Understanding the Ancient World's Greatest Poem Re-Reading Job

by Michael Austin

Job is perhaps the most difficult to understand of all books in the Bible. While a cursory reading of the text seems to relay a simple story of a righteous man whose love for God was tested through life's most difficult of challenges and rewarded for his faith through those trials, a closer reading of Job presents something far more complex and challenging. The majority of the text is a work of poetry that authors and artists through the centuries have recognized as being one of--if not the--greatest poem of the ancient world.In Re-reading Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem, author Michael Austin shows how most readers have largely misunderstood this important work of scripture and provides insights that enable us to re-read Job in a drastically new way. In doing so, he shows that the story of Job is far more than that simple story of faith, trials, and blessings that we have all come to know, but is instead a subversive and complex work of scripture meant to inspire readers to rethink all that they thought they knew about God.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Lds, Church, Poetry, Old Testament, Theology

Paperback

First published June 27, 2014

About the author

I am an English professor who became an administrator who dreams of being a political pundit. After eleven years teaching English and writing books like this, I accepted a position as the Provost and Academic Vice President at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. All the while, though, I dreamed of being a talking head. Soon after moving into administration, I started to write the Founderstein Blog, which examines contemporary politics from a historical perspective. My most recent book is That's Not What They Meant Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America's Right Wing, a 75,000 word op-ed piece that treats the misuse of history by conservative politicians and media personalities.

Reviews

[Steven Peck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always loved the book of Job. I've read it several times, in many translations and thought I'd explored it fairly thoroughly. Austin's book, however, has opened it in new ways, given me deeper insights, and done so with such wit and clarity that having just finished it want to start all over again. What's so unique about this book is not just its treatment of the scholarly and historical aspects of Job (for which it does a fantastic job), but the close attention to its literary and poetic aspects as well. Austin displays an incredible understanding not only of the text, but how the text has been read and influenced people's thinking in literature and religion. The chapter on Auschwitz is worth the price of the book alone, (actually in thinking about it, every chapter is worth the price of the book alone). I've bought three copies as gifts already. I'm already planning on buying more. Don't miss this one, it's well written, clear, and fun to read.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fantastic title in the "Contemporary Studies in Scripture" series from Kofford Books. Michael Austin combines the sophistication of a literary scholar with the conversational tone of a close and funny friend. Not only will Latter-day Saints come away from this book with a better understanding of the book of Job, they will also emerge as better readers of scripture in general. I wish my conversations in Sunday School were like this.

[Kathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know the author personally. He was the best Sunday school teacher I've ever had. And I can almost hear him speaking as I read this marvelous book. This has changed my perspective on Job, the Scriptures and the nature of pain, suffering and overcoming. A brilliant book from a brilliant mind.

[Russell Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Austin has written a wonderfully readable book, which carefully and with a light touch communicates to a Mormon audience a huge range of ideas about the hugely important poem of Job. I'm one of the many tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints who, because of our over-correlated and proof-texting Sunday School curriculum, had a poor understanding of Job's literary significance and moral challenges for much too long. Michael was one of them as well, and this book is, in part, a story about his discovery of how Job not only doesn't teach the usual, easy Sunday School lessons, but that in seeking to learn and think about and argue with what it does teach, the whole Old Testament--which its competing narrative voices and traditions, its mythologies and its overlapping literary possibilities--is revealed anew. I've been working through the Old Testament in a genuinely serious way over the past several months, and this book, while obviously primarily focused on a single book of the Bible, is as fine and as accessible guide to the whole range of ways in which any Christian believer who wants to get beyond simplistic (and textually inaccurate) answers ought to re-think the whole project of Biblical interpretation. The scholarly part of me almost wished that Michael had given his readers a little more explicitly philosophical hermeneutic reflection, but that would have taken away from what he wants this book to do: get religious folk who think they have "read" Job to do it again, for real this time. I know I will.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never been so excited about anything in the old testament. I finished just in time for our Sunday school lesson on Job tomorrow. I was a little skeptical to believe initially that Christians have been misinterpreting Job for millennia, but Austin makes an incredible strong case for it. Just because Job really didn't prophesy of Christ, or the fact that he did curse and blaspheme God, doesn't make the book any less amazing. I agree with a review elsewhere that the chapter on Auschwitz was with the price of the book alone. I can't recommend this book enough!

[conor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am fascinated by The Book of Job (which you may know from my reading of it as a comedy for one of my papers this past semester). This book is a fantastic, readable, & insightful look at The Book of Job. It provides some historical context & information about the composition of the text, as well as great insights into how to read it to best understand what is going on. Austin's theological preferences are not always the same as mine, but I appreciate his perspective nonetheless. If you've never quite been sure what to do with the story of Job or found aspects of it baffling or confusing or even just haven't really read it, this book is worth checking out.

[Heather WG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember that simplistic version of a Job you probably picked up in Sunday school? Well, it’s mostly wrong. However the more nuanced version of the book of Job is 1,000 times more meaningful for anyone who has ever grappled with the questions, “why are bad things happening to me? How should I respond to suffering?” This book lays it all out and manages to find that nice balance between presenting academic research and arguments yet speaking to a lay audience.

[Loyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

For most of my adult life I've been troubled by the traditional reading of Job. Austin shows us that we should be and that this work of poetry was written to cause us to rethink what we had been taught to believe about God.

Besides being incredibly insightful, Austin has a dry wit that makes Re-reading Job a joy to read.

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, albeit academic, analysis of Job from the Old Testament. Highly recommend to read it for a better understanding of this text as a poem that teaches about our relationship with God through trials.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Austin presents his analysis of the Book of Job by using just the right balance of his own prose and supporting (or sometimes contradictory) excerpts from many of the thinkers who have pondered Job through the millenia. I don't know that I agree with all of his conclusions, but I filled my book with notes and will be thinking about this for a long time to come.

[Kole · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The book of Job is a magnificent work of literature that teaches us important truths about suffering, friendship, human nature, and God. And it teaches us these things by being a poem" (p. 147)

I have always loved the book of Job and thought I had a grasp of what was taking place. Michael Austin has helped me to see and understand the book of Job in a way that I hadn't thought of before. Many of the things I have believed about the book of Job previously have been challenged, forcing me to look at the book of Job in a different view - view that I am now grateful to have - and even unlearn some of the things I thought about the book of Job. Through my reading of this book I have to come to appreciate more the book of Job, its teachings, and literary style.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book completely transformed Job for me, from a trite story with obvious flaws (e.g. oh, your 10 kids died? No prob, just have 10 more.) to a rich poem with such depth I will read it again and again. God and I have been having trouble lately, so this book gives me hope that that's OK. It suggests that maybe even God prefers critical questions to mindless parroting of how I think God works.

And sadly, I have often reacted as Job's friends--questioning another's worthiness before God because s/he didn't fit in the box I had put God in. I am grateful Austin's book unlocked the 2500 year-old treasure of Job for me.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the most important books I have ever read. Why? Because it helps unlock a pearl of great price - the treasure trove of the Book of Job. I can't believe how much of Job's wisdom I have been missing my entire life.

The author, in writing an analysis and interpretation of the world's greatest ancient poem, has himself created a work of prose worthy of high praise that I will place among my list of top pieces of literature. I savored this book by reading a chapter a week, and I pondered it's message many times between readings. The book is itself great Wisdom literature in the ancient Hebrew tradition.

[Marc Hutchison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read the book of Job in the Bible, and felt I needed some help in understanding what it was all about. This book really helped. Austin examines Job as a literary work and explores the work's structure and meaning. I came away with a greatly enhanced understanding and appreciation of Job and the Bible as a whole.

[William]

But first I have to read it for the first time, right? . . .

So, I had a mixed experience with this book--kind of like the Old Testament book that serves as its subject, albeit in very different ways. On the whole, I'm glad I read it, though.

This is a book written by a guy who, like me, is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ("the Mormons"), directed at other members of the Church. And though he spends time basically scolding Church members for misreading Job in specific ways (probably somewhat deserved), the corrected reading of Job he presents here is not overtly LDS, or at least not overwhelmingly so. I guess what I'm trying to say is that other Christian readers might actually find this book useful, maybe ever more than I did.

I say that because I really wanted Austin to engage Latter-Day Saint theology (such as it is) more. He offers a well-articulated interpretation of the text and how it confronts "the problem of evil" that really invites comparison to other texts unique to the Church's canon: 2 Nephi 2, D&C 121, and Moses 7, maybe even Alma 7 and Alma 14. I saw the potential to draw parallels and point out subtle differences, but he never really tries to engage these other rich texts or invite us to think about them and Job together. And I wanted to.

That said, Austin does a nice job elucidating those tough, boring middle chapters of Job. No, he did not necessarily convince me that it is "the ancient world's greatest poem." Or maybe I just don't care. But he did help me see how Job tackles this idea of "the law of retribution/law of the harvest"--that if we are moral and righteous, we will always prosper and be protected from suffering and bad things. Nonsense, says the Book of Job. Seems about right to me.

I am especially grateful for the way Austin illuminates the passages about the Behemoth and the Leviathan--possibly symbols of the mighty, violent forces of chaos inevitable in both the natural and human worlds. Or something like that. Before I had no idea what to do with those, and now I feel like I have a place to start.

But I think Austin is a little too hard on "the frame story"--the opening two chapters and last couple of verses that he explains are an old folk tale that the rest of the book sort of riffs off of, and for Austin, kind of contradict. I get where he's coming from. He wants to trash those opening chapters as silly and trite so he can show how groundbreaking the "boring" middle chapters really are. But in his enthusiasm for the "riff," I think he overlooks the subtle power and depth of that simple tale. For me this culminates in Job 1:21--"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

For all his talk of how great and complex and sophisticated the poetry in those overly-long middle chapters is, he somehow is oblivious to greatness of this verse, which for me, is the best line in all of Job. I think Austin makes a mistake by reading it exclusively through the fact that the "frame story" eventually restores and surpasses all of Job's worldly goods and familial abundance. In fact, at one point, he dismisses my favorite line as "tepid doggerel," which seriously hurt my feelings. I find a subtle, but deep Zen-like wisdom in that verse that I really do think compliments what Autin argues the rest of the Book of Job is trying to say--a rejection of the law of retribution, but an acceptance and embrace of the covenant relationship with Jehovah anyway. I know he would disagree with me, but my man Dieter doesn't: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s...

Yes, I get that my understanding of all of this, like Dieter's, is a New-Testament-influenced reading of the Old Testament, perhaps especially the Christians' metaphoric interpretation of Jehovah's delivering power that the ancient Hebrews probably tended to see in literal, material, earthy terms. But I think there are moments in the Old Testament that push against that focus on literal, material redemption. Daniel 3:17-18 is one. Job is another. I think that Austin sort of gestures in that direction, but I struggle with the fact that he doesn't want to see Job 1 as part of that. Oh well.

All that said, I'm still glad I read this book and I'm still grateful to Austin for writing it. His illuminating discussion of the way Job addresses the problem of evil and the law of retribution, particularly in his chapters four through seven, has helped turn the boring parts of Job into something I can actually work with and gives much food for continued thought and reflection.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! Biblical commentary from an LDS perspective! I've previously described Austin's style as disarming, not just because of its approachable prose, but also because of the way he comes at material from new angles in an attitude of total sincerity. I admit I was a bit confused about why Austin wrote a book on Job to begin with, but he explains that as someone with experience doing literary analysis on ancient poems, it's not that weird, because Job is a literary text. And its being a literary text (and not a historical one) doesn't take away from what we can learn from the book. On the contrary, understanding the book's genre helps us to ask the right questions of it.

Of course, simply asking the right questions doesn't mean that the book of Job will 100% make sense or answer those questions, but we can stop wringing our hands about why God is making a deal with the devil and instead wonder why God appears to humans as unjust. I will confess to having the same basic (incorrect) assumptions about the book of Job--that it is a simple story about a man who stays faithful through many trials and receives temporal rewards for doing so. That's the beginning and ending frame story, which is in a completely different style from the main poem. And the main poem subverts the frame story. It has Job wondering why God has been so unjust to him, and his friends telling him to please stop being so blasphemous (they at least sat with him in his suffering for a week before asking him to stop). And God comes to tell Job He's asking the wrong questions and it's confusing.

I think I've mentioned before that the Old Testament has seemed completely opaque to me, and that reading commentary has renewed my interest in it, to the extent that I am making the assumption that everyone else's scripture study would benefit from reading commentary as well. And I'm also, frankly, a little disillusioned with the idea that the scriptures can mean whatever we want them to (or that we should read for the sake of obedience because we will receive unrelated revelation in reward for doing so), but I'm also torn, because I think it's unreasonable to expect all people who believe in religious texts to become religious scholars. I'm having an existential crisis about how much importance Biblical commentary and exegesis should have in a global religion. I can say, at least, that it's important for me.

I don't think I'll ever be able to sing "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" with the same conviction knowing that, in context, Job is asking to be redeemed from God's own injustice. But Austin doesn't just tear down our ideas about Job. He also builds them up, noting how the non-Jewish names and emphasis on service to the poor still make Job, thematically, very Christian to Christian interpretations.

A note on the ebook--about half of it is end matter and ads for other books from Kofford books. Be prepared for the book not to be as long as you'd hoped.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really helps the reader think about the Book of Job as a work of literature (not history--the author is convincing on this point) with things to teach us. Austin, a literary scholar and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, acknowledges that the Job poet presents several points of view without reaching a clear conclusion or solving the central question of why bad things happen to good people--if indeed that is the appropriate question. He seems to me to go a bit doctrinally astray in a couple of places, but that's okay; he is trying to get the reader thinking outside the Sunday School box and to collect the responses of many scholars and other writers to Job's predicament. The book is excellent in helping us understand that the notions of retributive justice, of the human choice to do good as part of a quid-pro-quo for blessings, of the human-God relationship as a commercial transaction, are not the highest and best ways to understand our relationship to God or to understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He is also persuasive in his reasoning that the Book of Job can teach us more about the compassionate response to those who suffer than about the need for and purpose of suffering. I came away from this book with a greater understanding of it and of the human predicament that can both be seen as defying understanding; with Job I say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

[Wesley Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great explanation of what the book of Job is actually about, and why Latter-day Saints often misread it. The author of this book makes a helpful comparison: imagine that someone retold the story of Cinderella, but in the middle of the book there were 30 chapters of debates between Cinderella and her step-sisters about feminism and the unequal power structure of the story. We get too caught up in the "happily ever after," not realizing that the book we have likely adapts an older folk tale and is trying to show us that these questions do not have easy answers.

Michael Austin does a good job of correcting misconceptions without attacking beliefs. He explains that Job doesn't randomly prophecy of THE redeemer (which should be translated avenger), but the theological questions of Job are answered by Jesus's atonement.

This book helped me appreciate the complexity of Job. The tough questions it asks actually make it more helpful and hopeful than the simplistic story. Job is probably now my favorite book of the Old Testament, or at least on par with Genesis and Isaiah. It also made me want to read all of the modern reinterpretations of Job by Voltaire, Kafka, Goethe, and others.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't found anything Michael Austin has written that I didn't like. He somehow manages to effectively convey all of the technical details without dumbing down the subject matter, and does so in a very accessible manner.

The book of Job has always been discomfiting when understood in the traditional manner I've always encountered it. The context of the genre (Wisdom books), the form of the writing (prose and poetry) - the frame, and most of all understanding the satire were all key for me. This book transformed for me the story of Job from a nearly meaningless fairy tale to the epic status it deserves.

[Cami · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Job poet positions the poem as a challenge to the simplistic ideology of the folk tale. The Job of the poem complains loudly, to anyone who will listen, that God has treated him unfairly. The more his friends try to defend God, the more they feel that they have to blame Job for his own suffering, and the angrier he gets. Using the Ancient Near Eastern literary form known as a 'Wisdom dialogue,' the poet explores, and rejects, his culture’s most common explanations for human suffering."

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book of Job never sat right with me, but I never took the time or rigor of thought to figure out why (though a gambling God and an ending that seems to contradict the whole point of the book were definitely part of it!). Austin helps us look closely not just at what the book of Job might mean, but at how it brings meaning and why it's important to us today. It feels like a great English class mixed with a great religion class in one book.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was superb. Austin's literary exploration of Job is well-organized, well-researched, and thoroughly thought-provoking. He emphasizes the context of the writing and its structure in a way that makes you really dig into what wisdom literature actually is meant to do. He acknowledges hypocrisy (even his own) to encourage deeper engagement with the text. Absolutely fabulous.

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I like most about this book is that the author, not trapped in a job at BYU, is able to speak freely without worrying that his livelihood could be endangered as a result.

The poem has lots to consider, and I think I only touched the surface on my original foray into this book. So I'll definitely revisit it at some point.

[Alex Wheatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting insights and interpretations on Job. I will never view the book the same again. It makes me want to diver deeper into the subject, especially since the author was a little bit scattered in his thoughts toward the end.

[Michele R · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book for anyone who feels like they must have missed something in Job. Austin pieces together the puzzle of Job- and it is a page-turner (believe me !). I have a completely different, and much greater appreciation and understanding for Job, and the Old Testament in general. Thank-you, Mr. Austin!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking and deeply inspiring. And very applicable to life today.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! Truly brilliant. An excellent theological and literary rendering of Job.

[Brodie Scoffield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Job - one of the worlds greatest poems whose true meaning has been hidden in plain sight for over 2000 years. Amazing book.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic resource for studying the book of Job. Austin is one of my favorite thinkers. This book follows his usual style of breadth and depth. Highly recommend.

[Walker Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

****1/2