Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1871

of Job in particular was, originally, certainly not Israelitish, but Aramaean.
Job is not mentioned in the writings of Josephus, but we do find there a remarkable passage concerning Job's native country, the land of the Usites, viz., Ant. i. 6: “Aram, from whom come the Aramaeans, called by the Greeks Syrians, had four sons, of whom the first was named Οὔσης, and possessed Trachonitis and Damascus.” The first of these two, Trachonitis, has usually been overlooked here, and attention has been fixed only on Damascus. The word el-Ghûta (Arab. ‘l-gûṭt), the proper name of the garden and orchard district around Damascus, has been thought to be connected in sound with 'Us, and they have been treated as identical: this is, however, impossible even in philological grounds. Ghûta would certainly be written עוּטה in Hebrew, because this language has no sign for the sound Gh (Arab. g); but Josephus, who wrote in Greek, ought then to have said Γούσης, not Οὔσης, just as he, and the lxx before him and Eusebius after him, render the city עזה by Γάζα, the mountain עיבל by Γαιβάλ, the village עי by Γαΐ́, etc. In the same manner the lxx ought to have spoken of a Γαυσῖτις, not Αὐσῖτις, if this were the case. Proper names, also, always receive too definite and lasting an impress for their consonants, as ץ and ט, to be easily interchanged, although this is possible with the roots of verbs. Moreover, if the word עוץ had had the consonant ץ (Arab. ḍ), Josephus must have reproduced it with τ or θ, not with s, in accordance with the pronunciation (especially if he had intended to identify עוץ and Ghûta). And we see from Ptolemy and Strabo, and likewise from the Greek mode of transcribing the Semitic proper names in the Haurânite inscriptions of the Roman period, e.g., Μάθιος and Νάταρος for Arab. mâḍâ and nḍr, that in the time of Josephus the sound of ץ had already been divided into Arab. ṣ and ḍ; comp. Abhandl. der Berlin. Acad. d. Wissenschaft, 1863,