The Trial of Job
The Book of Job translated and annotated by Roger Eaton
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Translation and notes © 1996 Roger Eaton. All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reproduce for non-commercial use is granted.

Introduction

Was Job originally a play? It is an old idea, going back at least to Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died in 428 AD. He was sure the Book of Job was a scandalous drama on the pattern of Greek tragedy, but the Church Council of 553 at Constantinople condemned his thinking.

Dr. Horace Kallen has fared only a little better in modern times for his The Book of Job as Greek Tragedy, which added stage directions and a chorus to the American Revised Version. The play was put on by college groups and once by professional actors in 1926. But poor Dr. Kallen has been relegated to footnote status. The current academic view runs something like this: Job is a poetic dialogue, even a dramatic dialogue in form, but of course Kallen was wrong to think it a play.

Kallen was right at least to this degree: that if the Book of Job was a play, then a Greek connection is hard to resist. Theater may have arisen among the Greeks and the Jews independently, but Athens and Jerusalem are too close and the timing too coincidental to believe so.

Thespis of Attica is generally accepted as the first tragic actor in the Greek tradition. He may have toured the countryside with a chorus putting on his plays as early as 550 B.C. In 536 the Tyrant Pisistratus of Athens established an annual prize for the best tragedy. The author of Job is thought to have traveled and so may have been to Athens and seen one of Thespis' productions. On this scenario and on the assumption that Job was drama, the earliest possible date for the book would be 550. The early tragedies had only a single actor, though, and were not nearly so sophisticated as Job, so a later date is indicated, probably several decades into the fifth century B.C.

Still on the assumption that Job was actually played, the latest likely date for it would be circa 445, when Nehemiah took over Jerusalem and rebuilt the walls of the city. Internal evidence from Job suggests that the walls of Jerusalem were still in ruins - see the note for 17:6. More cogently, Job is written in Hebrew, and Hebrew was losing its hold from 500. Finally, the Temple priesthood, once they became a force in the city, would have banned as idolatrous a play where God appears on stage. The Temple was rebuilt by 515, but just when the priesthood took charge of cultural life is unclear. It might have been as late as Nehemiah. A good guess for Job's first production? Say 470 B.C.

Was Job a play? Well, yes. The internal evidence is quite clear. There are so many scenes that only work by a reference to the surroundings or with a gesture. Let's play it again, here in Los Angeles. Let's bring Jew, Christian and Muslim together for an interreligious production. Why not? Truly, Job has a timeless message for all humanity, a message Los Angeles needs to hear. Job is a healing play, exactly the right prescription for a fractured city.

* * *

The translation was accomplished by first comparing English versions and then going to the Hebrew. Priorities were 1) the meaning of the original Hebrew, 2) the meaningfulness of the English, 3) poetic force and 4) literal faithfulness to the received text.

The Book of Job is a difficult work in the original. Scholars dispute the meaning of many of its verses. The translator has the worst of it: 1) The author's vocabulary was the largest of all ancient Hebrew writers. 2) The verse form is more compact than prose. 3) Idiomatic expressions from the spoken language are many because the work is a dramatic dialogue in form. 4) If the peculiarities of the Hebrew are not sufficiently explained by points one through three, then perhaps Job was written in an otherwise unknown Hebrew dialect. 5) An accumulation of scribal errors is likely. And 6) thrgnlhdnvwlspncttnrspcsbtwnthwrds -- the original had no vowels, punctuation or spaces between the words.

But the interpreter also suffers. Perhaps some ten to fifty verses began as marginal notes and were copied into the text by the next scribe. In the present edition, verses thought to be unassimilable interpolations are parenthesized. Then there are deliberate distortions of the text in the name of piety, including the eighteen "Emendations of the Scribes." For instance, 1:5 in the received text says: Perhaps my sons have sinned and blessed God... Finally, the structural integrity of the work is in question. Chapters 24 to 30 are jumbled and the Elihu speeches may have been added by a second hand.

A meaningful version of Job must therefore be in part a work of the imagination. The traditional versions of the difficult passages are themselves only defensible, not proved, and too often they don't really make sense in the larger context. Yet surely the original was seldom indefinite or obscure.

In this edition, cuts are suggested using bold versus standard typeface. The cut version will run about an hour and forty-five minutes. The full version about 2 and a half hours. Additions to make the work more understandable to the radio audience are indicated by [square brackets]. This simple typography only works if the reader makes allowances. Once again, brackets for the radio announcer, parentheses for original material that is being excluded, boldface to indicate a cut version. The Storyteller's "foreword" is entirely a modern addition, of course, as is the falconry interpolation at 16:18.

Dramatis Personae

The Scene

[Radio announcer. A lone palm tree grows by a city gate. A small crowd of men in Middle Eastern dress are seated on benches. Center stage are rocks and piles of ashes. Above is Heaven] with an inner curtain. [In the middle distance is a wadi, the deep gully of a desert stream, and on its far side are stately tombs for the rich. Below, in front, is the common burial pit for the poor.] This single scene, with Heaven, Earth, and Pit will suffice for the entire play. Music should be supplied as appropriate -- harp, tambourine, pipe and drums.

The angels and the messengers, when their part in the Prologue is done, join the audience. With their prompting, and with the help of cue sheets, the audience is encouraged to become part of the Crowd, the ancient jury before whom the Trial of Job will take place.

[Radio announcer. The Trashman with his basket of ashes enters from the city gate followed by two men carrying a man's body on a makeshift stretcher. A well dressed Job and his wife enter opposite. As they cross paths, the arm of the dead man flops out to smack Job squarely in the chest. Job stops to watch as the naked body is dumped unceremoniously into the Pit. Just at that moment the trashman, grinning, tips his ashes, spilling them over the feet of Job and his wife.]

Storyteller's Foreword

[Radio announcer. Now here's the Storyteller with her scroll and her raven's quill pen.]

Storyteller. Theodore of Mopsuestia was condemned as a heretic for thinking Job a play, but it was, I know! I've played this part before. We've trimmed a bit from the original. What's left though, are still the words of Job and his friends -- God, too -- as I first took them down with this pen, nearly three thousand years ago.

Now be advised, the only plots here are that cemetary plot over there, where this poor man was dragged and dumped, and those tombs back there, where the rich are buried along with their plots against the poor. The word's the thing in this play, so give ear, you that know, "for the ear can tell a word as the tongue tells a taste!"

The Prologue

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last changed November 17, 2014