text · B0033
Sefer Iyov ספר איוב
The righteous sufferer of the land of Utz, and the canon's hardest book to pin to a date — the Gemara itself says so. The baraita of Bava Batra opens its authorship list with "Moshe wrote his book, the portion of Bilam, and Iyov," and the map follows that stam attribution. But the same sugya then runs a full catalogue of alternatives — Iyov in the days of the spies, of the shoftim, of Achashverosh, of Yaakov, even among those who returned from Bavel with a beit midrash in Teveryah — and one sage's view that Iyov never existed at all and the book is a mashal. Nowhere else does the tradition display its own uncertainty about a book's setting so openly.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- ספר איוב
- Also known as
- Iyov, Job, Book of Job
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- written by Moshe per the stam baraita, placed c. 2448–2488 AM; the sugya itself canvasses datings from Yaakov's days to the return from Bavel
- Academic
- dating debated; the poetic dialogues usually placed between the 7th and 4th c. BCE
- Duration
- ≈40 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Language
- Biblical Hebrew
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Moshe wrote his book, the portion of Bilam, and Iyov" (משה כתב ספרו ופרשת בלעם ואיוב) — the stam baraita of Bava Batra. The Gemara supports it with R' Levi bar Lachma's teaching that Iyov lived in Moshe's days (the shared word אפוא, and Moshe alone called מחוקק).
Map placement follows this stam attribution (Moshe's era, c. 2448–2488 AM), per the atlas rule of traditional AM positioning.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★★☆☆ | |
| The sugya itself treats Iyov's date as an open machloket and canvasses alternatives: Rava — Iyov lived in the days of the spies; a tannaitic dispute has R' Elazar placing him in the days of the shoftim, R' Yehoshua ben Korchah in the days of Achashverosh, and "some say" in the days of Yaakov (having married Dinah); R' Yochanan and R' Elazar say he was among those who returned from Bavel, his beit midrash in Teveryah.
Machloket flagged: the traditional sources themselves span some 1,300 years for the book's setting; no single dating commands the sugya.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★☆☆☆ | |
| One sage before R' Shmuel bar Nachmani went further: "Iyov never was and was never created — it is a mashal" (איוב לא היה ולא נברא אלא משל היה); R' Shmuel bar Nachmani rejects this from the verse "there was a man in the land of Utz."
Recorded and rebutted within the sugya — cited here because the Gemara itself preserves the view.
|
rabbinic | ★★★☆☆ |