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Originally Posted by Beware Owner
Did Rome happen before or after Job? I'm forgetting my history here.
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Rome happened after Job.
Job 19:24 mentions an "iron pen". Iron did not come into common use in the ancient Near East until the 12th century B.C. (according to a footnote in my KJV Bible). It is believed that the unknown Israelite author of the Book of Job lived sometime between the reign of Solomon (circa 1000 B.C.) and the exile (began around 605 B.C.). The subject of the book, the man Job, seems to have been a non-Israelite sage (Job 1:1 says he was "a man in the land of Uz...who feared God and eschewed evil"). He seems to have lived between 2000 and 1000 B.C., likely late in that millennium, due to the iron pen reference.
Rome started rising from being just an Italian hill town around 500 B.C., to become the (known) world power. Herod, heir to the Judean royal line of the Idumaean Antipater, became a Roman citizen in 47 B.C. He was nominated to be king of Judea by the Roman, Marcus Antonius, in 40 B.C., but was unable to take power until Roman troops drove a Parthian invasion force out of Jerusalem. He was King of Judea from 37 B.C. onwards. He was brutal (he had a highly effective secret police), but also a subtle diplomat, keeping his subjects quiet and his Roman allies satisfied. He was also a builder -he restored the Temple in Jerusalem and created several new cities (I got this information from a history book).