr. of the LX.X version of Job which exhibits the pre-Ongenian state of the text. As this version substantially agrees with the evidence furnished by the five MSS above named, omitting the passages which in them are marked with asteriska, it is clear that this text gives us the LXX version in its earliest form.
The question is, what is its relation to the Hebrew ? It must not be taken for granted either that it is earlier and purer than the SiT, or that it is simply a curtailed and mutilated tr. from the Heb. that has come down to us. A similar state of thinp exists in relation to the text of Jeremiah, and scholars are not yet agreed upon an inter- pretation of the facts. In the case of Job, Bickell uses this evidence to support his OA\-n very sweep- ing reconstruction of the text, seeking to show that the book in its present state has grown by additions, successively made, to a very much shorter poem. Hatch {Essays in Bib. Greek, pji. 215-245) argues in the same sense, that the early Greek translation represents the primitive form, the Hebrew a later and amplified form, of the text. Dillmann, on the other hand (Trans. Royal Prus. Acad, of Sci. 1890), contends that, except in a few cases, omissions from the Heb. were arbitrarily made by the Gr. translator— a view apparently held preWously by Bickell himself ; and Driver (Contemp. Rev. Feb. 1896, p. 262), though with some hesitation, pronounces the latter to be the more probable hypothesis. It is noteworthy that the omissions of the LXX do not relieve tlie chief difficulties which attend the text of the book as it stands, whilst, in several cases at least, it is difficult to understand the context without these omitted passages, or to explain how, if they did not form
part of the original text, the passages in the Heb. came to be added to it. (ilo-^-ses and aniplificationa on such a scale "enerallv lioclare themselves as such bcj-ond mucli possibility of question. In- trinsic jirobability, in other words, is almost entirely against the hypothesis that the shorter Gr. form represents the primitive type of text. Budde, in his latest work on Job (see Literature below), also pronounces against the view of Bickell and Hatch.
iNone of the other versions are of much use in textual criticism. The Peshitta Syriac was made from the Heb., and its rendcrinjjs are occo-sionally serviceable in dilhculties of detiiil. The variations of the Targum are more curious than helpful, while the old Latin version was made from the Gr., and exhibits the same peculiarities (cf. BurkitI, Old Lat. and Itala, p. 8 f.). A revision of it was m.ide by Jerome, preserving the critical marks which indi- cated the p.assages supjilied from the Heb. to till up the considerable deficiencies noted above.
v. Integrity. — Obviously, tliissubject is closely connected with the last, and some arguments of critics concerning the text have been reserved for this section, because a discussion of the genuine- ness of certain passages cannot be carried on with- out an examination into the subject-matter of the book. Criticism has been busy in recent years with the construction of Job, and most modern interpreters hold that the book as it has come down to us has undergone more or less of amplili- cation or modification. Some would reduce the volume of the book by at least one half. They hold that neither prologue nor epilogue, neither the speeches of the Almighty nor those of Elihu, formed part of the original work, and that the speeches of Job and the three friends must be both reduced in bulk and altered in character, if we would read them in their original form. Repre- sentatives of this extreme view, which lops oil from the statue limbs and members till a mere torso, altered in its proportions, is left, are Bickell and Studer.
Three main reasons are assigned for this trenchant handling of the text. (1) The tact that the earliest form of the LXX version was so much shorter than the Heb. as it now stands. But we have seen that it is by no means clearly proved that the shorter form represents the primitive type, and the reconstruc- tion proiTOsed in many respects does not follow the lines thus indicated. (2) A metrical theory concerning the composition of Job — a hypothesis of great learning and ingenuity, in which, however, few Heb. scholars have followed Bickell— demands some such system of wholesale abbreviation as is thus pro- posed. This attempt to make the lines of Job 'scan' can only be carried out by the application of extreme violence. Not only must whole passages be shorn away, but the lines that remain must be read \^ith frequent elisions and accommodations. In many cases these are so \iolent and unnatural as to ojike it clear that Bickell is trjingto forceintouniformityand regularity an irregular though real and impressive poetical rhyth'n which runs through the book. It may be added, that a metrical version of a poem which can be remembered with ease would not readily be displaced by a more cumbrous and irregular for-a. The whole history of Heb. poetry, moreover, is against the iupiK>iii- tion that a poem of the length of Job. and of its probaUe aat«, w.'is composed in regular metre with lines of almost uniform regulation length.