Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 21:57:26 -0500
Subject: job

I'd like a site reference for the sumarian text that is similar to the
Book of Job.   I have ran accross a few referances but cannot seem to
find it in our Bible Schools library.   Please send me a HTTP site that
might have some of the text.

Thanks. 

Allen Pangburn



Allen,
 I don't have the reference at my fingertips, but here is what I
have found so far on the web.
 - rob
> Extracted from a defense of the Book of Mormon, Michael T. Griffith's Refuting the Critics: Evidences of the Book of Mormon's Authenticity, Horizon Publishers, 1993.

Using the loose, uncritical comparative method employed by so many anti-Mormons, one could easily and quickly "disprove" the Bible's authenticity (cf. Jackson; Kuhn; Frazer; Weigall). Scholars have identified hundreds of striking parallels between the Old Testament and numerous earlier pagan texts. Likewise, numerous parallels between the New Testament and earlier pagan and rabbinic sources have also been documented. What follows is only a small sampling of these similarities.

Job 38:8-11 discusses the subduing of the sea (yam) by Yahweh, who is frequently depicted as a storm-god in the Old Testament. This passage bears a marked resemblance to an Ugaritic account of the subduing of the sea-god Yamm by the Canaanite storm-god Baal (Mullen 57). In both texts, the restriction of "Sea" within certain limits by a storm-god "constitutes the initial stage of creation" (Mullen 57; see also Pope 288-296).

In fact, the Old Testament as a whole contains numerous references to a sea-god who had to be defeated in order for the creation to proceed (Wakeman; Day). This theme was common in the pagan literature of the ancient Near East.

Returning to the book of Job for a moment, Marvin Pope observes that "Mesopotamian parallels to Job have continued to increase since the early days of the recovery and interpretation of cuneiform documents" (xxxiii). Pope continues:

The first composition to be recognized as a parallel to the Book of Job was the text entitled "I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom" . . . which became widely known as the "Babylonian Job". . . .

A Sumerian text dealing with the same problem as the biblical Book of Job has been pieced together by S.N. Kramer from fragments that long had lain unrecognized in museums thousands of miles apart. This Sumerian version of the Job motif is not very similar to the so-called "Babylonian Job," but is as close to the latter to the biblical Job. (Pope xxxiii-xxxiv)

However, the best-known parallel to Job is the text entitled "I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom," commonly referred to among scholars as "the Babylonian Job." This text and the biblical book of Job have a number of details and themes in common (Pope lxi-lxiv) . In both accounts, a prominent personage, known for humility and righteousness, is suddenly stricken with disease. Both victims, to varying degrees, question divine justice. Both give long and gory descriptions of their ailments. And both are finally restored to health.

The date of the composition of the book of Job is still debated. Some have suggested the book might have been written as early as the fifteenth century B.C. However, most Bible scholars believe Job was composed between the eighth and fourth centuries B.C. As for the Babylonian Job, it was composed in Cassite times, or around 1600 to 1150 B.C. (Pope xxxiii). The Sumerian Job poem recovered by Kramer dates from around 1700 B.C., "but it is likely that it derives from a composition as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur, ca. 2000 B.C." (Pope xxxiv).



> From the WWW edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica:

"Ludlul bel nemeqi"
(Akkadian: "Let Me Praise the Expert"), in ancient Mesopotamian religious literature, a philosophical composition concerned with a man who, seemingly forsaken by the gods, speculates on the changeability of men and fate. The composition, also called the "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer" or the "Babylonian Job," has been likened to the biblical...

(You have to pay $8.50 a month to read the rest)