Ragnar Andersen's Elihu Speeches

Ragnar Andersen, the author of The Elihu Speeches: There Place and Sense in the Book of Job, examines the arguments of the critics who claim that the Elihu speeches are later interpolations, while simultaneously presenting the arguments of those, who like himself, argue that the Elihu speeches are original text in the book of Job. According to Andersen, Matthias Heinrich Stuhlmann, a Lutheran preacher, was the first person to include an argument against the originality of the Elihu speeches in his commentary several years after Johann Gottfried Eichhorn first proposed that they were a later interpolation during the 1780s. Since then, as seen in the evidence presented by Andersen, several scholars have also refuted the idea that the Elihu …show more content…
Beeby refer to Elihu as a “covenant mediator” (Andersen, 82). He also noted how other scholars called Elihu a “charismatic mediator” (Andersen, 82). Unfortunately, Andersen failed to explain how Elihu’s role as a charismatic mediator or a convent mediator relates to Job or Job’s situation. Hendrik Viviers referred to Elihu as a literary figure whose speeches were “meant to be counterproductive and constitute a contrast against critical wisdom circles” (Andersen, 82). Overall, although Andersen did not present adequate evidence to prove that the Elihu speeches were not later interpolations, he did a profound job of explaining the meaning of Elihu’s speeches to the reader. However, it was noticed that the common theme mentioned by Andersen in each of his speech explanations was that “Elihu justified his claim for attention, asserting that he preaches the pure knowledge that he has acquired” (Andersen, 87). Personally, I believe that the Elihu speeches are original, not because of the evidence presented in this article, but because before any text could have been deemed canonical Scripture, it was seen as an authoritative text. Which means, several authority figures saw a need to include it in the