Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1008

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progressive works, there is the Commentary of Heiligstedt (1847), which is only a recapitulatory clavis after the style of Rosenmüller, but more condensed; and for what modern Jewish commentaries, as those of Blumenfeld, Arnheim (1836), and Löwenthal (1846), contain beyond the standpoint of the earlier פרושׁים and באורים, they are almost entirely indebted to their Christian predecessors. Also in the more condensed form of translations, with accompanying explanations, the understanding of the book of Job has been in many ways advanced. We may mention here the translations of Köster (1831), who first directed attention to the strophe-structure of Hebrew poetry, but who also, since he regarded the Masoretic verse as the constructive element of the strophe, has introduced an error which has not been removed even to the present day; Stickel (1842), who has, not untastefully, sought to imitate the form of this masterpiece, although his division of the Masoretic verse into strophe lines, according to the accents, like Hirzel's and Meier's in Canticles, is the opposite extreme to the mistake of Köster; Ebrard (1858), who translates in iambic pentameters, as Hosse had previously done;[1] and Renan, who solely determines his arrangement of the stichs by the Masoretic division of verses, and moreover haughtily displays his scornful opposition to Christianity in the prefatory Etude.[2]
Besides, apart from the general commentaries (Bibelwerke), among which that of Von Gerlach (Bd. iii. des A. T. 1849) may be mentioned as the most noted, and such popular practical expositions as Diedrich's (1858), many - some in the interest of poetry generally (as Spiess,

  1. Vid., Schneider, Die neuesten Studien über das B. Hiob, Deutsche Zeitschr. für christl. Wissensch., 1859, No. 27.
  2. Against which Abbé Crelier has come forward: Le livre de Job venge des interprétations fausses et impies de M. Ernest Renan, 1860.