Job the silent : a study in historical counterpoint

Abstract

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.

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