On Bone Marrow...

I started to read the book of Job, and I came across this verse, Job 21:24 (NKJV):

His pails are full of milk,
And the marrow of his bones is moist.

And the marrow caught my [biologist] eye. I read another version, NIV, to get a different perspective (still Job 21:24):

his body well nourished,
his bones rich with marrow.

My study Bible says the date Job was written is unknown and the author is unknown, but it is believed to be possibly Moses or Solomon. The books Moses wrote were written from, according to my study Bible, 1445 to 1405 BC, and Solomon wrote from ~971 to 931 BC.

What bothers me about the verse in Job is that whoever wrote it had not only the knowledge of bone marrow, but also knowledge that somehow, bone marrow correlated with health. When did we discover bone marrow?

I googled and so far have come up with next to nothing on the history and discovery of bone marrow. Instead, I googled the history of anatomy and judging my wikipedia's entry on the topic, it appears as though the Greeks around 4th century BC would have been most likely to discover it, as it says Hippocrates study "demonstrates a basic understanding of musculoskeletal structure, and the beginnings of understanding of the function of certain organs, such as the kidneys." Before that, it doesn't seem as though anybody had come up with realistic models of human anatomy that were complex enough to have touched on the idea of bone marrow.

So what does this mean?

I have no idea. I'm going to have to do more research and ask some people to figure it out.

Maybe they knew of marrow, that it was sort of blood-like in color, and therefore related to health somehow? Or maybe Job was written later on after marrow and its purpose were really discovered? Or maybe these versions say "marrow" when an original version said something like "body core"?

We'll see.


ETA (April 21, 2009):

YEY! I asked on a forum and an awesome Christian guy, well-versed in literal Bible things, explained the meaning of marrow. It's Hebrew root refers to fat, and back then fat was associated with health. And he said they likely ate marrow from animal bones, and in that sense, would have some idea as to what the marrow of a sickly animal versus healthy animal would look like. So there you go. Life is simpler than it seems.