The question will one day be asked, how it has been that, in spite of the high pretensions of us English to a superior reverence for the Bible, we have done so little in comparison with our continental contemporaries towards arriving at a proper understanding of it?  The books named below * form but a section of a long list which has appeared in the last few years on the Book of Job alone; and this book has not received any larger share of attention than the others, either of the Old or the New Testament.  Whatever be the nature or the origin of these books, (and on this point there is much difference of opinion among the Germans as among ourselves,) they are all agreed, orthodox and unorthodox, that at least we should endeavour to understand them; and that no efforts can be too great, either of research or criticism, to discover their history, or elucidate their meaning. ____ * I. Die poetischen Bucher des Alten Bundes.  Erklart von Heinrich Ewald.  Gottingen:  bei Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. 1836. 2.  Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuck zum Alten Testament.  Zweite Lieferund.  Hiob Von Ludwig Hirzel.  Zweite Auflage, durchgesehen von Dr. Justus Olshausen.  Leipzig. 1852. 3.  Quaestionum in Jobeidos locos vexatos Specimen.  Von D. Hermannus Hupfeld.  Halis Saxonum. 1853. ____

We shall assent, doubtless, eagerly, perhaps noisily and indignantly, to so obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will not bear us out.  The able men in England employ themselves in matters of a more practical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what has been done elsewhere, no book, or books, which we produce on the interpretation of Scripture acquire more than a partial or an ephemeral reputation.  The most important contribution to our knowledge on this subject which has been made in these recent years, is the translation of the “Library of the Fathers,” by which it is about as rational to suppose that the analytical criticism of modern times can be superseded, as that the place of Herman and Dindoff could be supplied by an edition of the old scholiasts.

It is, indeed, reasonable that, as long as we are persuaded that our English theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we should shrink from contact with investigations, which, however ingenious in themselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation.  But there are some learned Germans whose orthodoxy would pass examination at Exeter Hail; and there are many subjects, such, for instance, as the present, on which all their able men are agreed in conclusions that cannot rationally give offence to any one.  For the Book of Job, analytical criticism has only served to clear up the uncertainties which have hitherto always hung about it.  It is now considered to be, beyond all doubt, a genuine Hebrew-original, completed by its writer almost in the form in which it now remains to us.  The questions on the authenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thought important,