1. Edwin M. Good writes on the dating: “If we cannot say where Job originated, it is equally difficult to say when. Ezekiel referred to Job as an important person alongside Noah and Daniel (Ezek. 14:14-20). Moreover, tradition put him in the patriarchal period and made the book one of the oldest in the Bible. Modern scholars are skeptical of this claim to antiquity, but dates proposed range from the tenth to the third century B.C. The book itself is completely silent about its time, with no allusions to historical events or topical subjects (some take 12:17-19 as a depiction of the Exile). If we could be certain of the history of the Hebrew language or of the relations between one text and another, we could more confidently assign a date. Some affinities of Job 3 with Jer. 20:7-18, for example, do not allow certainty of which passage came first. Stylistic similarities between Job and Isaiah 40-55 have also been alleged. Those connections suggest a time either before the early sixth century B.C. (if Job is prior) or in the late sixth or early fifth century B.C. (if Job is later). Job 7:17-18 is almost surely a parody of Psalm 8, but no one can be sure when Psalm 8 was written. Job 3:4 is a parodistic allusion to Gen. 1:3, a creation account usually dated after the Exile in the sixth century B.C. Such evidence suggests but does not prove that Job was composed and completed after the Babylonian exile.” (Harper’s Bible Commentary, p. 408)

James King West writes on the style/dating, while giving hints on the author with its’ vocabulary of Deutero-Isaiah:
“The prose account is written in an archaic style which bears all the marks of an ancient and popular folk tale. That its hero is a virtuous Edomite is good evidence that it predates the Exile, when Jewish distrust of Edomites was most intense. The poem, by contrast, reflects the influence of Jeremiah and the speculative mood of the Exilic or post-Exilic period. If the poet influenced the thought and vocabulary of Deutero-Isaiah, as seems likely, his work could not be dated later than the middle of the sixth century B.C. Notwithstanding the contrasts between the poem and its narrative setting—most especially the patience of the legendary hero as compared with the impatient subject of the poetry—the poem would be unintelligible apart from the story. Having utilized the legend as the basis for his work, the poet himself, presumably, affixed it to the poem as prologue and epilogue.” (Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 393)

Samuel Sandmel writes on some aspects of the book:
“Since the poem presupposes that something has preceded it to set the stage for the speeches of the characters, it is logical to assume that there must have been a preamble of some kind. But the body of the book at no point hearkens back to the details of the prologue, and hence there arises the frequent opinion that the present prologue does not completely fit the subsequent poem. In the first place, by attributing Job’s misfortunes to Satan, the prologue diminishes God’s responsibility. Secondly, by making Job, though a worshiper of Yahve, a resident of Uz and not a Jew, the prologue is implying that the unorthodox questioning, which would be inappropriate to a pious Jew, is now intelligible if Job was a Gentile. In the third place, Job is declared in the prologue merely to be undergoing a test, the product of a momentary divine caprice. Is human suffering the exceptional lot of those whom God decides to test? The poem will say no, for evils are assumed in the poem to be quite other than capriciously exceptional. Rather, the poem deals with what is set forth as frequent human experience. If it is true that disasters test a human being, then the poem carefully abstains from equating Job’s experience with a test. It is only coincidentally that Job is tested in the poem; in the prologue, the test is the direct purpose. Job in the poem seems a real person; in the prologue he is a puppet, though a lifelike puppet. One effect of the prologue is to compromise the earnestness of the poetic discussion. An explanation for these discrepancies between poem and prologue is the suggestion that whereas the dialogues have a fixed poetic form, the prose prologue went through several stages of recounting common to folk tales. The prologue in its present form is to be regarded as younger than the poem, but as containing bits of folklore much more ancient than the poem.” (The Hebrew Scriptures, pp. 277-278)
Jay G. Williams writes on the “authors” and more:
“Still, though Job begins with the thought-forms and the questions of the wiseman, the book must be said to stand ‘at the edge of wisdom.’ It is, in fact, an impassioned assertion of the awareness that the simple moralism of most wise men is hardly enough. Proverbs is full of the kind of ‘practical’ advice which a father might offer to his son who is starting out to seek his fortune in the big wide world. Work hard, act and speak honestly, beware evil women and you will succeed. Job avoids all such clichés. In fact, the more one reads the book the more difficult it becomes to know just what answer is being given. Only the most superficial reader will put down the book fully convinced that he has understood it. Like Plato, who also wrote in dialogue form and who often ended his dialogues inconclusively, the authors of Job involve the reader in an intense debate which ends, not with a final Q.E.D., but with a new set of questions. If there is truth to be found in the book, therefore, it is born in the midst of struggle. Perhaps the truth is the struggle itself.” (Understanding the Old Testament, pp. 267-268)

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Dating the book of Job 📜
The poetic discourses are often thought to be older than the prose frame narrative, which has conspicuous late features, such as the figure of “the satan” (הַשָּׂטָ֖ן) found also in Zechariah and Chronicles, קָבַל “take, accept” (an Aramaism found in Ezra, Chronicles, Esther, and later Hebrew such as the Apostrophe on Zion in 11QPsa), לְהִתְיַצֵּ֖ב followed with עַל instead of לִפְנֵ֣י as in earlier biblical Hebrew, and so forth (see Avu Hurvitz’ “Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered” in HTR, 1974, but also see Ian Young’s assessment in VT, 2009). The poetic text itself has probable secondary accretions such as the Elihu speeches. Overall it is more difficult to date because it has likely intentional archaisms and regionalisms but here intertexuality may shed light on the date of this material, with Job showing likely dependence on Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40:26 = Job 9:2-12; Isaiah 41:20 = Job 12:7-25; Isaiah 43:13 = Job 9:12, 11:10; Isaiah 44:5, 45:4 = Job 32:21-22; Isaiah 44:25-26 = Job 5:12-13, 9:2-12, 12:17; Isaiah 45:9 = Job 9:12, 25:2-4; Isaiah 53:9 = Job 16:17). On the intertextuality of Job, see Reading Job Intertextually (2013, T&T Clark). The poem (sans the Elihu speeches) is probably the oldest part, dating to c. 520-500 at the earliest (if not the first portion of the fifth century BCE), taking into account its affinities with Deutero-Isaiah and its critique of Deuteronomistic retribution theology (as championed by Bildad who applied it at the individual level), with the prose narrative frame dating later, perhaps with the book finalized in the fifth or fourth centuries BCE.
The frame was probably designed to give a backstory to the poem and especially to rationalize Job’s predicament, which was not the point of the original story (Yahweh is inscrutable and so there is no sense in explaining why Job had to suffer). However Ezekiel 14:14, 20 shows that in the early sixth century BCE, Job was already an antiquarian figure alongside Danel (probably the same figure from Ugaritic legends) and Noah. The allusion shows traits in common with the frame narrative, yet it seems independent from it (for example, Job’s sons and daughters are not saved from death but are instead replaced). Ezekiel may therefore reveal that Job was a folkloric figure prior to the composition of Job, which itself has resonance with Mesopotamian analogues such as Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (which could have had an impact on Jews in the exilic period who felt that God had unfairly punished them). Like Danel, Job as a folkloric hero possibly has great antiquity going back to the LBA (with the tale of Aqhat dating to this period), with names similar to Job (A-ia-bu) attested in the Amarna tablets and the Alalakh letters.

Anyways, we know that Job drew on traditions in the ancient near east involving a pious man who suffers needlessly. There are poems dedicated to this man from Mesopotamia, Sumerian, Babylonian, Syria, and Egypt, dating at lest to the first century BCE. These traditions are various and yet, obviously, share a common tradition. For example, dialogue among friends; insistency of the man that he is blameless; the loss of children, health, or social alienation; salvation being accomplished in the end by a deity. Not every version has every detail, so perhaps Job drew in upon several different existing traditions.
The first round of composition of Job likely would have been the primary poetic sections “in the middle” of the book, excluding the narrative frame. The last cycle of speeches seems to have been interrupted as it is lacking the final speech of Zophar and may reflect additional changes near the end of this sections composition. Later, perhaps even by the same author, a narrative framework was added at the beginning and end of Job. There seems to be evidence that this also happened in two steps with the original omitting details about Hasatan.
Language and textual references in Job suggest while the book itself drew on very old traditions that the composition of it is likely of a later period. Job references Second Isaiah, a later composition. Linguistically, the work references Aramaic, Phoenician, Egyptian, Babylonian, and perhaps ancient Arabic. References to Hasatan reflects a later development in ancient Israelite faith. Many of these things point to the primary composition of Job during the Persian period.

Other passing references, to geography, natural science, and astronomy, are quite prolific, suggesting the author was quite learned. This, plus the linguistic evidence suggests the author of Job was likely a Jerusalem intellectual.

In summary, it would appear Job started as a common folktale told throughout the ANE. In poetic form, many cultures drew on this folktale to reflect on theodicy questions from at least the first millennia BCE. While some form of the story or philosophical reflections might have been known to ancient people of Israel, our best evidence suggests that the written form of Job likely comes from the Persian period, approximately 550-330 BCE. It seems to have been written and developed in stages, with the cycle of speeches presented in poetic form coming first and the addition of the narrative framing devise in prose following later.
Edward L. Greenstein, “Job” in The Jewish Study Bible
A great example is Isaiah 27:1 (from the Isaiah Apocalypse dating possibly to the second half of the sixth century BCE) which parallels almost verbatim the Ugaritic Baal Cycle in KTU 1.5 i 1-4. One of these phrases (נחש ברח) occurs also in Job 26:13 in a very similar context.
Here’s an excerpt from The Anchor Bible Dictionary:
Although the book is set in pre-Mosaic times, the actual time of composition is much later. Linguistic evidence seems to indicate a date in the 6th century or later (Hurvitz 1974), despite the complete silence about the national calamity in 587 B.C.E. Specific indicators for dating the book are exceedingly rare.

…Mention of caravans from Teman and Sheba (6:19) and the nomenclature of officials (kings, counselors, princes) in 3:14–15 corresponds to Persian hierarchy. The use of the definite article ha- with Sõaṭan suggests a stage in the development of the figure prior to the Chronicler and parallel to Zechariah. The abundance of Aramaisms, while problematic, may indicate a date in the late 6th or 5th century. The relationship between Job and comparable laments or lyrical texts in Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah is difficult to assess, but priority may go to the latter books. Similarities between Job and theological probings within the Psalter (37, 49, 73) certainly exist, but the uncertain dates of these psalms render them dubious witnesses about the actual date of the book of Job.

The possible allusion to Job in Qoheleth 6:10–11 may echo familiarity with the folktale, and the recently discovered Targum of Job from Qumran, dating from the 2d or 3d century B.C.E., suggests a considerably earlier date for the book of Job.

… Two other factors, sometimes thought to indicate a late date for Job, alter the situation little: the emergence of monotheism and monogamy. The heavenly Adversary can act only insofar as God allows it to do so, and the divine speeches also insist on the creator‘s authority over the entire cosmos.”
Here is a quote from An Introduction to the Bible by Robert Kugler and Patrick Hartin on dating Job:
There is at least general agreement that job is best dated sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries B.C.E. A 6th-century date may be thought most likely on the basis of a wide range of evidence. Some see job’s plea that his words be inscribed in stone (19:24) as an awareness of Darius’s late-6th-century Behistun Inscription (which was inscribed with lead on stone). Also suggesting a Persian-era date is the language employed to name kings and princes in 3:14-15. And the abundant Aramaisms in Job – Hebrew expressions that reflect the influence of Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Persian Empire – also support a later than earlier date. An additional indicator is the use of the definite article with Satan in chs. 1-2; that the Chronicler uses the title as a proper name (without out the definite article) suggests job is earlier than the latter work, and the similar use of the title with a definite article in Zechariah invites close affiliation between job and that late-6th-century prophet.

To restate this, the poetic discourses are often thought to be older than the prose frame narrative, which has conspicuous late features, such as the figure of “the satan” (הַשָּׂטָ֖ן) found also in Zechariah and Chronicles, קָבַל “take, accept” (an Aramaism found in Ezra, Chronicles, Esther, and later Hebrew such as the Apostrophe on Zion in 11QPsa), לְהִתְיַצֵּ֖ב followed with עַל instead of לִפְנֵ֣י as in earlier biblical Hebrew, and so forth (see Avu Hurvitz’ “Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered” in HTR, 1974). The poetic text itself has probable secondary accretions such as the Elihu speeches. Overall it is more difficult to date because it has likely intentional archaisms and regionalisms but here intertexuality may shed light on the date of this material, with Job showing likely dependence on Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40:26 = Job 9:2-12; Isaiah 41:20 = Job 12:7-25; Isaiah 43:13 = Job 9:12, 11:10; Isaiah 44:5, 45:4 = Job 32:21-22; Isaiah 44:25-26 = Job 5:12-13, 9:2-12, 12:17; Isaiah 45:9 = Job 9:12, 25:2-4; Isaiah 53:9 = Job 16:17), and the original Joban layer sharply criticizes deuteronomistic ideology which the Elihu speeches attempt to mitigate. A fifth century BC date (with the book finalized in the fourth or third centuries BC) may fit the evidence rather well. However Ezekiel 14:14, 20 shows that in the early sixth century BC, Job was already an antiquarian figure alongside Danel (probably the same figure from Ugaritic legends) and Noah. The allusion shows traits in common with the prose frame narrative, yet it seems independent from it (for example, Job’s sons and daughters are not saved from death but are instead replaced).
Ezekiel may therefore show that Job was a folkloric figure prior to the composition of Job, which itself has resonance with Mesopotamian analogues such as Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (which could have had an impact on Jews in the exilic period who felt that God had unfairly punished them). Like Danel, Job as a folkloric hero possibly has great antiquity going back to the LBA, with names similar to Job (A-ia-bu) attested in the Amarna tablets and the Alalakh letters. On the intertextuality of Job, see Reading Job Intertextually (2013, T&T Clark).
In ch. 14, the author depicts death as a natural process akin to a river drying up, a mountain crumbling away, and water eroding stones (v. 11, 18-19). He also contrasts humankind to a tree which may have a hope of sprouting anew from a stump, denying that there is such a hope for man. God has destroyed such hope by predetermining the length of a person’s life (v. 5). In v. 13 he expresses the wish (via an exclamation that marks off this section) that death is not final but that a person may live again (v. 14), but he admits in v. 18-20 that this wish has no basis in reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxENRH-v0Xk&ab_channel=YaleCourses, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7egdj_nIfEM&ab_channel=TheMaster’sSeminary (Some good videos)

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Authorship 📜
The book of Job isn’t “given” an author, it was likely written over multiple redactions over time throughout centuries. It probably had multiple authors, but inconsistently, perhaps texts adding one to another over a large period of time and then ended later on.
The “folktale” and the dialog sections are generally distinguished from each other. To quote from the Jewish Study Bible:
The framework is a prose narrative that resembles a folktale. The perfect moral hero, Job, is introduced with the biblical equivalent of “Once upon a time … ”: “There was a man in the land of Uz … ” (cf. 2 Sam. 12.1). He has seven sons and three daughters, and his wealth is described in multiples of the round numbers seven and three, as well as five. His unnamed critical wife corresponds to a type. The solesurviving messenger is also a type (e.g., Gen. 14.13), and Job is visited by one messenger after the other, in conformity with a biblical pattern (e.g., 1 Kings 1.14). The testing of Job reflects the folktale category of a man who must prove his love by suffering physical abuse. The test emerges out of a contest between the Deity and His loyal opponent, the Satan (“Adversary”).

The mode of contest, one of the earliest known literary genres in the ancient Near East, characterizes the poetic dialogues that follow—the argument between Job and his companions and the legal challenge that Job presents to God. …

1.1–2.13: Prologue in prose. This narrative (together with the Epilogue, 42.10–17) frames the poetic dialogues, providing the background and introducing the participants. No other pious sufferer composition from the ancient Near East contains a background story. […] Nevertheless, the Job story resembles other tales of men who must prove their devotion to another, and the contest between God and the Satan has many folktale parallels as well.
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Anyways, for the poem (https://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/life/righteousufferer.htm), Newsom notes in her chapter on the divine speech that the unmediated divine answer is peculiar to Job:
Since the didactic tale and the wisdom dialogue allude to identifiable genres, I would like to be able to say that the disputation between a person and his God also can be situated in relation to a generic tradition. But I think this is not the case. In his study of the way in which the book of Job adapts and parodies various ancient Near Eastern wisdom genres and traditions, Zuckerman distinguishes between the Mesopotamian dialogue texts and those he calls the “Righteous Sufferer’s appeal to the deity.”11 He understands both to be taken up and joined by the Job poet in creating a dialogue/appeal form. Yet the one thing that is almost completely missing in the Mesopotamian appeals by a sufferer is the dramatic representation of a direct reply by the deity. Marduk’s response to Subshi-meshre-Shakkan in Ludlul is mediated by emissaries who appear to the sufferer in a dream. In AO 4462, the Dialogue of a Man with His God, there is a dramatization of the divine reply (strophes 8 and 9, lines 48–67), but in scope and content it bears virtually no resemblance to the book of Job. Moreover, Job’s speech in chapters 29–31, as discussed in chapter 7 of this book, bears little resemblance to Mesopotamian appeal texts but rather seems to posit as its audience an assembly of elders, however much it may be implicitly addressed to the deity. It only becomes explicitly a part of a disputation with God when God surprisingly appears and addresses Job directly.
So far as one can tell, there is no literary precedent for a pair of speeches that set over against one another the voice of a sufferer and the response of his God. What the author of the book of Job has composed is something of a tour de force. Nevertheless, one is warranted in setting the speech of Job in chapters 29–31 and the speech of God in particular relation to one another. They are, if the Elihu speeches are rightly judged to be a later addition, intended to be immediately juxtaposed in the book. Dramatically, too, they are linked.
Several authors (Seow, Cline, et. al.) have noticed that there seems to be a text critical issue in the final chapter and epilogue of Job (42:1-17) that has led some scholars to claim it is a redaction. The issues are technical, but as an example in 31:40 Job concludes his case and we read “The words of Job are ended.” For the next ten chapters Job doesn’t speak. His friends procede to accuse him of guilt. YHVH himself challenges him, but he doesn’t speak. All the way until chapter 42. If 42 was not original, the story is still a question of theodicy, but it reads entirely differently.
I should also state, Job 40:1-5 is an interpolation.
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The Difficulties With Reading Job 📜
The book of Job is quite a puzzle, it has very odd theological questions that it poses. However, given the absence of overt historical markers within the text, there are difficulties with locating the book of Job at a particular geographical place; and with respect to the time of its composition, it can only be said that it was most likely written “no earlier than the sixth century B.C even though it was likely finalized in its’ fourth centuries (Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job. A Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985), p. 40. There seems to be general agreement in the literature about dating Job either during the exilic or the early post-exilic period).
*While there are striking parallels between this story and other Ancient Near Eastern texts (See: Robert Gordis’ chapter on “Job and Near Eastern Literature”, in his The Book of God and Man. A Study of Job), explicit reference to Job within the Hebrew Scriptures can be found only in Ezekiel 14:14 and 20, where it is implied that Job, together with Noah and Dan(i)el, is a righteous man; though one may want to argue that the some of the laments in Job parallel those in Jeremiah. What can be deduced from the narrative itself about the context of this particular text is that its implied audience would have included wealthy and educated listeners who were familiar with collections of wisdom sayings and tales of the sages and who would measure riches in terms of large herds of livestock, many servants and extended families. For one can hardly help noticing that the main character in this narrative is a rich and respected individual, a patriarch, someone from the upper socio-economic class; that is evident both from the prologue and the epilogue as well as from other indications throughout the dialogues, especially Job’s lament about his former life in chapter 29. Beyond that, the issues of historical setting and social location of this narrative are entirely unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. So the hope to illuminate the theological questions that are raised in the text by exploring the historical situation behind the text remains in this case largely unfulfilled.
Then there are the literary-critical approaches, which are often useful in situations such as this when historical-critical methods yields few insights. Positioning themselves over against the more diachronic historical approaches, literary-critical readings of texts tend to emphasize what is synchronic and coherent by searching for a narrative key, for a main concept or trajectory, which would help the reader gain literary access to what is otherwise difficult to grasp from a theological and historical perspective.7 Yet that, too, seems insufficient when applied to this particular text, since such an approach would render the theological, historical, and literary complexities inherent in Job rather one-dimensional: while it may be useful for understanding parts of this narrative, trying to make the entire book conform to one key theme would leave out important aspects of the disputation and gloss over the fact that the quarrels and disagreements uttered by the various characters and voices are at the heart of this text.
In addition, approaching the book of Job by means of text and redaction criticism has uncovered seemingly endless problems of textual corruption, of displaced passages, of unique words and obscure phrases. Modern literary-critical readings of Job have not been able to resolve the apparent ruptures and non-sequiturs in the narrative, though some exegetes have attempted to re-structure and re-order parts of the text.9 Yet even that still leaves the reader with the striking contrast between the prose frame with its fairy-tale-like narration and the poetic core of the book which deals with the bitter sufferings of Job. Claims that the frame was added later to soften the harsh content of the book are neither justified linguistically nor do they explain in a satisfactory way the theological conundrums which this text raises. Thus the theological difficulties and tensions in this narrative remain unresolved, even when modern literary-critical methods are brought to bear on the book of Job.

Finally, there are the various ideological critical approaches as ways of looking not only at what is stated and highlighted in a given narrative, but also at what is not said, what is left out, what is absent. The list of possible ways of approaching a Biblical text from such an ideological perspective includes feminist critique, liberation theology, cultural and post-colonial criticism. Yet again: most of these do not seem particularly helpful for understanding the theological issues raised in the book of Job.
For what is at stake here is not suffering because of economic exploitation where human injustice and sin could be blamed, which is what Israel’s eighth century prophets had to deal with and what liberation and post-colonial criticism might highlight; nor does this narrative focus on human suffering brought about by a particularly oppressive social order or political regime, which is what one finds in the Revelation to John at the end of the 1st century C.E. and what one might critique from a feminist or minority-culture perspective. Rather, Job’s suffering occurs virtually entirely at the private-personal level, which is what engenders this intimate theological struggle between Job and his friends on the one hand and Job and God on the other. Seeking to view his intensely private pain primarily from a public-political perspective would mean glossing over, and missing, the disturbing theological issues raised in this text; though the reaction of Job’s friends does point at the tendency of “the wise” to adhere to theological traditions in times of questioning and crisis and to reject unconventional experiences and insights.