determine whether one believes Job really lived or was simply the subject of a legend like Paul Bunyan or Hans Brinker. Unless clearly indicated otherwise, I assume that the Bible speaks of real people and places. Nothing in the text suggests that Job was a mythical, imaginary, or fictitious figure. True, there is a seeming artificiality about the numbers of his cattle (1:3; 42:12) and a certain standardization in the way the tragedies were reported (1:13–19), but this does not impinge on the historicity