Read complete books and articles on: Book of Job

Job - jōb, book of the Bible. The book is of unknown authorship and date, although many scholars assign it to a time between 600 b.c. and 400 b.c. A lament in narrative form, the subject is the problem of good and evil in the world: "Why do the just suffer and the wicked flourish?" In the prose prologue Satan obtains God's permission to test the unsuspecting Job, whom God regards as "a perfect and an upright man"; accordingly, all that Job has is destroyed, and he is physically afflicted. The main part of the book is cast in poetic form and consists of speeches by Job and three friends who come to "comfort" him: Job speaks, then each of the three speaks in turn, with Job replying each time; there are three such cycles of discussion, although the third is incomplete. The friends insist alike that Job cannot really be just, as he claims to be, otherwise he would not be suffering as he is. Nevertheless, Job reiterates his innocence of wrong. The sequence changes with the appearance of a fourth speaker, Elihu, who accuses Job of arrogant pride. He in turn is followed by God himself, who speaks out of a storm to convince Job of his ignorance and rebuke him for his questioning. The prose epilogue tells how God rebukes the three friends for their accusations and how happiness is restored to Job. The author did not intend to solve the paradox of the righteous person's suffering, but rather to criticize a philosophy that located the cause of suffering in some supposed moral failure of the sufferer. The texts are imperfect, and there may be serious losses, misplacements, or even additions to the original. The book contains many eloquent passages; among them are Job's declaration of faith in the "redeemer," his speech on wisdom, and God's discourse on animals. Job is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.

See N. C. Habel, Job (1985); L. G. Perdue and W. C. Gilpin, ed., The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job (1991); R. P. Scheindlin, The Book of Job (1998). See also bibliography under Old Testament.

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Book of Job

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Book of Job: A Commentary » Read Now
by Norman C. Habel. 588 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

This critically acclaimed series provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The authors are scholars of international standing.
2.

The Rhetoric of Suffering: Reading the Book of Job in the Eighteenth Century » Read Now
by Jonathan Hoeber Lamb. 329 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

The Rhetoric of Suffering provides a fresh approach to such topics as the rise of the novel, sociability of sentiment, and the communitarian emphasis in eighteenth-century literature. Lamb draws on the Book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics found in various...
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The Rhetoric of Suffering provides a fresh approach to such topics as the rise of the novel, sociability of sentiment, and the communitarian emphasis in eighteenth-century literature. Lamb draws on the Book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics found in various eighteenth-century works--poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, commentaries on criminal law--which try to account for the relations between human suffering and systems of secular and divine justice. Deliberately downplaying questions of chronology or discursive coherence, genre, or topic, he offers considerations of Richardson and Fielding, Hawkesworth and the South Pacific, Goldsmith and Godwin, Hume and Bolingbroke, Blackstone and Bentham, Burke and Longinus, and Blackmore and Wright of Derby.
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3.

On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent » Read Now
by Gustavo Gutierrez, Matthew J. O'Connell. 136 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
4.

Discipleship and Imagination: Christian Tradition and Truth (Chap. 4 "Job and Innocent Suffering") » Read Now
by David Brown. 438 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
5.

The Book of Job: Its Origin, Growth and Interpretation (1920) » Read Now
by Morris Jastrow Jr. 372 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...THE BOOK OF JOB OTHER WORKS BY MORRIS JASTROW, Jr., Ph...THE SONG OF SONGS Uniform with The Book of Job and A Gentle Cynic THE CIVILIZATION...GOD SHOUTED FOR JOY." Job, 38...
6.

In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie (Chap. 5 "Wisdom in the Book of Job") » Read Now
by Leo G. Perdue, Bernard Brandon Scott, William Johnston Wiseman, John G. Gammie. 318 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

This much-needed volume provides a comprehensive study of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, in selected intertestamental and Rabbinic texts, and in the New Testament. Seventeen essays by leading scholars--including Joseph Blenkinsopp, Carole R. Fontaine. Michael V. Fox, Richard Horsley, David Winston, and...
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This much-needed volume provides a comprehensive study of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, in selected intertestamental and Rabbinic texts, and in the New Testament. Seventeen essays by leading scholars--including Joseph Blenkinsopp, Carole R. Fontaine. Michael V. Fox, Richard Horsley, David Winston, and Tina Pippin--help students identify and understand the presence of wisdom in the Bible and related literature.
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7.

The Cruel God: Job's Search for the Meaning of Suffering » Read Now
by Margaret Brackenbury Crook. 224 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...lectures, which centered upon the Book of Job, forms the basis for THE CRUEL...Pritchard . SHEED AND WARD: The Book of Job , by Edward J. Kissane. The...1. A Search for a...
8.

The Problem of Evil: Christian Concepts and the Book of Job » Read Now
by Albion Roy King. 221 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library
9.

The Sense of the Book of Job, in Prooftexts » Read Now
by Alan Cooper. 18 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...ALAN COOPER The Sense of the Book of Job THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING of the Book of Job has preoccupied commentators for...do we begin to see readers of the Book of Job...
10.

Job and the Unanswered Question, in Prooftexts » Read Now
by Samuel A. Meier. 12 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...Question The conclusion to the Book of Job can be a disappointing finale for...Particularly perplexing in the Book of Job is the elaborate set-up of nearly...disorienting...
11.

Gift Theory and the Book of Job, in Theological Studies » Read Now
by Wing-Chi Ki. 26 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
12.

Essays in Jewish Thought (Chap. 7 "'Knowest Thou...?' Notes on the Book of Job" and Chap. 9 "The Book of Job and Its Interpreters") » Read Now
by Nahum N. Glatzer. 295 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
13.

The Long View: Essays on the Discipline of Hope and Poetic Craft ("Betrayal and Nothingness: The Book of Job and King Lear" begins on p. 251) » Read Now
by Robert Pack. 280 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...The Long View: Darwin and the Book of Job 181 Comfort and...Betrayal and Nothingness: The Book of Job and King Lear 251...special emphasis on the author of the Book of Job...
14.

The Philosophy of the Old Testament (Discussion of the Book of Job begins on p. 359) » Read Now
by Charles H. Patterson. 560 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library
15.

Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin (Chap. 4 "Who Is This That Darkens Cousel? Cross-Talk in the Book of Job") » Read Now
by Walter L. Reed. 234 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

Drawing on the theory of language developed by the Soviet critic Mikhail Bakhtin, this book argues that the historically diverse writings of the Bible have been organized according to a concept of dialogue. The overriding concern with an ongoing communication between God and his people has been...
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Drawing on the theory of language developed by the Soviet critic Mikhail Bakhtin, this book argues that the historically diverse writings of the Bible have been organized according to a concept of dialogue. The overriding concern with an ongoing communication between God and his people has been formally embodied, Reed shows, in the continuous conversation between one part of the Bible and another. Reed looks beyond the close readings of recent accounts of the Bible as literature to larger paradigms of communication in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. He considers the Bible in its different canonical states, distinguishing the genres of law, prophecy, and wisdom in the Hebrew Bible and describing how these earlier forms of divine and human communication are appropriated and answered by the New Testament genre of gospel. The dialogic character of the Bible is also discovered within individual books: patriarchal answers to primeval failures in Genesis, cross-talk between justice and providence in Job, and orchestration of judgment and worship in Revelation. Throughout this wide-ranging study, Reed demonstrates the surprising relevance of Bakhtin's ideas of literature and language to the biblical writings as they assume formal coherence within the canon.
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16.

Dimensions of Dialogue in the Book of Job: A Topology According to Bakhtin, in Texas Studies in Literature and Language » Read Now
by Walter L. Reed. 20 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Dimensions of Dialogue in the Book of Job: A Topology according to Bakhtin...literary books of the Bible, the Book of Job. I am concerned with the Book of Job first within...