The Emergence of the Biblical Book of Job on the Backdrop of the so-called Job Literature
The aim of the project is a methodologically sound, complex and utterly transparent full-screen picture of the history of the Job literature, in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, as well as other relevant languages of the time. Immediate forerunners of the Job literature in the Bible and the mediate relatives in extra-biblical literature (Mesopotamia) as well as the biblical and extra-biblical traditions contemporary to all the authors of the book in the second temple period in Palestine (e.g., Proverbs, Ben Sira, wisdom in Dead Sea Scrolls) or immediately following them (e.g., Job’s translations, particularly the Old Greek version, also the Testament of Job, and the early Hebrew and Aramaic aftermath in the next centuries) will be taken into account. It is an innovative attempt to synthesize the results of various methodological approaches to the book, in order to ascertain an entire literary history of the Job literature (text, form, ideas) and the methodology suitable for that purpose.
This work was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant (PRG938).
Doctoral defence: Iakov Kadochnikov “Deification of kings in Ancient Mesopotamia (from III to II millennium BC)”
