Katherine E. Southwood - Jobs Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising

This book focuses on the expressions used to describe Jobs body in pain and on the reactions of his friends to explore the moral and social world reflected in the language and the values that their speeches betray.

A key contribution of this monograph is to highlight how the perspective of illness as retribution is powerfully refuted in Jobs speeches and, in particular, to show how this is achieved through comedy. Comedy in Job is a powerful weapon used to expose and ridicule the idea of retribution. Rejecting the approach of retrospective diagnosis, this monograph carefully analyses the expression of pain in Job, focusing specifically on somatic language used in the deity attack metaphors, in the deity surveillance metaphors, and in the language connected to the body and social status. These metaphors are analysed in a comparative way using research from medical anthropology and sociology which focuses on illness narratives and expressions of pain.

Jobs Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising will be of interest to anyone working on the Book of Job, as well as those with an interest in suffering and pain in the Hebrew Bible more broadly.

Katherine E. Southwood is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, UK, and Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Religion and Fellow for Women at St Johns College, Oxford. She is author of Marriage by Capture in Judges 21: An Anthropological Approach (2017) and Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 910: An Anthropological Approach (2012).

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Jobs Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising

Katherine E. Southwood

www.routledge.com/classicalstudies/series/BIBWORLD

Katherine E. Southwood

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Katherine E. Southwood

The right of Katherine E. Southwood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Southwood, Katherine, 1982 author.

Title: Jobs Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising/Katherine E. Southwood.

Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, [2021] | Series: Routledge studies in the biblical world | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020012128 (print) | LCCN 2020012129 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367462574 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003029489 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Job Socio-rhetorical criticism. | Suffering in the Bible. | Metaphor in the Bible.

Classification: LCC BS1415.52. S58 2021 (print) | LCC BS1415.52 (ebook) | DDC 223/.1066 dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012128

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012129

ISBN: 978-0-367-46257-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-02948-9 (ebk)

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The dialogues form the major corpus of the book of Job. However, in the dialogues, the entrenched and unrelenting positions of all of the characters result in the conversation seeming to have a somewhat circular, almost pointless, character. Perhaps this is why when many readers first encounter the book of Job, they often tend to focus on, and prioritise, the prologue, Jobs curse (Job 3), Jobs sarcastic doxology (Job 7), the quest for wisdom (Job 28), the whirlwind speeches, and Jobs responses to Yahweh. This monograph, in contrast, has sought to prioritise the speeches. Far from being irrelevant, perhaps dare we suggest even rather dull at first glance, this monograph understands speeches as the central core of Job. In particular, this monograph focuses on Jobs body within his own speeches, suggesting that it is a device through which the author/s can explore some of the ethical and epistemological aspects of Yahwism at the time of writing and for early audiences. In order to try and contextualise and understand the way Jobs body functioned in the speeches, this monograph has used research concerning illness narratives and expressions of pain from medical anthropology. However, the serious topics that Job and his friends discuss are portrayed in a light-hearted way in Job, which we have imagined as a play to be performed before audiences. Rethinking Job in this way brings the dialogues to life. Far from being dull and repetitive, they regularly move from the tragic to the comic and vice versa. They are full of parody, sarcasm, hyperbole, misdirection, word plays, absurdity, and anti-climaxes. Indeed, the entire surreal premise upon which the play is set (that the Satan can touch Jobs body, but not kill him), is a grandiose piece of dramatic irony. This allows audiences to be privy to information that the baffled Job struggles to explain and ferociously argues about. It also allows the audiences to observe the friends advice to Job and the irony of their self-assured moralising. In addition to this monograph, I have several articles that use a similar method. These include Metaphor, Illness, and Identity in Psalm 88 and 102. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (2) 2019, 228246. Also You Are All Quacks; If Only You Would Shut Up (Job 13:4b-5a): Sin and Illness in the Sacred and Secular. Theology 121(2) 2018, 8491; and, The Innards in the Psalms and Job as Metaphors for Illness in Horizons in Biblical Literature (forthcoming).

I imagine that very few, if any, monographs could ever be published without support of other people who surround authors. Too often this help is assumed, invisible, and unrecognised. I seize the opportunity here publicly to recognise, acknowledge, and thank all those who have made it possible for me to produce this research. I owe Elisabeth Hsu, professor of anthropology and a specialist in medical anthropology, a tremendous debt of gratitude for having allowed me to attend her lectures. I also owe her my thanks for working together with me to co-convene an international seminar series from January to March 2019 on The Personification of Pain in Different Religions: Engaging with Religious Texts through Medical Anthropology. Working with Elisabeth has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure: she has been patient, supportive, and kind, and I could not have produced this monograph without her guidance. As a result of Elisabeths inspiration, and as chair of the Society of Biblical Literature programme unit Social Sciences and the Interpretation of Hebrew Scripture, I ran a successful panel on medical anthropology entitled How Can Medical Anthropology Be Used in Biblical Studies? for November 2019. I was excited by this and am glad to see so much high-quality interdisciplinary work emerging in biblical studies.