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and is even at pains to show its universal and eternal ideas, and its imperishable nature full of meaning for all men, so a book like the book of Job could only have been written by an Israelitish author, only have sprung from the spiritual knowledge and experience rendered possible by the Thora. For as insight into the groping of the heathen world after divine truth is only possible in the light of Christianity, so also such a spiritually bold and accurate reproduction of an old patriarchal tradition was only possible in the light of the revelation of Jehovah: not to mention that the middle part of the book is written in the style of the book of Proverbs, the surrounding parts in evident imitation of the style of the primitive histories of the Pentateuch. But as the supposition of a pre-Salomonic composition is proved invalid, so also are all the grounds on which it has been sought to prove a post-Salomonic. Ewald, whom Heiligstedt and Renan follow, is of opinion that it shows very unsettled and unfortunate times in the background, and from this and other indications was written under Manasseh; Hirzel, that the writer who is so well acquainted with Egypt, seems to have been carried into Egypt with King Jehoahaz; Stickel, that the book presupposes the invasion of the Asiatic conqueror as begun, but not yet so far advanced as the destruction of Jerusalem; Bleek, that it must belong to the post-Salomonic period, because it seems to refer to a previous