imagination. We may be thankful for his protest against applying a prosaic standard to the poetical books of the Hebrew Canon. Those who do so, he remarks,[1] 'fail to observe that the book stands, not among historical, but among poetical books, and that it would betray a very low grade of culture, were one to depreciate imaginative as compared with historical writing, and declare it to be unsuitable for sacred Scripture.'
I entirely agree with the eminent scholar, whose unprogressive theology could not entirely extinguish his literary and philological sense. But I see no sufficient reason for adopting what in itself, I admit, would add a fresh laurel to the poet's crown. Merx indeed assures us[2] that the meaning of the name 'Job' is so redolent of allegory that it must be the poet's own invention, especially as the name occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. He adds that the story of Job is so closely connected with the didactic part of the book that it would be lost labour to separate the legendary from the new material. All was wanted; therefore all is fictitious. This is not, however, the usual course of procedure with poets whether of the East or of the West, whose parsimony in the invention of plots is well known. As for the name Job (Iyyob) it may no doubt be explained (from the Arabic) 'he who turns to God,'[3] and in other ways, but there is no evidence that the author thought of any meaning for it. When he does coin names (see Epilogue), there is no room for doubting their significance. Ewald may, certainly, have gone too far in trying to recover the traditional element: how difficult it would be to do so with Paradise Lost, if we had not Genesis to help us! But the probability of the existence of a legend akin to the narrative in the Prologue, is shown by the parallels to it which survive, e.g. the touching Indian story(Arabic Ayyàbb Ayyáb]) will thus be equivalent to the mythic prophet Saleh (= 'pious') in the Korán (Das Buch Hiob, Einl., S. x.), on whom see Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, p. 50, where he is identified with Moses. This is bold, and, in any case, must not such a name be comparatively modern?]
