The Testament of Job

Summary

Genre, purpose, features

Beyond the biblical book which bears his name, Job is remembered both in the Old Testament (Ezek. 14:14, 20) and in the New (Jas. 5:11). Little wonder, then, that the fame of the heroic sufferer led to a Testament of Job, since the times abounded in ‘testaments’ attributed to a wide range of patriarchal worthies. As with other testaments of the hellenistic era, a particular trait of character is praised – patience, predictably, in Job's case.

Unlike many testaments, the TJob shows little interest in the future, though at times the vocabulary of apocalyptic surfaces. Nor is there found in the TJob that pessimism over the present state of the world which is so often characteristic of apocalyptic.

What does occur, however, is a high regard for the upper world such as later came to characterize Gnosticism – a blend of oriental mysticism with Christian thought, which thrived about the second to the sixth centuries. To this higher cosmic realm Job avows allegiance in spite of his woes. His three daughters enter the same upper world when they don charismatic sashes made from their father's belt-like ‘phylactery’, which had brought about his recovery from illness. By means of the magical sashes, the daughters speak in the tongues of angels.