the fourteenth century, made known by Hennig, and the Florentine national poet Juliano Dati at the beginning of the sixteenth century, accomplished in their poetical reproductions of the book of Job, is here incomparably surpassed. What might not the fathers have accomplished if they had only had at their disposal such a translation of the book of Job as e.g., that of Böckel, or of the pious Miss Elizabeth Smith, skilled in the Oriental languages (died, in her twenty-eighth year, 1805), or of a studious Swiss layman (Notes to the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament, together with a Translation of the Book of Job, Basel 1841)?
The way to the true and full perception of the divine in Scripture is through the human: hence rationalism - especially after Herder, whose human mode of perception improved and deepened - prepared the way for a new era in the church's exposition of the book of Job. The Commentaries of Samuel Lee (1837), Vaihinger (1842), Welte (1849), Hahn (1850), and Schlottmann (1851),[1] are the first-fruits of this new period, rendered possible by the earlier Commentaries of Umbreit (1824-32), Ewald (1836-51), and Hirzel (1839, second edition, edited by Olshausen, 1852), of whom the first[2] is characterized by enthusiasm for the poetical grandeur of the book, the second by vivid perception of the tragical, and the third by sound tact and good arrangement, - three qualifications which a young Scotch investigator, A. B. Davidson, strives, not unsuccessfully, to unite in his Commentary (vol. i. 1862).[3]
Besides these substantially
- ↑ Vid., the review of the last two by Oehler in Reuter's Repertorium, Feb. 1852; and Kosegarten's Aufsatz über das B. Hiob in der Kieler Allgem. Monatsschrift, 1853, S. 761-774.
- ↑ Vid., Ullmann-Riehm's Blätter der Erinnerung an F. W. C. Umbreit (1862), S. 54-58.
- ↑ The author, already known by a Treatise on the Hebrew Accentuology, is not to be mistaken for Sam. Davidson. In addition, we would call attention to the Commentary of Carey (1858), in which the archaeology and geography of the book of Job is illustrated by eighty woodcuts and a map.
