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This short guide to the book of Job launches an exciting new series of guides to the Hebrew Bible that present the latest developments and most up-to-date scholarship in biblical studies. In the light of dramatic new hermeneutical approaches to the Bible that have characterized the last couple of decades, this guide to Job follows both literary and readerly approaches to the book that acknowledge the traditional historical questions but find others yet more pressing for our time.

Job is a work of great literature that has engaged readers, scholars, sceptics and believers for many centuries. This guide reflects that diversity in its rounded picture of exciting new work that is taking place in the present-day readerly arena. Each chapter contains a ‘key text’ that highlights a particular section of the text of Job that serves as a focus for a topic of current concern.

A special emphasis and interest of Katharine Dell is the matter of genre. She shows how problematic the term ‘wisdom’ is for this unique book, and argues that its radical sentiments earn it, rather, the title of ‘parody’. Of all the biblical books it comes closest to tragedy, raising profound questions about its nature and place in the biblical canon.

Job’s relationship to its ancient Near Eastern counterparts, notably in ancient Mesopotamia are also closely examined and key theological themes that characterize the book are explored. Finally different readerly approaches—feminist, liberationist, ecological and psychological—are pursued that illuminate and inform our own personal readings and generate ever fresh understandings of this enigmatic text.

Katharine Dell is Senior Lecturer in Old Testament Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.

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