Job (The Anchor Bible, Vol. 15)
This third edition of the Anchor BibleBook Of Job(Volume 15 in the series) contains numerous new, revised or augmented  notes.  Of special interest is the inclusion of readings from the  earliest translation of theBook Of Job, the recently published  Targum (Aramaic translation) recovered from Cave XI of Khirbet Qumran,  in the Judean Wilderness near the Dead Sea, perhaps the version which  was suppressed by Rabbi Gamaliel.TheBook Of Jobis one of  the indisputably great works of world literature.  The story is  well-known:  a prosperous and happy man, distinguished for rectitude  and piety, falls victim to a series of catastrophes.  And the occasion  (if not the reason) for these undeserved calamities:  Satan's challenge  to Yahweh to test the sincerity of Job's faith.It is by now  proverbial to refer to the patience of Job.  Yet this traditional image  derives only from the Prologue and the Epilogue of the book.  But the  Job who confronts us in the long middle section is anything but  patient.  His outcries against God raise the question of theodicy, or  divine justice, which occupies the greater portion of Job's Dialogue  with his comforters.But it is inevitably as literature thatJobmust be read and enjoyed.  This translation is marked by a  concerted effort to capture as much as possible the poetic and metrical  characteristics of the original Hebrew:  the result is a version  notable for its accuracy and directness. The experience of reading theBook Of Jobin this translation, then, is to rediscover an  exceedingly eloquent masterpiece.  In the terse, rhythmic quality of  the translation, the incisive comprehensiveness of the introduction and  notes,Jobmaintains the high standard of scholarship,  literateness, and readability established in The Anchor Bible.