The Writings
- The Writings
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This introductory textbook covers the main topics and books of OT wisdom literature. The introduction and first two chapters survey the nature of wisdom; the relationship of Israelite/Jewish wisdom to that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan; and the literary features and forms of the wisdom literature. The next five chapters treat Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon, respectively. The final three chapters discuss the presence of wisdom in other parts of the OT, wisdom theology, and wisdom in apocalyptic works, the DSS, the NT, and rabbinic literature. Each chapter includes a substantial bibliography for further reading.—B.C.G. [End Page 259]
Before the Enlightenment, interpreters sought to discover the theological meaning of the Book of Job. After the Enlightenment, however, the goal of Job’s interpreters shifted from theology to making sense of Job’s own experience. Job’s response to disaster became an aesthetic and ethical touchstone for subsequent reflection on catastrophic events. Ariel Hirschfield’s essay (pp. 9–36) asks, “Is the Book of Job a Tragedy?” The answer turns, he says, on how we define tragedy. Moshe Halbertal’s essay, “Job, the Mourner” (pp. 37–46) shifts the reader’s attention away from big questions of theodicy to smaller matters: the experience of grief and how Job learns to care about others again (Job 42). Naphtali Meshel’s contribution is “Whose Job Is This? Dramatic Irony and Double Entendre in the Book of Job” (pp. 47–76). Yosefa Raz’s “Reading Pain in the Book of Job” (pp. 77–98) challenges Elaine Scarry’s presupposition that the book portrays God as a torturer. Instead, says R., the Book of Job explores multiple perspectives on suffering, and tries to hold them in tension with each other. Ilana Pardes sees a likeness between Job and Bartleby the Scrivener in “Melville’s Wall Street Job: The Missing Cry” (pp. 99–122). The “the death of God” forms the background for “Kafka’s Other Job” by Vivian Liska (pp. 123–46). Galit Hasan-Rokem writes on “Joban Transformations of the Wandering Jew in Joseph Roth’s Hiob and Der Leviathan” (pp. 147–72). “Hebrew Poems Rewriting Job” (pp. 173–84) by Robert Alter focuses on several poems by Natan Zach. Job was caught up in a drama of cosmic proportions, but mundane complications can push us to ask the same questions in “For Job It Was a One-Time Thing.” Does God ever experience loneliness? The premise of Zach’s poem, “Sometimes He Misses,” is that God does miss Job after his old friend passes away. Freddie Rokem shows how Job can be used to question the presumed harmony between religious Zionism and the secular state of Israel in his essay “The Bible on the Hebrew/Israeli Stage: Hanoch Levin’s The Torments of Job as a Modern Tragedy” (pp. 185–212). Should we conclude that God is a friend to Job? Or an oppressive presence? Leora Batnitzky tackles that question in “Beyond Theodicy? Joban Themes in Philip Roth’s Nemesis” (pp. 213–24). For her, our elders taught us that obedience will be rewarded. They were not wrong about that, exactly, but the Book of Job always threatens to overturn that equation, leaving us with many unanswerable questions.—F.W.G.
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