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THOMAS F DAILEY, O.S.ES., The Repentant Job: A Ricoeurian Icon for Biblical Theology (Lanham/New York/London: University Press of America, 1994). Pp. xvii + 237. Cloth $49; paper 32.50.
BILL THOMASON, God on rial: The Book of Job and Human Suffering (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997). Pp. vii + 101. Paper $9.95.
Thomas Dailey applies the hermeneutic theory of P. Ricoeur to the Book of Job and finds the book's interpretive key in the seemingly discordant conjunction of Job's repentance (42:6) with Yahweh's emphatic commendation of Job's "God-talk" (42:78). D. begins with a nice synthesis of pertinent aspects of Ricoeur's thought. For example, the notion of narrative "emplotment" as the "configuration" of "disparate events into a meaningful totality" (pp. 22-23) prepares us to read the Book of Job as a "coherent whole" (p. 59), a "theo-novella" in which the problematic junctures between prose and poetry "constitute the intrigue of the tale" (p. 61).
The book's unifying theme, the debate over "theo-linguistics" (i.e., "God-talk"), is initiated in the prologue, carried over into the dialogue and "theologue," and resolved in the epilogue. Thus, the book is not to be read disjunctively as a work promoting irony, skepticism, or the failure of wisdom. On the contrary, it is the story of wisdom's triumph. Yahweh's speeches only "deepen, rather than solve," the mystery of existence (p. 94), yet they offer Job "a new modality for his theological understanding" (pp. 102-3). "With a bolt of theophanic help Job becomes a sage . . . an exemplar of wisdom for all ages" (p. 81).
Dailey offers a "novel translation" of Yahweh's questions in Job 38:2-3 and 40:2, and of Job's laconic responses in 40:3-5 and 42:2-6. He strives mightily to defuse Yahweh's words of any tone of "opposition" or...