32 armin d. baum
them. they then discovered discrepancies between these and copies in the
possession of other individuals, and so sent them to me with the request that
I correct them. since, then, as I have stated above, they were written not for
publication but to fit the particular attainments and needs of those who had
requested them, it follows naturally that some of them are rather extended,
while others are compressed; and their styles, and indeed the actual theoretical
content, vary in their completeness. those works which were written for the
parties mentioned above would obviously be neither complete nor perfectly
accurate in their teaching. that was not their requirement—nor would such
individuals have been able to learn the whole subject-matter accurately until
they had first reached a certain basic level. some of my predecessors gave such
works the title of “outlines,” others “sketches,” or “Introductions,” “synopses,”
or “guides.” I simply gave them to my pupils without any such inscription, and
it is for that reason that when they later fell into other hands, they were given
a number of different titles by different persons. those which were sent back
to me for correction I decided to inscribe with the title “for Beginners”; and it
is with these works that I shall begin.
Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob pr. 1.1–3
In the sixth century, gregory the great (in the prologue of his Moralia in
Iob) declared it unnecessary to determine the author of the anonymous
Book of Job. according to gregory, the author of the Book of Job con-
cealed his name because he considered god to be the actual author of
his work and viewed himself as a more or less passive mediator of god’s
revelation.38
Many people often ask who is to be considered the author of the book of
blessed Job...
2 But who wrote these words is quite a pointless question when we believe
confidently that the holy spirit is the true author of the book. the writer is
the one who dictates things to be written. the writer is the one who inspires
the book and recounts through the voice of the scribe the deeds we are to
imitate. We might read the words of some great man in his letters but ask
by what pen they were written; but it would be ridiculous not to recognize
the author and attend to the contents and to go on asking by just what sort
of pen the words were pressed onto the page. since we know the substance
of the story and know that the holy spirit is the author, if we go on asking
who the scribe was what else are we doing than reading the text and asking
about the pen?
3... so also blessed Job, inspired by the holy spirit, could write of his own
deeds, which were themselves really the gifts of the spirit from above, as if
they were not his own. the things he spoke of were someone else’s, insofar
38 trans. by J. J. o’donnell, online: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/moralia1.html.