That’s the title of Jeff Oien’s recent post. In it he decides that on the basis of Ezekiel 14:14 that Job was “of course” a real person. Critics would respond with the argument that Job is simply a parabolic figure and he’s being used here as a symbol of righteousness in a hypothetical and impossible situation: the simultaneous presence of Noah, Daniel, and Job. Bryan Lilly chimed in with a post detailing the reasons he thinks Job was a historical figure. Martin Luther, if I remember right, believed Job was a parable. I’ll not wade into the arguments, but I thought I’d just throw in something else.
According to E. W. Bullinger (see his Companion Bible, Genesis 46:13), Job may well have been the son of Issachar. As it says in Genesis 46:13 (Masoretic Text),
And the sons of Issachar [were] Tola and Puah and Job and Shimron.
If we turn to our NIV’s however, we find that there is no Job:
The sons of Issachar: Tola, Puah, Jashub, and Shimron.
The difference is that the Samaritan Pentateuch and some Septuagint mss. read “Jashub,” which better agrees with some other passages. So even if the correct reading for Genesis is “Job,” and this is uncertain, the Job/Jashub referred to could well be different from the Job of the Book of Job.
2 Comments
I suppose people could argue he’s not in any genealogy but that’s not good enough for me. Thanks for the mention.
Jeff
You’re right that lack of genealogy is not enough to disqualify someone from historical reality. Nebuchadnezzar, for example, has no genealogy, but no one at all–even among non-believers–would deny his historical reality.