In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job, with a Translation (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 121 Reviews particular issue is the appropriate balance between the representation of the various applied areas and discussion of theoretical linguistic issues emerging from the grammatical description and analysis of modem Hebrew data. The research reports outlined above apply models of computational and mathematical linguistics, discourse analysis, or socio-linguistics to modem Hebrew and test them for reliability; so should models in current linguistic theory be measured in the light of data from Hebrew phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics in a greater proportion of the articles included in a typical issue. This reviewer would like to see the relative weight of descriptive/theoretical contributions to this journal restored to what it used to be at some earlier phases of its development. Shmuel Bolozley University ofMassachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 IN TURNS OF TEMPEST: A READING OF JOB, WITH A TRANSLATION. By Edwin M. Good. pp. xiv + 496. Stanford: Stanford University, 1990. Cloth, $45.00. Edwin M. Good, a literary scholar best known to biblicists for his Irony in the Old Testament, presents here a "reading" of the book of Job. "Reading" is current literary parlance for interpretation, and this reading shows both the strengths and weaknesses of this new mode of biblical commentary. Good takes a stand against "scriptural dogmatism," espousing instead "deconstructive indeterminacy." (That is, the text does not have one meaning, it has infinite meanings.) He views his reading as essentially a personal experience which cannot be transferred to the reader of his book, for each reader will have his or her own reading experience with the book of Job. At best, Good states, his reading may assist others in their own reading (p. viii). This approach has now been adopted by most literary critics. (It is very democratic but not always as humble as it sounds.) Applied on the level of a review it means that the reviewer can only present a reading of Good. That is, the reviewer cannot claim to have understood Good's one and only meaning but can only claim to have grasped one of the infinite meanings of Good's work. I put this somewhat facetiously to show that, although the "indeterminacy" approach does have Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 122 Reviews the merit of opening the interpretive possibilities of a text, academic disciplines still require some objective criteria for judging their products. I hope that in the not-too-distant future a compromise between "dogmatism" and "indeterminacy" can be reached. For now, though, I will seek for this review no more than Good sought for his book-that it may assist others in reading In Turns of Tempest. The book contains two introductions, the first, in Good's terms, dispensable and the second indispensable. The "dispensable introduction" deals with questions of date and authorship-questions which Good finds irrelevant to his task but which he summarizes in a belittling, pro forma manner in order to prove to biblical scholars that he is well-informed in this area. The "indispensable introduction" presents literary matters: the structure of the book of Job, problems of translation, a discussion of biblical poetry. This introduction is enough to orient the inexperienced reader of the Bible, but it does not come to grips with the question of why poetry is an appropriate form of discourse for the issues found in Job (on this see M. Greenberg in R. Alter and F. Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1987], p. 303) or how the poetry in Job differs from other biblical poetry (see R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry [New York: Basic, 1985], pp. 85-110). Then follows an annotated translation, nicely formatted with translation and notes on facing pages, and nine essays which constitute "A Reading of Job." Notes, an extensive bibliography, and indices complete the volume. The translation flows smoothly, capturing the poetic rhythm of the Hebrew text. It is not radically different from most current renderings and reflects the translator's familiarity with the work of modem Job scholars. The need to translate is often felt by those commenting on a text in a language other than the one in which the text was written, for...