The poem of Job, as originally composed, comprised the following: Chapters i-xxvii, 10; xxviii-xxxi; xxviii-xli, 12; xlii, 1-6. All the rest of the book, about eight chapters--nearly one fifth of it--consists of clumsy forgeries. The poet is a radical thinker who boldly questions the wisdom and justice of God. To counteract the influence of his work these interpolations which controvert its teachings were inserted. Nor is this all. Our translators have still further mutilated the work. Its most damaging lines they have mistranslated or glossed over. Thus Job (xiii, 15) says: "He [God] will slay me; I have no hope." Yet they make him say the very reverse of this: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." The Five Rolls. The second division of the Hagiographa, known as the Five Rolls, or Megilloth, contains five small books--The Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Ruth, and Esther. The Song of Solomon, Song of Songs, or Canticles, as it is variously called, and Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher, are said to be the works of Solomon--the former a product of his youth, the latter of his old age. It is quite certain that the same author did not write both, and equally certain that Solomon wrote neither. The Song of Solomon, Ewald affirms, is an anonymous poem, written about the middle of the tenth century B.C..--after Solomon's time. It is doubtless of much later origin. It belongs to Northern, and not to Southern Palestine. This alone proves that Solomon did not write it. The Talmud says, "Hezekiah and his company wrote Isaiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs." Hengstenberg, one of the most orthodox of commentators, says that Ecclesiastes was written centuries after the time of Solomon. Davidson believes that it was written as late as 350 B.C.; while Hartmann and Hitzig, German critics, contend that it was written still later. Solomon's Song is an amorous poem, beautiful in its way. But when we turn to it in the Christian Bible and find the running titles of every page and the table of contents of every chapter filled with sanctimonious drivel about Christ and his bride, the Church, we are reminded of a lecherous parson masquerading under the cloak of piety among his female parishioners. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes is something of a Freethought preacher. He is a skeptic and a philosopher. Lamentations, it is claimed, was composed by Jeremiah. There is little evidence either for or against this claim. Oort affirms that its ascription to Jeremiah is a "mistaken tradition," that its five poems were written by five different authors and at different times. The habit of ascribing anonymous writings to eminent men was prevalent among the Jews. Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Daniel, and probably Jeremiah, have been declared the authors of books of which they never heard.