Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint - Softcover

Zuckerman, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195121279 ISBN 13: 9780195121278

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

This remarkable work offers a brilliantly original reading of the book of Job, one of the great classics of biblical literature, and in the process develops a new formula for understanding how biblical texts evolve in the process of transmission.

Zuckerman presents the thesis that the book of Job was intended as a parody the stereotypical righteous sufferer. In his most extended analogy, Zuckerman compares the book of Job and its fate to that of a famous Yiddish short story, `Bontshe Shvayg', another covert parody whose protagonist has come to be revered as a paradigm of innocent Jewish suffering. The history of this story is used to show how a literary text becomes separated from the intention of its author, and comes to have a quite different meaning for a specific community of readers.

About this title

From the Back Cover

One of the great literary classics of biblical literature, the book of Job is best know as a story which exemplifies the virtue of patience in the face of suffering. Indeed, the patience of Job is so well celebrated as to be a cliche. But here one encounters a problem; for throughout the greater art of the book that bears his name, Job is clearly one of the most impatient characters in the Bible.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195121279
• ISBN 13: 9780195121278
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312