ABSTRACT
The Book of Job, generated by an archaic civilization, a society no longer primitive, symbolizes the converse of the primitive notion of the trickster and also represents the origin of our own conceptions of good and evil. It is, so to speak, an ideological pillar of our civilization. The Book of Job, like Plato's Republic which was composed at roughly the same time, is bent upon denying human ambivalence and social ambiguity. Thus Job and Plato insist upon the obliteration of injustice. In both Plato and Job the relationship between the human and the divine is no longer played out in dramatic form, but is orchestrated in imposing intellectual dialogues which rationalize the very basis of our civilization. The key to an understanding of the Book of Job, then, is in the triumph of orthodoxy; the work is an awe-inspiring rationalization of God's ambivalent nature.
