PASTORALIST SYSTEMS 9 



believed to be the elder, but the pastoral development 

 seems there to be more advanced than in Genesis. The 

 community has apparently ceased to be nomadic ; and 

 the use of coined money or bulhon, is known, as, indeed, 

 it is also in Genesis. What appears to be still more 

 decisive is the character of the discussions and specula- 

 tions enshrined in this the loftiest of ancient books. 

 It ranks, indeed, with (and above) the Prometheus 

 Bound and the Eubaiyat of Omar, above even Hamlet 

 and Faust, as the most inspired utterance that trial and 

 sorrow have wrung from the heart of suffering humanity. 

 Not in the morning of the world, any more than these 

 sublime masterpieces, but when Chaldsea's sun was 

 nearing its zenith, were those moving plaints and 

 threnodies, that noblest vindication of the ways of God 

 to man, conceived and composed. 



Nevertheless, the life described is among the most 

 archaic that is known. Though probably Semitic, it 

 has one note of the Turanian race. The patriarch Job 

 is stated to possess 7,000 sheep, rising after his vindica- 

 tion to 14,000, and these are first mentioned. Either 

 number would seem small to a modern grazier on the 

 Canterbury Plains of New Zealand or the Liverpool 

 Plains of New South Wales. Yet Job Avas " the greatest 

 of all the men of the East." For he had, besides, 3,000 

 camels (where the modern pastoralist has horses), 500 yoke 

 of oxen, 500 she-asses (all of these figures were doubled 

 after his trials), and " a very great household." His 

 four sons had separate, but adjacent, households and 

 families of their own. Polygamy was practised, and 

 adultery committed. Agriculture was carried on jointly 

 with pasturing, as it has been to some extent from the 

 first by the Austrahan pastoralist ; and oxen were put 

 in the plow, as they were by early Australian pastora- 

 lists. Vines were reared. They drank milk and made 

 cheese. That the community was now stationary is 

 shown both by the existence of houses and by the use 

 of landmarks, which were sometimes fraudulently 

 removed. Flocks were violently stolen. Corn was 



