The Book of Job As a Greek Tragedy - Also ONLINE at https://archive.org/details/bookjobasagreek00goog

GroupA

Plot

The thesis here is that the Book Of Job was originally a drama, in the form of a Euripidean Greek Tragedy, written by a third century Hellenistic Jew (singular), and later formally, by structural transposition, imported into and later cannonized in the final rendering of the Tenach.

"...Prologue, agon, messenger, choruses, epiphany, epilogue, they are all evident with just those differences from the Greek that may be expected from the difference in tradition and background between the two authors (writer of Job and Euripides). That the thought of Job has Euripidean analogues need not be argued. The injustice of divinity, the unhappiness of mankind, the desirability of death, the rebellion and the ultimate or primal mystical perception which consoles, - these are the commonplaces of Euripides' thinking."

There are few who will argue that the Joban Theophany has proved the most provocative deus ex machina extant in Western cultural memory, in this day, when, in the words of Daniel Berrigan in the preface of his commentary to Job, "Today Job is an image of those who dwell in a world we Americans have both named and created: the "third" world. But more than "out there", he dwells in our own assaulted humanity..."

Kallen traces the history of Job to the Messianic tradition in the personage of the apparently failed ascendency of Zerubabbel, which appears to foreshadow the Gospel narratives, centuries later.

There is much else in this now little read, and injustly ignored study, including a terrific, comprehensive, yet concise analysis of the dialogue between Job and the "friends" - the section many of us skim - due to its inherent complexity and the exalted poetry of the Theophany.

Job is unique in that it is the one book in the Bible that questions the nature, even the existence, of a Divine Entity - and focuses on the ubquity and inexorability of suffering which could be claimed to define the human epoch - at least in these times, if not all. Job's importance in our culture is thus undeniable as the relevance of Kallen's reading is indispensible.