CHAPTER XII.
ON THE DISPUTED PASSAGES IN THE DIALOGUE-PORTION, ESPECIALLY THE SPEECHES OF ELIHU.
A detailed exegetical study would alone enable the reader
to do justice to the controversies here referred to. But I may
at least ask that, even upon the ground of the slender analysis
which I have given, he should recognise the difficulties at the
root of these controversies. In comparison with his possession
of a 'seeing eye,' it is of little moment to me whether he
adopts my explanations or not. Poets, like painters, have
different periods. It is therefore conceivable that the author
of Job changed in course of time, and criticised his own work,
these afterthoughts of his being embodied in the 'disputed
passages.' It is indeed also conceivable that the phenomena
which puzzle us are to be explained by the plurality of authorship.
In the remarks which follow I wish to supplement the
sketch of the possible or probable growth of the Book offered
in section 3 of Chap. VII., chiefly with regard to the speeches
of Elihu.
Keil has spoken of 'the persistently repeated assaults upon the genuineness' of these discourses. I must however protest against the use of the word 'genuineness' in this connection. Even if not by the author of the poem of Job, the speeches of Elihu are as 'genuine' a monument of Israel's religious 'wisdom' as the work of the earlier writer. No critic worthy of the name thinks of 'assaulting' them, though divines no less orthodox than Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede have uncritically enough set the example. The speeches of Elihu only seem poor by comparison with the original work; they are not without true and beautiful
