Job in the Medieval World

The Image of the Biblical Job A History

Volume 2: 
Job in the Medieval World

Stephen J. Vicchio

JOB IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

The Image of the Biblical Job: A History, vol. 2

Copyright © 2006 Stephen J. Vicchio. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

ISBN: 1-59752-533-2

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7656-6

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Job in the medieval world / Stephen J. Vicchio.

Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006

viii + 258 p.; 23 cm.

[KC to supply cataloging info]

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter 11: Job in Jerome’s Vulgate

Introduction

The Life of Jerome

Sources for the Vulgate Job

Jerome on Job in his Other Writings

Jerome’s Translation of the Hebrew Book of Job

Jerome’s View of Job after the Vulgate Translation

Jerome and his Contemporaries on Job

The Fate of the Vulgate Job

Conclusions

Chapter 12: Job in Gregory the Great’s Moralia

Introduction

The Life and Mind of Gregory

Gregory’s Method in the Moralia on Job

Gregory’s View of Job

The Influence of Gregory’s Moralia on Early Medieval Christian Interpretations of Job

Conclusions

Chapter 13: Job in Medieval Christian Liturgy

Introduction

A History of the Office for the Dead

Job in the Early Liturgy

The Figure of Job in Medieval Liturgy

Pety Job and the Office for the Dead

Job in the Office for the Dead after Vatican II

Books of Hours and the Office for the Dead

Office for the Dead in Art and Music

Conclusions

Chapter 14: Job in the Quran and Later Islam

Introduction

The Nature of the Quran

Job in the Quran

Job in Medieval Islamic Commentaries

Job and the Sacred Water

The Role of Prophets and Ayyub in Modern Islam

Conclusions

Chapter 15: Job in Saadiah Gaon and Early Medieval Judaism

Introduction

The Life and Times of Saadiah Gaon

Saadiah and the Problem of Evil

Saadiah’s Translation and Commentary on Job

Life of Gersonides

Rashi on Job

Joseph Kara on Job

Conclusions

Chapter 16: Job in Maimonides and Gersonides

Introduction

The Life and Times of Moses Maimonides

Maimonides on Job

Maimonides’ View of Job

Life and Times of Gersonides

Gersonides on Job

The Influence of Maimonides and Gersonides on Jewish Interpretation of Job

Conclusions

Chapter 17: Job in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas

Introduction

Early Christian Historical-Critical Readings of Job

The Life of Albert the Great

Albert the Great on Job

The Life and Times of Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas’ View of Job

Thomas Aquinas’ Exegetical Method

Job in the Late Christian Middle Ages (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)

Thomas à Kempis on Job

Nicholas’ Hermeneutics

Nicholas of Lyra on Job

Conclusions

Chapter 18: Job in the Zohar

Introduction

The Nature of the Zohar

The Development of the Zohar

The Zohar’s View of Job

Rabbi Zerahiah ben Isaac ben Sheatiel on Job

Later Jewish Medieval Commentaries on the Zohar

Conclusions

Chapter 19: Job in the Reformation (Luther and Calvin)

Introduction

The Life of Martin Luther

Luther’s Method of Exegesis

Luther’s Translation of Job

Job in Luther’s Table Talks

The Life of John Calvin

Calvin’s View of Job

Theodore Beza on Job

Conclusions

Chapter 20: Job in the Renaissance

Introduction

Sources for the Renaissance Views of Job

Job in Renaissance Humanism

Francis Bacon’s View of Job

Job in the Sermons of John Donne

Conclusions

Appendix C: Job in Literature and Drama

Introduction

Literature on Job in the Medieval Period

Other Job Literature before the Renaissance

Job in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature

Literary Uses of Job in the Enlightenment

Job in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Job in Twentieth-Century European Literature and Drama

Job in Twentieth-Century English and American Literature

Job in Twentieth-Century English and American Drama

Job in the Essay

Job in Modern French Literature

Job in Modern German Literature

Job in Modern Italian Literature

Conclusions

Appendix D: Job in Medicine

Introduction

Some Cautionary Notes

Early Interpretations of Job’s Malady

Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Diagnoses of Job’s Malady

Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Job’s Malady

Another Approach to Job’s Disease

In loving memory of Sister Bridget Marie Englemeyer (1905–2001), mentor and dear friend, and Robert Gordis (1908–1992), Hebrew scholar and man who got me started on this project.

Introduction


Apparently with no surprise

To any happy flower

The frost beheads it at its play—

In accidental power—

The blonde assassin passes on—

The sun proceeds unmoved

To measure off another day

For an approving God.

—Emily Dickinson

In Volume One of this work, Job in the Ancient World , we explored the precursors to the book of Job in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and elsewhere. We also explored the uses of the biblical figure of Job in its historical setting, in the Septuagint, in the Jewish Aprocrypha, the first four centuries of Christianity, the Talmud, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Peshitta, the Syriac translation of the book.

For the most part, exegetes in the ancient world and early church saw the biblical Job in four different ways: the Patient Job, the Angry Job, Jobus Christi (Job as a Christ-figure), and Job as a Warrior/Wrestler for God.

In the second volume of this work, these four images remain the central ways that Jews, Christians, and Moslems understand the figure of the biblical Job. In the first chapter of Volume Two, we look carefully at Saint Jerome’s translation of the book of Job, the Vulgate. We examine the influences that may have been at play in formulating his view of the book, and the uses that Saint Jerome gives to the Job figure elsewhere in his writings.

For the most part, Jerome employs the Patient Job, the Jobus Christi image, and the tendency to see Job as a warrior or wrestler for God. Like most Christian thinkers in the first five hundred years of Christianity, Jerome sees the patient Job, and says very little about Job’s iconoclastic qualities. In chapter 12, we examine the exegetical method and theology of Gregory the Great’s Moralia on Job. In general, Gregory sees Job as a patient saint, as a Christ figure, and as a warrior or wrestler for God. Gregory also employs the allegorical method in much the same way as Jerome and Augustine did. Indeed, Gregory’s allegorical method, and his commentary on Job, dominate Christian exegesis on the book until the twelfth century.

Chapter 13 of this volume explores the role that the book of Job plays in the development and the history of the Office of the Dead. From early on in Christian worship, several readings from the book of Job were part of the Office. This chapter examines the role of Job in the liturgy, and in Pety Job, a late medieval text based on the Office.

Chapter 14 explores the image of Job, (Ayyub in Arabic), in the Qu’ran and later Islam. Generally, in Islam Ayyub is seen as a saintly prophet, as the patron saint of skin diseases, and as a recipient of healing water from Allah. Chapter 14 also explores the figure of Ayyub in Moslem iconography.

Chapter 15 is an analysis of the figure of Job in early medieval Judaism. More specifically, this chapter looks at Saadia Gaon, Gersonides, Rashi, and Joseph Kara’s exegetical points of view about the man from Uz. Chapter 16 continues in the medieval Jewish tradition by examining more about Gersonides, as well as Moses Maimonides’ analysis of Job in his Guide For the Perplexed.

In chapter 17, we explore the figure of Job in Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Lyra, the greatest of late medieval exegetes. In chapter 17, we also see a turn from the allegorical method of reading scripture to more literal-historical points of view.

The exploration of the roles and uses of the biblical Job in the Zohar, the major tradition in medieval Jewish mysticism, is the goal of chapter 18. We also explore the work of Rabbi Zerahiah, and other later Jewish commentaries on the biblical Job.

Chapter 19 examines the Job figure in Reformation thinkers Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Theodore Beza, a follower of Calvin’s. These Reformation thinkers continued the literal-historical method in Thomas and Nicholas of Lyra.

In the final chapter of this second volume, we examine the role Job has played in the Renaissance. In addition to examining the sources for Renaissance views of the biblical Job, we also look specifically at the view of Job found in Francis Bacon’s essays, and the sermons of John Donne.

We concluded Volume One of this work with two appendices on Job in Art and Architecture, and Job in Western Music. At the conclusion of Volume Two, we have added two additional appendices on Job in Literature and Drama, and Job in Medicine. The latter is a history of from what disease Job was thought to have suffered. At the conclusion of Volume Three, Job in the Modern World, we provide three additional appendices: Job’s Geography, Job in Zoology, and Job in Film.

11

Job in Jerome’s Vulgate


Si velus anguillam, vel muraenulam

citius elabitur.

(If you wish to grab an eel or a lamprey, the harder you

squeeze, the faster it escapes.)

—Jerome

Preface to the Book of Job

We have seen in what energetic terms St. Jerome expressed himself with regard to the ancient Latin version which was made on the basis of the Septuagint. Hence it is no matter for surprise if the great doctor began his revision of the Bible by a new recension.

—E. Dhorme

A Commentary on the Book of Job

Introduction

Before the High Middle Ages, Western Christianity produced only one great translation of the biblical text: the Latin Vulgate of Jerome (346–420). ¹ When Jerome’s translation emerged in the fifth century as the preferred text in the west, it remained that way for the next one thousand years. Although Latin had become the official language of western Christianity by the second century, Greek for many reasons nevertheless remained the literary and scholarly tongue until the third century. Indeed, by the end of the third century, an Old Latin translation of the biblical text had began to circulate in the west. It is likely that other translations of the biblical text existed, as well. These translations clearly were used by Cyprian and Tertullian during the second century. By the fourth century, several other Latin translations made from the Septuagint also appeared, all with considerable variation among them. This situation led Damascus, the bishop of Rome from 366 to 384, to commission a revision of the Old Latin text. The man selected for this monumental task was Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymous, better known as Saint Jerome.

Jerome was born to Christian parents at Stridon, Dalmatia. He was sent off to Rome for study at the age of twelve. By nineteen, after seven years of extensive study, he was baptized a Christian. He devoted the rest of his life to asceticism, scholarship, and to sometimes acrimonious disputes with other scholars. From 374 until 379, while living in Antioch, he employed a rabbi to teach him Hebrew. By 379, he was ordained by a presbyter, moved to Constantinople and studied under Gregory Nazianzen. By 382 the commission from Damascus came, and he began his extraordinary task of translating the biblical text. It is of some interest to note that while Jerome was preparing his translation of the Old Testament from the Greek (389–392), some critics became outraged at what they saw as a Judaizing of the Septuagint, which is quite ironic given the Jewish origins of the LXX. It is equally ironic when we consider that much later, in the High Middle Ages, Jerome’s translation of Job would be used for a variety of anti-Semitic purposes.

We know from an examination of his letters that Jerome made two different translations of the book of Job. The first was made from the Septuagint, sometime between 389 and 392. Dissatisfied with this early effort, his translation from the Hebrew began a short time later. The text we now refer to as the Vulgate Job is this latter translation, made directly from the original language, sometime in the mid-390s.

Although Jerome points out in the preface to Job that he has striven to be faithful to the Hebrew, it is clear that he did not free himself entirely from the influence of the Septuagint, nor from a reliance on Origen, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotian. In the Vulgate there are striking parallels to each of these translations, parallels of great variance to the Hebrew text, as we shall see later in this chapter. First it would be profitable, however, briefly to discuss Jerome’s sources for the Vulgate Job.

In this chapter our efforts primarily are spent on Jerome’s translation of the book of Job into Latin. In addition to an examination of the Vulgate’s version of Job, we also explore a number of other items in this chapter: an analysis of Jerome’s use of Job in his homilies, as well as a description of other fourth- and fifth-century thinkers’ views of the book of Job. What we will see in this chapter is, for the most part, an extension of two themes found in earlier chapters—the image of the saintly, patient Job, as well as Job the warrior/wrestler for God image.

The Life of Jerome

St. Jerome was born at Stridon, a town bordering on Dalmatia and Pannonis in Asia Minor, around 340–342. He died in Bethlehem on the 30th of September, 420. He traveled to Rome in 360, and was baptized there. From Rome he journeyed to Trier, where he began his theological studies. Around 373, Jerome traveled to the East, settling first in Antioch. From 374 to 379, Jerome led the life of an ascetic in the desert of Chalcis, southwest of Antioch.

After being ordained a priest at Antioch around 380, Jerome went to Constantinople. In 382 Jerome made another journey to Rome, not far from the Vatican residence of Pope Damascus. After the death of Damascus on December 11th, 384, Jerome left Rome, and by way of Antioch and Alexandria, he reached Bethlehem in 386.

Jerome settled in Bethlehem at a monastery near a convent established by two Roman women, Paula and Eustochium, who become Jerome’s disciples in Palestine. In Jerusalem, Jerome experienced a series of controversies, including a battle with the Pelagians, and conflicts with various scholars at odds with Jerome’s translations of the Bible.

Jerome’s literary activity included translations of the Bible, theological controversies, historical works, and various surviving letters. The first period of his academic work extends to his sojourn to Rome in 382. In this period Jerome worked on the translation of some homilies of Origen.

A second literary period extends from his sojourn in Rome to the beginning of his translations of the Old Testament from 382–390. During this period most of his work was dedicated to a Latin version of the psalms.

Between 390 and 405, Jerome gave most of his attention to a Latin versions of the Hebrew scriptures. He also wrote a number of tracts against his enemies in this period, including several diatribes against Palagius.

In the final period of Jerome’s life, 405–420, the biblical scholar wrote a series of biblical commentaries, including individual commentaries on the gospels.

Sources for the Vulgate Job

In addition to the obvious biblical sources (the Masoretic text, the Greek versions of Job, and the Old Latin translation), several other materials are important as possible sources in understanding Jerome’s approach to the book of Job. Some of these sources are his contemporary fourth- and fifth-century Christian writers, as well as Jerome’s writings in other contexts, particularly his sermons on the book of Job. A third group of materials that might illuminate Jerome’s view of Job are earlier patristic interpretations of Job in the first few centuries of Christianity. In Volume One, we discovered what I have called the Saint Job motif, that is, the propensity to enhance the importance of the patient, long-suffering Job of the prose at the expense of the iconoclastic Job of the poetry. Indeed, this tendency to see Job as saintly, as we have noted in Volume One, was the prevalent view of Job from the first century writing of the Epistle of James through the making of the Vulgate in the fifth century.

Two good examples of the Saint Job motif in Christian thinkers between the writing of James’ Epistle and the time of Jerome and Augustine are Tertullian, the Roman stylist converted to Christianity in 195, and Cyprian of Carthage who was also converted, sometime around 245, and martyred under Valerian in 258.

In chapter 14 of his essay, On Patience, Tertullian gives us a good look at the Saint Job motif:

Happy, too, was the man who displayed every manner of patience against every vicious attack of the Devil. His flocks were driven away, his wealth in cattle destroyed by lightning, his children killed in a single stroke when his house collapsed, his own body, finally, was tortured by painful sores—yet, by none of these was he lured from his patience.²

Indeed, he even embellished the tale a bit:

What a trophy over the Devil God erected in the case of this man. What a banner of His Glory He raised above His enemy when that man let fall from his lips no other word than Thanks be to God! as each bitter message reached him; when he severely rebuked his wife, who weary by now of misfortunes, was urging him to improper remedies. How God laughed and how the Evil One was split asunder, when Job, with perfect calm, would wipe away the discharge oozing from his ulcer and, with a jesting remark, would call back to the cavity and the sustenance of his open flesh the tiny creatures that were trying to make their way out.³

Tertullian ends chapter 14 with the familiar language of Job as Warrior/Athlete, a second important Christian motif explored in Volume One:

Thus did that hero who brought about a victory for his God beat back all the darks of temptation and with the breastplate and shield of patience soon after recovered from God complete health of body and the possessions of twice as much as he had lost. Had he wanted his sons to be restored, too, he would have once again heard himself called, father. But he preferred that they be restored to him on the last day; placing all his trust in the Lord, he deferred that joy.⁴

Tertullian’s affection for the Saint Job motif also can be seen in section III of his Flight in Time of Persecution. In this book, Tertullian exhorts persecuted Christians to stand firm against the evils of the Roman authorities. He once again offers Job as an example of patient suffering:

For this we have the example of Job, to whom the Devil could not have sent a temptation unless he had received the power from God to do so; nor could he have laid a hand on Job’s property unless God had said; Behold I give into your hands all things that are his, but on himself do not lay a hand. And the Devil would not have done even that unless, when he asked for this power later, God had said: I hand him over to you, only save his life.⁵

Tertullian does not answer the question about why an omniscient God would give the Devil this kind of permission, but Cyprian, in his Exposition on the Lord’s Prayer, does:

Power indeed is granted us in two ways: either for punishment when we sin or for glory when we are approved, as we seen was done with respect to Job when God made this clear with the following words: ‘Behold all he has done in your hands, only don’t put forth your hand on his person.’⁶

It is of some interest that both Tertullian and Cyprian (the latter in The Good of Patience and in his essay, On Morality) see Job as Saint Job: a blameless and upright sufferer who endures the onslaught of the Devil, as well as the slights and scorns of his wife, an unwitting agent of the Devil. It is likely that both thinkers were introduced to the man from Uz by reading the LXX and the old Latin version, both of which put great emphasis on the Patient Job.

Both Tertullian and Cyprian also emphasize the glory to come when Job’s endurance is finally sufficiently tested. It is almost as if these early Christians, themselves living in harsh times, unwittingly ignored the poetic portions of the text, with the exception, of course, of the important speeches of Elihu, in favor of a view of Job that might give them much consolation and hope.

One interesting example of the Saint Job motif in a fourth-century contemporary of Jerome’s was the view of John Chrysostom of Antioch, the only member of the School of Antioch whose orthodoxy was never challenged. In conscious opposition to the allegorical method of scripture employed by the Alexandrian School, the Antiochenas employed what today would be called a more grammatico-historical method.

John mentions the figure of Job throughout his homilies. In his Sermons on Matthew’s gospel, he presents the view of Job as a wrestler of self-denial, who practices freedom from all despondency. He was not affected by the loss of his wealth, for he did not desire it when it was present. In short, his life displayed an endurance firmer than any adamant.⁷

In another homily, The Power of Man to Resist the Devil, John created an analogy between Adam and Job, Eve and Job’s wife, and Satan and the serpent in the Garden. His conclusion gives us some sense of the power of the Saint Job motif in the fourth century.⁸ John suggests that Job’s wife’s temptation of her husband was considerably more difficult to resist than Eve’s tempting of Adam, yet, Job was triumphant and Adam was not.⁹ By the end of the homily, he calls for his readers to imitate the life of Job.¹⁰

Perhaps the most important and certainly the best known of John’s sermons were those delivered in Antioch in the late 380s. The circumstances surrounding the sermons are quite relevant here. The people of the city in 387 rioted against the imposition of what they saw as an unfair tax by the Roman government. In the melee that followed, statues of the Emperor were destroyed. In his homilies, John responds in the midst of this crisis.

What is significant about the sermons is that John exhorts the people to bear up with patience under what will surely be the violent retaliation by Emperor Theodosius. Throughout these sermons John repeatedly mentions the example of Job and his great patience and fortitude. But as in James’ Epistle and the Apocalype of Paul, it was the Job of the prose that is adduced in support of Job’s virtue,¹¹ the Angry, Iconoclastic Job looking too much like the rioters John was dissuading.

Another member of the Antiocian School, Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilia, also carried on the Saint Job tradition in the fourth and fifth centuries. Theodore, a friend and classmate of John Chrysostom, was excommunicated for his denial of the doctrine of original sin.

Theodore suggests that the book of Job could not have been the original version of the book because it was unbefitting a man who mastered his life with great wisdom and virtue and piety.¹² In an interesting way, Theodore held so tightly to the Saint Job point of view, that the Job of poetry is seen by him as being insufficiently pious to be labeled saintly, so Theodore assumes the existence of an earlier version of the text where Job was wise, virtuous and pious. Theodore also rejected the idea that the Epistle of James was a canonical New Testament work. The Epistle of James, of course, is the only place in the New Testament where the figure of Job appears.

The writings of John and Theodore, and earlier thinkers like Tertullian and Cyprian, are mentioned here, not so much because they acted as direct sources for Jerome’s understanding of Job, but rather to show that the Saint Job motif was alive and well when Jerome sat down to complete the monumental task of translating the text into Latin. Jerome, as we shall see, at least before the Pelagian controversy, saw Job in much the same way as other thinkers in the first centuries of the Christian tradition did: as pious, patient, and steadfast. For a more direct understanding of Jerome’s book of Job, however, we can turn to three other places where Jerome, before his making of the Vulgate, talks explicitly about the book of Job.

Jerome on Job in his Other Writings

The first of these sources is a letter written in connection to the controversy over the theological and philosophical view of Origen of Alexandria. In an acrimonious letter written against John of Jerusalem, a follower of Origen’s, Jerome testily discusses Origen’s denial of the concept of resurrection of the body. In this letter, Jerome cites Job 19:25-27 as proof text for resurrection:

No one since the days of Christ speaks so openly concerning the resurrection as he did before Christ . . . he knew and saw that Christ, his redeemer was alive, and at the last day would rise again from the earth.¹³

Before Jerome’s translation of Job, it should be clear he has a predisposition, despite his training in ancient Hebrew, to see the ambiguous 19:25-27 as proof for survival after death.

Four other texts may also elucidate Jerome’s preconceptions about the Job text. Homilies 6, 73, 88, and 91 all make reference to the figure of Job. Homily 6 deserves a quotation in full:

For those who love God all things work together unto the good. Job, a holy man was tempted; he lost his sons and daughters, his home fell into ruin; he lost everything he had; suddenly everything was gone. He was neither father, nor lord; nothing remained sound in his body save his tongue with which he could blaspheme. See the tempter, the devil. ‘From the sole of the foot,’ scripture says, ‘even to the top of his head he struck him with a grievous ulcer, that is, with leprosy. From the ulcer vermin spread over his entire body, and disease and putrification. Only his tongue the devil left untouched that he might be able to blaspheme God. In all these things Job sinned not with his lips.’ Just realize the magnitude of the temptation: reflect on the magnitude of the virtue. Ponder well and comprehend how the saying of the apostle has been fulfilled: for those who love God all things work together unto the good.’ When Job lost all his wealth, and when he lost his sons, everything seemed to militate against him, but since he loved the Lord, the evils that befell him worked together for his good. The vermin of his body were preparing for him the crown of heaven. Before the time he was tempted, God had never spoken to him; after he had been tempted, however, God comes to him and speaks familiarly with him, as a friend to a friend. Let calamity strike, let every kind of disaster fall, as long as after the catastrophe, Christ comes.¹⁴

One interesting facet of this quotation is the number of elements that do not appear in the Hebrew text. The notion that nothing of Job’s body remained sound but his tongue; that Job’s disease is leprosy; that vermin are attracted by his sores; and that the tempter of Job is called the devil, are all elements not appearing in the Hebrew book of Job. All but the first of these are features of the Septuagint version of Job.

Another significant feature of homily 6 is its stress on patience and fortitude as necessary virtues. Jerome makes this same point in connection with a discussion of Job in sermon 73:

The soul of blessed Job was a daughter of Judah. In the loss of his property, he consoled himself: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked I came forth from my Mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again—into dust.’ From a man of wealth he became a pauper; he lost all his property with his children, he was crushed under the weight of want and bereavement; finally, he reached the peak of misery and was struck by jaundice and an incurable ulcer—incurable to man, that is, but curable to God. What human medicine could not cure, patience and faith healed. He sat on a dung heap, but in his soul he was wandering about in paradise. With his entire body rotting, his tongue alone was spared, that with it he might blaspheme God. Do not miss the cunning of the enemy. In cruel plundering, he robbed a just man of his substance, took his sons in sudden disaster, and struck him with palsy and grievous ulcer. The devil left him nothing but his tongue and his wife, for her to tempt him, and for his tongue to blaspheme. The devil had not forgotten that old craftiness by which he deceived Adam through his wife, reckoning that he can always deceive man through woman, not considering that, because one man has been mortally wounded through a woman, now the whole world is saved through a woman. You remember Eve, but consider Mary, the former cast us out of Paradise, the latter leads us back to heaven.¹⁵

In addition to the elements mentioned in homily 6 (the tongue remaining intact, the leprosy, the vermin, Satan as a demonic figure), we also see a number of new features: jaundice, Job’s soul wandering in Paradise as his body sits on the dung heap; and the analogy of Adam and Job we saw back in John Chrysostom. In fact, a specific element of the analogy deserves some mention. Back in the Testament of Job, we saw the representation of the wife of Job as an unwitting agent of the Devil. Here Jerome suggests that the devil (Satan) employs women for that task regularly which perhaps tells us more about Jerome, or perhaps about his times, than it does about the Hebrew text, where the wife’s characters is left quite ambiguous.¹⁶ Another important feature of this homily is the tacit assumption that Job is a believer in soul/body dualism: how else would he separate his body and wander in Paradise? Both the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, of course, contain no hints of a belief in the possibility of a disembodied existence, but the Apocalypse of Paul and the Testament of Job clearly suggest a belief in the soul/body dualism. In homily 88, in conjunction with a discussion of Jesus’ birth in a manger, he mentions that Jesus was born on a dunghill in order to lift up those who come from it. He is born on a dunghill where Job, too, sat and afterward was crowned.¹⁷

There is nothing about Job’s birth in the MT. In this passage as well, Jerome seems to tie capacity for patience and fortitude to a notion of some grand reward beyond the grave, a feature we have seen in sources from the Christian appropriation of the Septuagint, through the Testament of Job, the Epistle of James, Clement of Rome’s First Letter to Corinth, and John Chrysostom. But again, this is a theme absent in the MT.

Jerome’s Translation of the Hebrew Book of Job

Given these early references to Job made by Jerome, one might expect that his translation relied more heavily on the Septuagint than he would like us to believe. But there are also areas of his Latin translation at odds with the LXX. Rather than a dung heap, for example as the LXX has it, Jerome returns in his translation to the more correct cinderheap in 2:8. In 42:16 where the Greek text adds a line about the certainty of resurrection, Jerome ends with a more direct translation of the Hebrew: et mortuus est semex et plenus dierum, (and he died old and full of days.) In the Greek text of 13:13 the translators hesitated to put words which in the original look blasphemous, while Jerome restores the text to the original meaning.

Jerome completed two different translations of the book of Job, one from the Septuagint,