Traces of the Tragic Anti-Heroe in the Enigmatic Wife of Job? The Biblical Re-use of a Classical Dramatic Form

Abstract

There are many analogies between the great protagonists of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek heroes of the archaic epic poetry, and the heroines of the classical theater. In particular, the figure of the wife of a right man – victimized and misunderstood precisely because of his unconditional faithfulness – is very close to that of the anti-hero of Sophocles’s theater, which strongly objects to the hero choice in name of the mentality of the common man; in both cases, the result is just the opposite of expectations, since it confirms the choice of the righteous/hero, helping to increase even more his isolation. On this literary form, the character of his wife might therefore have been placed in the story of Job; in fact, she was absent from the ancient legend that is the basis of the prologue and the epilogue, of the biblical book. The Old Greek (OG) attests clearly that by its addition (v. 9a-e), by means of which, a little later, the intervention of Job’s wife was defined more favorably, and making her a kind of anti-heroine, on the dramatic scheme of the antagonism of Ismene and Chrysothemis against their respective hero, in the tragic theater of Sophocles. The Testament of Job appreciated this choice, and deepened the role of woman, by reworking even more benevolently her image appearing in the OG addition.