St. Jerome (in the letter to Paulinus), and some of the Jews, give the first [place] to Moses’s books, the second to Job itself. But St. Chrysostom and Olympiodorus (on Job 38) gave to the same book [Job] not the second, but the first, [place]. And one cause moves them all: that before all the other books Moses seems to have written that history of [Job’s] patience, as [was] said in the general Prolegomena. But Joshua very well holds the place nearest after Moses’s books. For the matter itself, and the reckoning of the times and deeds, is most continuous with them. And therefore the beginning of this book is of the kind which is wont to be [the beginning] of those books that are aptly joined with the preceding [ones] — namely, “And it came to pass” [Et fuit], as [was] expounded in question 1 on Judith ch. 1. And is it not most fitting that the disciple should cohere to the Master, [and] the successor to the predecessor? But that Job was written by Moses, St. Athanasius does not concede (in the Synopsis), [nor] Olympiodorus (in the Catena), [nor] St. Nazianzen (in the oration against Julian), who attribute its writing to Solomon. But — on account of several other reasons and testimonies — let us grant [it] to be the work of Moses himself; [and yet the question is] whether Job should, on that account, be cast down from the second place—
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—[whether Job should be] cast down [from second place]? For either, in that order, the reckoning of time must be had — and thus Job ought to be placed either before Exodus, or certainly within it [that period], [Job] who, before the Israelites’ migration from Egypt, underwent all those bitternesses, and then nearly died; and in the same way David’s Psalms, the Proverbs, and Solomon’s other books would have to be placed before the third and fourth [books] of Kings. Or rather the reckoning of the writer is to be followed, so that whatever [books] are Moses’s may all be placed together at once. But then, if Ezra [Esdras] had written this book (as some above wished), it would have to be placed after Ezra’s book; and if any of Moses’s Psalms are in the Psalter (as [it] seemed to some), they would have to be recalled here [beside Moses]; and a similar disturbance would have to be applied in the others. In the New Testament too, the Acts of the Apostles would have to be crammed between St. Luke’s and St. John’s Gospels; and the Apocalypse placed after that same St. John’s Gospel, before the epistles of St. Paul and of the other Apostles. It was altogether better done, that these books be connected among themselves by the connection of the matters and times — especially because Job holds another mode of narrating and explaining, and is an altogether separate argument and subject-matter. Wherefore St. Jerome too, in the same cited preface, afterward followed the common opinion.
Elegantly, indeed, St. Athanasius (in the letter On the interpretation of the Psalms, to Marcellinus) joins those three together, and calls [them] the Triteuchon: Joshua, Judges, Ruth.