Section 1

TEACHING BOOKS

The books that make up the third section of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, which we are beginning to study, are called poetic in form, or didactic in content.

The resurrected Christ said to His disciples: "This is what I told you, while I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written about Me in the law of Moses, and in the prophets and psalms" (Luke 24:44). From his words it is clear that these books at that time were united under the common name of "psalms". These books were called poetic by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Gregory the Theologian, as well as St. John of Damascus. The writer of the 6th century, Leontius of Byzantium, was one of the first to call them didactic [51, vol. 4, p. 3].

According to the explanation of St. Athanasius the Great, "it was fitting that St. The Scriptures sang to God not only in a consistent [prosaic] speech, but also in a way that did not have a strict sequence [poetic]. Thus, in coherent speech is said what belongs to the law and the prophets, and everything narrative, with the inclusion of the New Testament. A speech that does not have a strict order is said that which is contained in the psalms and hymns. And this is what is required by the Law, so that people love God with all their strength and strength" [4, vol. 4, p. 29]. He also calls the speech of the teaching books "widespread" [ibid.], thus indicating a special form characteristic of Jewish poetry, when thought is conveyed by means of two or more related expressions (parallelism).

We call these books instructive because they contain "the teaching of piety" [59, p. 16]. "Teaching books are primarily subjective, in contrast to the objective exposition of the truths of faith and piety in the law and the objective description of the life of the Jewish people in historical writings" [4, vol. 4, p. 3]. Their task is to make man's own thoughts, feelings, and wills through the objective laws and decrees given by God; show their agreement with human nature. They give us the experience and comprehension of these revealed truths in everyday life, as well as the response of the human spirit to the voice of God. Each of the teaching books does this in a special way; We will consider the rest of the features of teaching books in the sections dedicated to each of them.

Chapter 1.

The Book of Job

The book does not contain specific indications of the time of its writing and authorship. St. John Chrysostom considered it to belong to Solomon, or even to Moses. It should be noted that the everyday realities described in this book can be attributed to the era of the patriarchs, to the beginning of the second millennium before the birth of Christ. The peculiarities of the language and style of this book, its closeness in many expressions to the Psalter, rather testify to the fact that it received its final form during the heyday of the kingdom of Israel, that is, in the time of Solomon, at the time when other works of teaching literature appeared. One does not interfere with the other, since the ancient tradition could have received its final form much later. In other books of Holy Scripture Job is spoken of as a very real historical person (Ezekiel 14:14, James 5:11). In a postscript found in the text of the Septuagint, it is said that Job was a descendant of Esau, the fifth from Abraham.