“Oh, that my words were written down! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!” (Job 19:23-24)
“Oh, that my words were written down!
Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!”
(Job 19:23-24)
Having indeed been written down, Job’s words are found in one of the most fascinating books in the Bible and in world literature more broadly. In the centuries since its composition it has been read and re-read by believers and skeptics, each bringing their own assumptions and values to the text and having their assumptions and values challenged by the text. In this episode, Mark Larrimore discusses the origins, reception, and interpretations of Job’s story to the present time. Larrimore wrote a biography on the book of Job as part of Princeton University Press’s “Lives of Great Religious Books” series.
Special Episodes: “Lives of Great Religious Books”
This series of MIPodcast episodes features interviews with authors of volumes in Princeton University Press’s impressive “Lives of Great Religious Books” series. Leading experts examine the origins of books like the Book of Mormon, Genesis, or Augustine’s Confessions. They trace shifts in the reception, influence, and interpretation of these landmark texts. As the Institute’s mission statement suggests, we perform scholarly study of religious texts and traditions in order to deepen understanding and nurture discipleship among Latter-day Saints and to promote mutual respect and goodwill among people of all faiths. By looking at other religious texts from a variety of perspectives—worthwhile in their own right—we come to understand other faiths better, as well as our own.About Mark Larrimore
Mark Larrimore currently researches religious studies in China at Fudan University, Shanghai. He is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Eugene Lang The New School for Liberal Arts in New York. He teaches and publishes in the fields of the problem of evil, theory of religion, comparative ethics, and the effects of cultural and other forms of difference on the religious and ethical imagination. His latest book, The Book of a Job: A Biography (Princeton), was selected as Book of the Year for 2013 by Tom Ashbrook of “On Point.” He is also the editor of The Problem of Evil: A Reader (Blackwell, 2001), The German Invention of Race, with Sara Figal (SUNY, 2006) and Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms, with Michael Pettinger and Kathleen Talvacchia (NYU, 2014).
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