Job in Early Medieval Jewish Literature

Elie Wiesel writes about Job in Job, our contemporary: In him we find the solitary conscience of Abraham, the fearful conscience of Isaac, the torn conscience of Jacob. Whenever the midrash runs short of examples, it quotes Job, no matter what the topic and it is always pertinent. The book of Job is probably the most enigmatic of the books of the Hebrew Bible, one of the few associated with canonical biblical wisdom, and the one that reflects most deeply on the problem of innocent suffering. Since antiquity the book of Job has fascinated its readers. Both the story and the wording of the book of Job have had a varied history of reception in Judaism, Christianity and Islam in exegetical, philosophical, literary, and scholarly discourse, in the arts, in film. Even if no Midrash Iyyov, i.e., biblical commentary from the rabbinic period, has come down to us, as we know such midrashim for other books of the Writings, such as the books of Esther, Ruth and Song of Songs, this does not mean that Job did not interest the rabbis. After all, this authoritative book raised questions that no other book had raised to the same extent. We know that late antique Jewish exegetes were interested in the time when Job lived, in his ethnicity, his piety and the reason(s) for his suffering. They interpreted verses of the book of Job not only when discussing the figure and the story of Job, but very often quoted Joban verses dissociating them from their scriptural context. The project The book of Job in early medieval Jewish literature focuses on a chapter in the history of the reception of the book of Job that has never been systematically addressed. It examines the Jewish literature that emerged primarily in Christian lands in the first centuries after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud. This early medieval Jewish literature will be analysed using digital humanities tools to describe the ways in which Jewish intellectuals interpreted Job, the figure of Job and the words that make up the book of Job. This methodology will allow us to determine with greater precision than is currently possible how often the text of this book has been quoted and interpreted, not only in midrashic corpora but also in other genres; to visualise these findings; and, last but not least, to say what themes the book of Job deals with in the eyes of these Jewish interpreters, apart from the generation of the Flood and the migration through the desert, as has for some time been assumed. For, according to the project`s thesis, Job has a lot to say.