Beaming Rae

Triumph of Job by Laura C. Pleming
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was so happy to read the story of Job interpreted in a way I could understand. Dr. Laura C. Pleming is a Bible scholar, and her indepth knowledge of this old, old scripture was insightful. Makes me want to take a bible study class. What I learned about the writing of the book of Job is that the author is unknown. It was written as a drama, the author is defined as being a dramatist. It is written poetically, using a rhythmical cadence. This is what Dr. Pleming's book taught me, then.....

As luck would have it, there is an article in The New Yorker magazine, Dec. 16th, 2013, pg 83, in the book review section, entitled "MISERY, Is there justice in the Book of Job?", by Joan Acocella. She is reviewing Mark Larrimore's book "The Book of Job: A Biography". In this article I discovered that, and to state it accurately I am just going to quote from Joan Acocella's article here; "The text here is clearly corrupt in many places. The central section - where Job speaks to his friends, and God speaks to them all - is in verse, and its language is impassioned: pleading, sweeping, vaulting. The outer sections are written in prose, and in a blunt, matter-of-fact manner." The article goes on to say that this is probably a story that was told verbally down through the ages, then a beginning and an ending were added to make it a complete story when it was converted to written form. There are other opinions about how this Book of Job was possibly written, and a slew of other books on the subject were referenced. I am intrigued now.

My reading list just got a lot longer because of my friend handing me her copy of a simple little book, a one hour read, called "Triumph of Job", by Dr. Laura C. Pleming.

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It will take eternity to answer all life's problems.