Job's Religious Position and the Nature of His Conflict with the Friends: A New Understanding

The aim of this lecture is to present the outline of a research project in progress on the book of Job, to be published by both of us as a series of papers, currently in different stages of publication or preparation.In this project we suggest a new understanding of the religious and moral positions of Job, and of the nature of his conflict with his friends. It is commonly believed that in the later stages of the dialogue, Job no longer believes in God’s providence in the world or in the existence of divine justice. Accordingly, it is assumed that the conflict between Job and his friends reflects the different opinions they have on these matters. In our opinion, these assumptions are incorrect; Job’s religious position is more complex than commonly presented, and the argument between him and his friends is not so much about facts – relating to the ways of God or of the world – but about the proper, or improper human attitudes towards the reality of the world. In order to establish these claims we focus on chapters 21 and 25-27 of Job and reinterpret them. As part of this discussion we claim that the third cycle of speeches is not textually corrupted, as commonly assumed, but rather stands in its original form. What seem to prove the damaged state of this cycle are, in fact, literary devices that serve the argumentative structure of the book. The reason that most scholars reject the attribution of the chapters 26-27 to Job is, in our view, precisely the fact that Job's position was not hitherto understood properly.status: accepte