The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought: Critical Essays by Jason Kalman (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought: Critical Essays by Jason Kalman Shira Weiss Jason Kalman. The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought: Critical Essays. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2022. 605 pp. Jason Kalman’s The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought is a diverse collection of republished, revised, and new critical essays on Job, ranging from rabbinic, medieval, to modern perspectives on the biblical text. The author examines how Jewish readers in different times and places interpreted the book of Job and reconciled the conflict between how the relationship of God and humans was described regarding seeming injustices, as opposed to depictions of the divine-human relationship in other biblical books within the Jewish canon. As often with collected works, each essay stands alone as an independent analysis of a disparate aspect of the book of Job, spanning different genres, with minimal cohesion among the chapters. Few books, however, cover so many time periods in such a sophisticated manner, as works typically offer either focused analyses on a single theme, such as theodicy, providence, or protest, delve into a specific time period, or broadly trace the reception of a biblical character or book throughout history. Kalman’s work makes a meaningful scholarly contribution by presenting a historical study of the interpretation of Job from antiquity to contemporary times [End Page 452] in one volume, gathering and analyzing varied texts, including the Targum of Job, medieval mystical commentaries, as well as poems, sermons, legal codes, responsa, and polemical writings. Throughout history, the book of Job inspired literary creativity as its interpreters explored foundational philosophical and theological issues that arose in the text, including evil, divine providence, free will, and the pursuit of wisdom. Though discussed, these concepts are not the primary focus of this collection. Rather, each heavily footnoted chapter engages in a critical analysis of a far more nuanced topic relating to Job. The first five chapters consist of individual essays that deal with ideas regarding Mosaic authorship of the book of Job in rabbinic literature; exegetical traditions of the church fathers; Rashbam’s methodological challenges; the unity of Maimonides’s thought; and Soloveitchik’s modern application of Job, respectively. The final section of the work presents a typography of the evolution of interpreting Job from the rabbinic era to the sixteenth century, highlighting Job’s place in Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, medieval peshat (literary-contextual) commentaries, philosophical, Karaite, and Jewish mystical texts, anthological commentaries, and medieval art. The appendix offers an English translation of texts from Midrash ʾIyov, alluded to earlier in the final chapter. Despite disparity between chapter topics, each essay in Kalman’s collection elucidates a link in the exegetical chain of how Job was read throughout history, providing insight into that which motivated various interpretations of Job in different places and time periods and the lessons that emerged as a result. Following an introduction in which the author investigates the limited exposure that contemporary society has to the book of Job, the first essay explores why the rabbis of antiquity attributed authorship to Moses and how it shaped their interpretations of Job, as well as those of later Jewish readers in the rabbinic and medieval periods. Scholars suggest that attributing authorship of the book of Job to Moses enhanced the authority and impact of the book and legitimized its theological challenges and inclusion within the biblical canon. In the second essay, the author examines exegesis of Job in exchanges between Jews and Christians in antiquity, in which denial of resurrection of the dead was a significant issue. A variety of rabbinic interpretations of Job resulted from polemical anti-Christian considerations. The third essay probes medieval Jewish biblical commentary through the lens of a sole surviving manuscript attributed to Rashbam. Through analyzing its peshat method, the author assesses its contribution to the influence of the book of Job among medieval French scholars. In his fourth essay, Kalman raises the question of why Maimonides used the biblical book altogether in the two chapters of Guide of the Perplexed that he devotes to an exposition of Job that illustrates his conception of divine providence. He conjectures that Maimonides...