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  • The Commentary of Thomas Aquinas in the History of Medieval Exegesis on Job:Intentio et Materia
  • Gilbert Dahan
    Translated by David L. Augustine1

The book of Job is certainly one of the most remarkable in the Bible: set in a surprising narrative framework (must it be taken at face value?), a series of dialogues or rather monologues ask a number of fundamental questions. If the replies of Job's friends seem correct by religious standards, they are swept aside by God during his final discourse, whereas Job's speeches, though theologically unpalatable, receive divine approbation. Without going into the problems related to the book's composition2 or structure—especially with the speech of the "intruder" Elihu3—Job has elicited a number of diverse readings throughout history.4 For our contemporaries, Job seems like a man in revolt and certain thinkers are left wondering even more intensely about the silence of God in the wake of the catastrophes of the twentieth century: the themes of the suffering of the [End Page 1053] just, of God's mysterious ways, of the presence of evil in the world (has the world been delivered over into the power of a criminal, as Job suggests in 9:24?), stand at the heart of present-day reflections.5 It has not always been thus: ancient exegesis saw Job as a saint (a figure of Christ, even) who was accordingly extolled as a model of patience.6 Significantly, certain ancient re-writings even clung to the book's narrative framework while simultaneously omitting its very heart.

Now, it might seem that it is Thomas Aquinas's commentary that has modified in profound ways the perception that one can have of the Book of Job. Ancient exegesis, strongly influenced by Gregory the Great's Moralia in Iob, endeavored to erase all the text's harsh aspects and to bring back into a reassuring perspective all the assertions that are difficult from a theological point of view. It is our aim here to situate St. Thomas's Expositio super Iob ad litteram within the history of the medieval exegesis of the book by asking why and how the change it provokes could have taken place. We will undertake this task, in the first place, by having recourse to some of the prologues of the commentators (on Job), and we will examine thereafter certain characteristics of the exegesis of St. Thomas, not from the point of view of exegetical methods,7 but from that of certain hermeneutical choices.

The Prologues

From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on, the prologues of biblical commentaries acquire a relatively well-defined form, whether they be accessus or prologues answering to the four "Aristotelian causes."8 In both cases (and equally in prologues that have a free form), two rubrics facilitate our present approach: those that are concerned with its materia, that is, the book's subject matter, and those that are concerned with its intentio, that is, its purpose, its intention. We will discuss certain other rubrics as well, [End Page 1054] but these two will chiefly answer our interrogations, since our aim will be to determine what constitutes the foundation of the Book of Job. We will examine successively the commentaries prior to the thirteenth century, the commentaries of the thirteenth century prior to Thomas Aquinas, and then a few later commentators—placing of course Aquinas's commentary at the center of our study.9

We will not dwell on the patristic commentaries:10 Ambrose,11 Augustine,12 Julian of Eclanum,13 and Philip the Priest14 devoted annotations or commentaries to Job. Isidore of Seville sums up the principal ideas concerning Job in his prologue: he is a figure of Christ; his wife represents carnal humanity; his friends are heretics; Elihu is a figure of the proud. Despite all this, Isidore does not provide us with an overall perspective on the book.15 Isidore has read Gregory the Great's Moralia in Iob,16 whose perspective prevails throughout the whole first part of the Middle Ages.

Apart from the reading of the Moralia itself, either directly or by means of anthologies, Gregory's influence makes itself felt...

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