Job’s Enemies in 30,17-18

Verses 30,17-18 in Job’s final speech are notoriously difficult for interpretation. Typically offered understandings of these verses by modern exegetes cannot be anchored in the text, and appear to be too simplistic for the Jobian context. The purpose of this paper is to understand vv. 17-18 from the perspective of the contradictory objectives that the ailing Job and his fearful community have. It is being argued that a cogent understanding of these verses can be obtained if it is assumed that they deal with Job’s closest circle of intimates (apart of his three friends) and his tragic disappointment in them, perhaps because of their effort to isolate him and prevent contagion. Such reading can be obtained by assuming only the revocalizations of just two words (????, ??????) in the MT.     

The Book of Job – The Cyclical Progression of the Aporia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relation between aesthetics and theology in the Book of Job. The overall aim of the article is to explain the relationship between centre and periphery (poetry and prose) and its significance for the theology of the book. The article claims that Job's problem is not the attainment of wisdom but how to reconcile wisdom with suffering—how to relate to suffering. And this theological theme is propagated through aesthetics—including stylistic, narrative, compositional and structural features.

It is impossible to point out a preferential reading in the Book of Job because of the fundamental and structural dissonance of the text. This destabilized, ambiguous, paradoxical, ironical and dissonance-producing text is the hermeneutical starting point. Qua dissonance-producing text this feature is used as foundation for the interpretative task. And to get a comprehensive grip on the book two instruments are used: the literary and compositional means are analyzed, and the structural elements are evaluated in their relation between frame and centre. Following this line of interpretation reveals that the stylistic differences of the work manifest crucial theological distinctions. In the book of Job, shape and aesthetics are meaning and theology.     

Job training and unemployment: Is Southwestern jiving me again?

Harland Padfield and Roy Williams. Stay Where You Were: A Study of Unemployables in Industry. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1973. xviii + 282 pp. Figures, tables, and appendix. $7.50 (cloth), $3.25 (paper).     

‘It’s a Good Job Nobody Mentioned Hedgehogs’: The Use of Narratives in Discworld Fandom

This article examines the use of staged narratives in the Hogswatch celebration—a celebration of Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld held in November in Wincanton, Somerset. Different narratives are used in fandom as part of the process of qualia resituation, in which the what-it-is-like of the Discworld series is conveyed in the fandom celebration.     

A Review of “Inventing the Job of President: Leadership Style from George Washington to Andrew Jackson”

Howell, William G. Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. xx, 239. $45.00 hardbound, $19.95 softbound.

Lewis, David E. Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 224. $45.00 hardbound.

Rudalevige, Andrew. Managing the President's Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii, 274. $60.00 hardbound, $18.95 softbound.     

A Good Job for a Girl? The Career Biographies of Women Graduates of the University of Liverpool Post-1945

The opponents of women’s higher education in the nineteenthcentury feared that a university education for women would radicallyalter the ‘separate spheres’ and ultimately leadto a sexual revolution. This article suggests that in termsof the career biographies of university-educated women, theyneed not have feared. Drawing on a range of data sources, thearticle documents the limited, gendered career options thatfaced graduate women post-1945, despite the increase in botheducational and employment opportunities. There remained astoundingpersistence in sexist assumptions about women’s life-plans;even for the academic elite, the role of wife and mother wasnever lost sight of. Graduate women negotiated the labour marketwithin the confines of a discourse that emphasized a ‘goodjob for a girl’ as opposed to a career for a woman.