0000000000994099
AUTHOR
Lawrence Besserman
Job in Literature
This classic counsel of despair is uttered by Job’s wife in the wake of all the evils which befall him (Job 2:9). It is preceded by the question, ‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity?’ Her words may have been motivated by bitterness over what she and Job had endured (the Septuagint and the apocryphal Testament of Job both give her a lengthy speech in which she catalogues their degradation). Possibly she felt that blasphemy would have sudden death as a consequence, and that this would put Job out of his misery. In any case, the import of her words is to question the value of ‘righteousness’ (cf. Tobit 2:11–14).
The Gospel of St John in Literature
‘Idou ho anthropos’ (Latin Ecce homo, ‘Behold the man’) are the words used by Pilate in presenting Jesus to the Jews, bound, scourged, crowned with thorns, and wearing a purple robe (John 19:15). Most interpreters of Pilate’s laconic statement have taken Ecce homo to mean, ‘Here is the poor fellow!’, the speaker’s rhetoric having the purpose of eliciting pity from the spectators, or contemptuously ridiculing the Jews for taking such a lowly and risible figure’s claim to kingship over them so seriously, or provoking them into demanding Christ’s release. Among those exegetes interested in drawing out the theological implications of Pilate’s pronouncement, some suggest that John here emphasize…