the following in Grassmann's translation (Rig Veda, I. 123, 4, 5),—
Die tageshelle kommt zu jedem Hause
und jedem Tage gibt sie ihren Namen;
zu spenden willig, strablend naht sie immer
und theilet aus der Güter allerbestes.
Als Bhaga's Schwester, Varuna's Verwandte,
komm her zuerst, o schöne Morgenröthe;
Wer frevel übt, der soll dahinter bleiben,
von uns besiegt sein mit der Uschas Wagen.
(There is also an Egyptian parallel in a hymn to the Sun-god, Records of the Past, viii. 131, 'He fells the wicked in his season.') How far the poet of Job believed in the myths which he has preserved, e.g. in the existence of potentates or potencies corresponding to the 'dragon' of which he speaks, we cannot certainly tell. Mr. Budge has suggested that Tiamat, the sky-dragon of the Babylonians, conveyed a distinct symbolic meaning. However this may have been, the 'leviathan' of Job was probably to the poet a 'survival' from a superstition of his childhood, and little if anything more than the emblem of all evil and disorder.
And now for the bearing of the above on criticism. It is a remarkable fact that there are mythological allusions, very similar to some of those in Job, in the later portions of the Book of Isaiah (Isa. xxiv. 21, xxvii. 1, ii. 9). This evidently suggests a date for the Book of Job not earlier than the Exile. It is not necessary to assume that the authors of these books borrowed either from Egypt or from Babylonia. They drew from the unexhausted store of Jewish popular beliefs. They wrote for a larger public than the older poets and prophets could command, and adapted themselves more completely to the average culture of their people.
