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.
- ISBN10 0195121279
- ISBN13 9780195121278
- Publish Date 22 October 1998 (first published 1 January 1991)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Paperback
- Pages 304
- Language English