"I Was Exhausted as a Woman": The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job

J Bible Recept 2015; 2(1): 51–67

David Pettit*“I Was Exhausted as a Woman”: The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of JobAbstract: The Testament of Job is a Hellenistic reception of the biblical Book of Job written sometime between the first century BCE and first century CE. This paper is attentive to Hellenistic notions of the masculine ideal as one fused with notions of virtue, where gender corresponds to virtue more than to anatomy. Mas-culinity is a continuum on which one’s masculinity and virtuousness is subject to slippage. It is this dynamic that energizes and dramatizes the narrative of the Testament of Job: Job is engaged in a wrestling match to demonstrate his virtue, and to prevail over weakness and traits associated with femininity.

Keywords: masculinity; Testament of Job; virtue.

DOI 10.1515/jbr-2015-0003

1 IntroductionThe biblical Book of Job features a heavenly drama. Through the divine wager, Job’s world is laid in the balance while Job, who is the main character of the biblical Book of Job, continues unaware. His unawareness of this drama persists even as he suffers loss and pain, while he protests and complains of his fate, while he curses the day he was born, and pleads for a day in court. The Book of Job pro-ceeds through dialogues and speeches, culminating in the divine speeches out of the whirlwind. Job is then restored to his fortunes and family in the epilogue. The structure of the Book of Job and its inherent gaps invite the reader into Job’s strug-gles and the questions of justice, theodicy, and the relationship between piety, sin, and suffering. Whatever answer one finds to these dilemmas in the Book of Job, it is to be found in the back and forth, and from the interaction of the characters and their dialogues and speeches. Carol Newsom describes the structure of the biblical book as polyphonic or dialogic. Several voices exist unmerged. There is no final statement that draws these voices into a summary or conclusion. The Book of Job’s

*Corresponding author: David Pettit, Iliff School of Theology and University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, e-mail: dpettit@iliff.edu

Authenticated | dpettit@iliff.edu author's copyDownload Date | 7/6/15 7:10 PM

52 David Pettit

meaning is left embodied with Job and his experience, with the divine speeches echoing. There is no final declaration to resolve the lingering questions.1 The Tes-tament of Job, in contrast, leaves little to doubt. Important elements and echoes of the Book of Job remain in the Testament of Job, such as Job’s losses, Job’s wife, the three comforters who appear with similar names but as kings, Elihu, the judgment against the comforters for their speaking incorrectly, and Job being restored with wealth and children. The Testament of Job begins, however, not with the heavenly drama and the wager of Satan as in the Book of Job. Instead, Job gathers his chil-dren round him to teach them the virtue of patience [ὑπoμoνή], sharing the lesson of his life as he nears his end.2 Job’s words frame the narrative that follows by saying, “I am your father Job, fully engaged in endurance” (1:5).3

The Testament of Job is not about a Job who suffers passively, in ignorance and protest, with lingering questions and opaque answers as in the Book of Job, but rather a Job who willingly and knowingly brings about his own suffering, who thereby pursues endurance/patience [ὑπoμoνή] and who prevails as one who wrestles with Satan (27:3–5). The focus of this article is how the pursuit of patience/endurance as a virtue energizes and intensifies the Testament of Job, and how the Hellenistic notion of virtue merges with notions of gender. The drama of the Testament of Job derives not from dilemmas of suffering or theodicy, but rather from the slippage of gender and virtue.

Job, in the Testament of Job, tells his children the lesson of his life, of an idolatrous temple in Satan’s honor that he willingly leveled to the ground (5:2). He is warned, however, by an angel who speaks out of a bright light:

He will bring on you many plagues, he will take away for himself your goods, he will carry off your children. But if you are patient [ὑπoμoνή], I will make your name renowned in all generations of the earth till the consummation of the age. And I will return you again to your good. It will be repaid to you doubly (4:5–7).

Satan indeed attacks, striking at his family and his health, seeking to lead him to contempt. Job will prevail over Satan. He will then be affronted by his fellow

1 Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21–31.2 For the elements of the testament genre of this time, see John Joseph Collins, “Structure and Meaning in the Testament of Job,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, January 1, 1974, 35–40. I follow R.P. Spittler with the most likely place of authorship being Alexandrian Egypt, sometime between the first centuries BCE and CE, “Testament of Job” in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2013), 829–68.3 Where I provide English translations of the T.Job, these translations are taken from Spittler.

The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job 53

kings, reminiscent of the comforters in the Book of Job. Job again prevails, is rewarded with renewed family and wealth, and he grants inheritances to his children, including his daughters, upon whom he bestows special gifts. Written sometime between the first century BCE and the first century CE, the Testament of Job bears close connections with the Book of Job, and in particular the Old Greek4 translation.5 And yet, despite the Testament of Job’s affinities with both the Maso-retic text and the Old Greek, the Testament of Job provides a significantly different retelling, more fully situated in its Hellenistic context.6

Testament of Job’s Job competes as an athlete (4:10–11, 27:3–7). The sparring gives opportunity to demonstrate virtue.7 Though Job is presented as a pious man who shows hospitality and who cares extensively for the poor (10–12), the strug-gle with Satan will give opportunity to solidify and demonstrate his virtue. For, as

4 The Old Greek translation is hereafter referred to as OG.5 See Natalio Fernández Marcos, “The Septuagint Reading of the Book of Job,” in Book of Job (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1994), 251–66; Pieter W. van der Horst, “Images of Women in the Testament of Job,” in Studies on the Testament of Job (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 93–116; Christopher T. Begg, “Comparing Characters: The Book of Job and the Testament of Job,” in Book of Job (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1994), 435–45; Cees Haas, “Job’s Perseverance in the Testament of Job,” in Studies on the Testament of Job ( Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 117–54; Maria Haralambakis points out that of the central themes in the Joban tradition, the themes of the Patient Job (James 5:11), and Job the Wrestler are present in, and are owed in large part to, the T.Job, in The Testament of Job: Text, Narrative and Reception History (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 142.6 The Masoretic text of the Book of Job is likely written during the Persian period; late sixth century to mid fifth century BCE, C. L. Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), 39–45. The T.Job avoids the intellectual and psychological angst and turmoil characteristic of the Masoretic text’s Job, as well as the questions of God’s culpability. The T.Job is not as focused on God, nor the dilemma of suffering, but rather on Job’s pursuit of virtue. Already in the Old Greek translated in Alexandria, Egypt, dated to sometime in the mid second century BCE, God’s culpability and Job’s complain-ing character are tempered. Some contextualizing has taken place in the process of translation. C.L. Seow notes several types of changes. The Old Greek is about one sixth shorter than the Maso-retic text, eliminating some long and repetitive sections, and reads more literary than literal. Instances of “divine susceptibility to the Adversary’s ploy” are avoided. For instance, the “fire of God” that destroys Job’s possessions is rendered in the Old Greek as “a fire,” 111–2. Seow states: “Unlike Job in MT, Job in OG does not presume to know what is in God’s mind, nor does he imply that God means him ill. Rather, Job’s certainty is his faith in the omnipotence of God,” 113. Job is more humble and less combative with God. The Greek translation represents the beginning of Job being contextualized in a Hellenistic cultural setting. 7 The four cardinal virtues of the Greco-Roman world were prudence [ϕρόνησις], temperance [σωϕρoσύνη], justice [δικαιoσύνη], and courage [ανδρεία]. These are articulated by Plato, Phaedo. 69C, as well as Philo in Special Laws I.63–72. These virtues are consistent with what we hear in T.Job, but which is expressed in the language of patience and endurance.

54 David Pettit

Aristotle asserts concerning the virtue of courage, true courage is only that which has been tested in battle, while confronting the possibility of a noble death.8 Job will gain, through both wrestling with Satan and adversity, the opportunity to show true virtue: patience; “Patience [μακρoθuμία] is better than anything” (27:7). The clear emphasis of the Testament of Job is Job’s opportunity to demon-strate true virtue, for true virtue is tested virtue. Furthermore, undergirding and energizing the narrative is the unstable landscape of masculinity, and the con-stant energy required to attain to, or maintain, one’s masculinity/virtue.

In what follows, I frame the conception of gender in Hellenistic culture as being more of a continuum of masculinity rather than a dichotomy, where notions of virtue and gender become fused, and where one’s masculinity is not fixed, but is continually worked out and therefore subject to slippage and vulnerable to succumbing to the womanly. I then proceed by reading closely for the places of slippage in Job’s masculinity and virtue in Testament of Job 16–27. I then focus on Testament of Job 28–45 and Job’s encounters with his fellow kings, attending to the elevation of reason (the manly) over the temporal and earthly preoccupations of this world (the womanly). Finally I look at the exaltation of the daughters by way of Job’s vicarious masculinity and virtue in the final section, and their par-ticipation in his ecstatic state. What is highlighted through each of these sections is Job wrestling to achieve masculine virtue, reason, and a heavenly crown.

2 Gender as ContinuumWe can easily imagine, in the Hellenized context of Alexandrian Egypt, that the biblical Job who suffers passively and in ignorance, and who protests his treat-ment pleading for a day in court, would be reshaped. Characteristics such as pas-sivity, ignorance, and passion are the opposites of prized Hellenistic notions of virtue, and were associated with weakness and femininity. Testament of Job’s Job is an active sufferer, aware and enduring, in order to attain virtue and the crown of glory, and such activity and awareness are associated with Hellenistic notions of masculinity. Seneca displays a similar idealization of masculine virtue:

Do you wonder if that God, who most dearly loves the good, who wishes them to become supremely good and virtuous, allots to them a fortune that will make them struggle? For my part, I do not wonder if sometimes the gods are moved by the desire to behold great men wrestle with some calamity (Seneca, On Providence IV. 1–6).9

8 III.vi.6. Aristotle, Aristotle, XIX, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham, 2nd ed. (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926), 152–3.

Hardship makes for a greater man, and greater men rejoice in adversity, like a soldier in warfare (Seneca, On Providence IV. 1–6).10 The narrative of the Testa-ment of Job both reflects and is energized by this connection between adversity and virtue as well as the connection between manliness and virtue. Virtue and masculinity are to be sought after; they are not fixed and secure, but are rather subject to slippage.

Maria Haralambakis, in “‘I am not Afraid of Anybody, I am the Ruler of this Land,’” recognizes both the Testament of Job’s focus on manly endurance, as well as the presence of women characters who speak and act (Job’s wife who is named Sitis, Job’s door-maid, and his daughters).11 She, along with a number of commentators, has focused on the presence of women in the Testament of Job, calling attention to both the hegemony of masculinity and the consequent nega-tive portrayal of women.12 The Testament of Job has attracted much attention in this regard; largely because of the space it gives to women, in comparison to their sparse mention in the biblical Book of Job.13 Despite the larger role of female char-acters in the Testament of Job, the focus and positive portrayal is still reserved for the man Job. Haralambakis seeks to “call out” this hegemonic conception of masculinity, stating that “women are immediately visible as women (as ‘other’), but men remain invisible as men, because they are perceived as the norm, as the general human being.”14 Haralambakis, in emphasizing the negative portrayal of women and the masculine norm, risks obscuring two important aspects to the Testament of Job, which I focus on in what follows. The first aspect is the slippage

9 Seneca, Seneca: Moral Essays, Volume I, trans. John W. Basore (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928), 25–7.10 Ibid, 25–7.11 Horst notes that in comparison to the Masoretic text of the Book of Job where less than one percent speak of women, in the T.Job no less than 107 out of the 388 verses involve women (or in other words 28%), “Images of Women in the Testament of Job,” 94–5.12 Ibid.; Susan R. Garrett, “The ‘Weaker Sex’ in the Testament of Job,” JBL 112, no. 1 (1993), 55–70; Robert A. Kugler and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, “On Women and Honor in the Testament of Job,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 14, no. 1 (2004), 43–62; Maria Haralambakis, “‘I Am Not Afraid of Anybody, I Am the Ruler of This Land’: Job as Man in Charge in the Testament of Job,” in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and beyond (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Pr, 2010), 127–44.13 Horst, “Images of Women in the Testament of Job”; Emily O. Gravett, “Biblical Responses; Past and Present Retellings of the Enigmatic Mrs. Job,” BI 20, no. 1–2 (2012), 97–125. 96. Gravett gives attention to the expanded role of women and in particular Job’s wife being named. I disagree, however, with her conclusion that Sitis’ being named indicates a more dignified representation.14 Haralambakis, “‘I Am Not Afraid of Anybody, I Am the Ruler of This Land.’” 130.

56 David Pettit

of virtue in the Testament of Job. In describing Job as a “man in charge,” she portrays him as being stable and unassailable. The second aspect Haralambakis risks obscuring is the slippage of gender. Gender in the Hellenistic world is not a strict dichotomy of male and female, but a continuum. She risks treating the male and female as fixed categories; a dichotomy guided by modern constructs and assumptions of gender and a strict correlation between gender and anatomy. Gender, in Greek culture, becomes moralized, corresponding more to virtue rather than anatomy. As Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson write:

This hegemonic conception of masculinity was less a dichotomy between male and female than a hierarchical continuum where slippage from the most fully masculine to least mas-culine could occur. The individual male’s position on this precarious continuum was never entirely secure.15

Job’s manliness is neither unassailable nor a fixed category.Job is under attack, and must endure lest he give in to his circumstances, to

the irrational; lest he succumb to weakness – that is womanliness. To assert that Job is a “man in charge,” as Haralambakis does, is to obscure the places of slip-page, and that Job is vulnerable on the continuum of masculinity and virtue. At the same time, as seen in the final chapters of the Testament of Job, the female may too ascend in virtue by demonstrating manly characteristics and virtues.16 Philo even speaks of there being within the soul a male and female element, an inward conflict, always warring to nurture the male element, and hold in check the female (Philo, Spec. Laws III.178).17 Stanley Stowers states: “Gender hierarchy

15 Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 2 (1998), 249–73; See also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, Reissue edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New Ancient World Series; Routledge, 1989); Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 42–56; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 5–25.16 Virtue comes to be associated with manliness; the way for a woman to be virtuous is to become like a man. See Garrett, “The ‘Weaker Sex’ in the Testament of Job,” 57, 68–70. 17 Philo also speaks of an inward dichotomy in terms of the heavenly man and the earthly man in Allegorical Interpretation XII. 31–2. For discussion of the one-sex theory, see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Reprint edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space, Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series (London: T & T Clark International, 2004), 46–51.

lies close to the heart of the discourse of self-mastery. Life is war, and masculinity has to be achieved and constantly fought for. Men are always in danger of suc-cumbing to softness, described as forms of femaleness or servility.”18 Manliness is not assumed; it is pursued.

John J. Winkler confirms this notion of the sexes as poles of a continuum which one traverses. He states:

Thus, ‘woman’ is not only the opposite of a man; she is also a potentially threatening ‘internal émigré’ of masculine identity. The contrast between hoplite [the ideal male] and kinaidos [deviant] is a contrast between manly male and womanly male, and therefore rests on a more fundamental polarity between men and women. The cultural polarity between the genders is made internal to one gender, creating a set of infra-masculine polarities between the hoplite and the kinaidos.19

These Hellenistic notions of gender are particularly challenging to feminist aspi-rations of equality because the masculine is not only presented as the ideal, but the feminine, or womanly, is seen as a threat to that masculine ideal, and lacking in prized Hellenistic virtues.

The Testament of Job represents a fusion of Jewish and Hellenistic ideas. Though we hear many elements of the Book of Job, we can discern most signif-icantly a Hellenistic masculine ideal that stems from the language of the mili-tary, the gymnasium, and from Stoic philosophy. This ideal places the greatest emphasis on self-mastery, on action, on reason’s elevation over the senses, on courage, on endurance, and the agon.20 The undesirable end of this continuum consequently becomes associated with the womanly, with passivity, ignorance, preoccupation with the body, and with weakness.

3 “I Was Exhausted as a Woman:” Moments of Slippage (Testament of Job 16–27)

Job is a man in charge in the beginning of the Testament of Job. He is strong and known for his great generosity. He courageously takes on Satan for righteousness’

18 Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 45.19 Winkler, The Constraints of Desire, 50.20 Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans; Stowers, “Paul on the Use and Abuse of Reason,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 253–86; Victor C. Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif. Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, v. 16 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967).

58 David Pettit

sake, by tearing down the idol of his worship. Job’s introduction as saintly and manly frames the places where slippage can be seen. In the Greco-Roman context, one’s ability to dominate people or circumstances is closely connected to, and justified by, the ability to be the master of oneself, one’s appetite, and desires. Self-mastery is the definitive masculine trait.21 When Job endeavors to tear down the idol, the Lord reveals that, “if you attempt to purge the place of Satan, he will rise up against you with wrath for battle” (4:3). This act of outward dominance over the worship of the idol will lead to an attack on his person. Satan’s attack will be first on Job’s ability to have mastery of others, as seen through the diso-bedient door-maid, the friends who attack and plunder his possessions, his wife who grows weary and confronts him, and the kings who assault his sanity. But his mastery of himself will also be attacked. Satan will try to lead him to contempt: “He will bring on you many plagues, he will take away for himself your goods, he will carry off your children. But if you are patient [ὑπoμoνή], I will make your name renowned in all generations of the earth till the consummation of the age.” (4:5–7). If we grant that outward control is part of the value of self-mastery, of manliness, and virtue, then we can discern slippage already. Job is not a “man in charge” quite like Haralambakis has portrayed him once the battle is engaged.

The battle ensues between Satan and Job in Chapters 16–27, and Job suffers great loss in the ability to control others and one’s world. Satan retaliates and attacks Job in the realm of Job’s dominance: servants, children (the loss of), his wife, and his countrymen. The outward control of Job is dismantled. As the battle ensues it will turn toward inward control, its outcome dependent upon whether Job will be able to maintain his reason and his control over his passions. In the fol-lowing section (28–45), the kings’ attack will target primarily the level of mastery over his self, questioning the stability and sanity of his mind. But, if Job endures the inner battle on him with patience, God will restore him as a man of wealth and family, as well as bestow on him a heavenly reward.22

The vocabulary of manly virtue in the Testament of Job revolves around the idea of patience and endurance. There are three words used for patience in the Testament of Job: ὑπoμoνή, μακρoθuμία, and καρτερία. Cees Haas suggests that while these words are largely synonymous, they are not merely so, but bring particular emphasis

21 Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 250; Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 45–6; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2, 63–77.22 Kugler and Rohrbaugh argue that the main idea in the T.Job is about a proper response to loss of wealth and honor, and that the permanence of honor ascribed by God is greater than the tran-sience of acquired honor. Their thesis recognizes and works with a distinction between acquired honor (one’s position and status in this world) and honor ascribed by God for one’s demonstra-tion of virtue, “On Women and Honor in the Testament of Job,” 42–6.

in their contexts: ὑπoμένω meaning to stand firm under attack; μακρoθuμία indi-cating patient endurance, and καρτερία signaling stubbornness or toughness, employed in the context of Job’s wrestling and competing as an athlete.23 Together, this vocabulary accentuates the Testament of Job’s focus on the ability to undergo attack but to not be defeated, to withstand and to maintain one’s strength.

Brent Shaw explores the significance of ὑπoμoνή [standing up under attack] in the context of the Testament of Job and in 4 Maccabees. He says that in the face of persecution and martyrdom, ὑπoμoνή [to stand firm under attack] is used in the context of passive suffering. Though passivity is otherwise a feminine (negative) quality, the idea of passive suffering is transformed into a virtue of the martyr. The martyr withstands torture and suffering outwardly passively, while inwardly the martyr actively endures, and ultimately wins the battle by reason’s control over the passions.24 This paradigm can be seen in the Testament of Job, as Job’s ability to control his dignified world, as described in Chapters 9–15, is dismantled by Satan. His children have been targeted. His maidservant disobeys his directions. His fellow countrymen pursue and attack him and they begin to snatch up everything in his house (18:1–3).

Even though Job will ultimately win the inward battle, 18:4 reveals a concern-ing moment of slippage in virtue and gender: “I was unable to utter a thing; for I was exhausted – as a woman numbed in her pelvic region by the magnitude of birth pangs.” The battle Job is engaged in takes a dramatic turn. Far from being a passing simile, Job describes himself with womanly characteristics, expressing the level of devastation of his body, and the devastation that threatens to over-come his mind.25 As Susan Garrett writes concerning women in the Testament of Job, “A fundamentally negative view of females as preoccupied with that which is earthly and corruptible underlies the document from beginning to end.”26 Philo says “the male soul assigns itself to God alone as the Father and Maker of the Universe and the Cause of all things. The female clings to all that is born and perishes; it stretches out its faculties like a hand to catch blindly at what comes its

23 Haas, “Job’s Perseverance in the Testament of Job,” 118–34.24 Brent D. Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4, no. 3 (1996), 269–312, especially 281–4; The mother in 4 Maccabees is said to take her suffering “like a man,” illustrating both the manliness of such patient endurance as well as the ability of a woman to transcend her womanly traits, and to act out manly ones. See also Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 260, 265–9.25 Moore and Anderson write: “A standard feature of popular Hellenistic moral philosophy was the distinction between the man who is ‘stronger than himself,’ that is, able to rein in his pas-sions and appetites, and the man who is ‘weaker than himself’ that is, a slave to his passions and appetites (as such not fully a ‘man’).” “Taking It Like a Man,” 261.26 Garrett, “The ‘Weaker Sex’ in the Testament of Job,” 57.

60 David Pettit

way” (Special Laws 3.178, 586–587). The male and female are not a dichotomy for Philo as much as elements or forces within oneself. Not only are the activities of women associated with the transient matters of the body, with senses, with igno-rance, and a lack of discernment but the female is also associated with weakness and with passivity, as opposed to the values of strength, dominance, and activity. Philo writes in the context of sacrificial laws,

In the first place the victim of the whole-burnt-offering is a male because the male is more complete, more dominant than the female, closer akin to causal activity, for the female is incomplete and in subjection and belongs to the category of the passive rather than the active (Special Laws).27

In light of the Hellenistic gender continuum, and its fundamentally negative view of the womanly we understand that Job has faltered, at least for the moment.28

Job is taken to the mat in this wrestling match.29 This moment of slippage also parallels Sitis’ own preoccupation with the things of this earth, of her children, and of their burial (Ch. 39). Sitis, however, will not rise above her earthly and feminine preoccupation so easily, whereas Job will regain his composure.

Masculinity is not secure. Quoting Stowers again, “men are always in danger of succumbing to softness, described as forms of femaleness or servility.”30 Job, in this moment of intense attack, rather than exemplifying strength, bears a moment of weakness, of womanliness, a moment of slippage on the continuum of masculinity.31 However, Job remembers the battle foretold, as he is enduring

27 Translated by F.H. Colson, Philo: In Ten Volumes, The Loeb Classical Library, vol. 7 ( Cambridge, Mass.: London: Harvard University Press: W. Heinemann, 1929), 215. It should be noted that Philo’s works are not a systematic whole without conflicting nuances. This passage for instance, rings of a dichotomy more than a continuum; however on the whole, Philo’s thoughts seem to be in line with the conception of a continuum. 28 It is notable that this instance of Job being likened to a woman does not receive comment from Haralambakis and Garrett. Shaw comments that, though he reads the likeness positively, he sees it as a positive comparison with the endurance of a woman in childbirth, but gives no correlating examples of such a connotation, “Body/Power/Identity.”29 Stowers writes, “Both Greek and Roman values derive from societies that had been centered on military elites. The gymnasium continued to train boys in physical prowess, competitiveness, hardness, and insensitivity to pain and emotions long afer the Greek cities lost military power. Maleness was defined by the values of men at war and seen as the opposite of the female nature”, A Rereading of Romans, 49.30 , Stowers. A Rereading of Romans, 45.31 Though the Book of Job contains many examples of Job succumbing to pain, to complaint, protest and the like, it is the Hellenistic context and reshaping of the drama of the narrative to that context that sets the T.Job apart.

this moment of pain, and he gains a new perspective. His reason is able to subdue the passions and sense-perceptions: “I also considered my goods as nothing com-pared to the city about which the angel spoke to me” (18:8). While besieged, and his outward control over his family and property dissolved, he recovers from the shock to reclaim mastery over himself, his mind and his passions. Then Satan, “unable to provoke [Job] to contempt” (20:1), attacked his health. Again Job is overcome physically, cast from his throne by a violent wind. Though in great trouble and distress again, Job resolves to endure. He, covered in sores and worms, even picks up the worms that fell off and replaces them, resolving to let the suffering do its work for the attaining of patience. He will endure until he claims the promise the angel spoke to him.

The assaults continue, and in Chapters 25–26 they come through Sitis, his wife. Sitis here resembles the common conception of the feminine. She is por-trayed as weak, lacking the manly virtues of mastery and endurance: “In the weakness of my heart, my bones are crushed” (25:10).32 Job implores her to endure: “If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, should we not in turn endure [ὑπoμoνή] evil things?” (26:4). Furthermore, Job points out the nature of Sitis’ failure to endure, and in doing so highlights what he is warring against, what is at stake in this battle: “Do you not see the devil standing behind you and unsettling your reasoning [διαλoγισμóς] so that he might deceive me too?” Job’s reason and inner control are the aim of Satan, “For he seeks to make an exhibit of you as one of the senseless women who misguide their husbands’ sincerity” (26:6). Satan seeks to use her senselessness to misguide Job’s senses, his mind and reason, therefore moving him along the continuum away from masculinity, and closer to the womanly man.

Job’s resistance, his ability to endure, and his ability to see Satan’s tactics causes Satan to surrender. In the language of the agon, evoking the gymnasium and the continual measuring of oneself against another, Job defeats Satan.33 He does not defeat Satan in any physical manner, but in the battle of reason, and of endurance. “I became like one athlete wrestling another, and one pinned the other” (27:3), Satan says, “[b]ut because he showed endurance [καρτερία] and did not grow weary, at the end the upper one cried out in defeat. So you also, Job, were the one below and in a plague, but you conquered my wrestling tactics which I brought on you” (27:4–5). Job has demonstrated virtue in battle. Satan, now defeated and ashamed, leaves. At this point Job breaks from the narrative

32 Two Greek manuscripts (S and V) read: The weakness of my heart crushed my bones. (Spittler, “Testament of Job,” 850). For the manuscripts of T.Job, see Spittler, “Testament of Job,” 830.33 Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif. Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature, 21.

62 David Pettit

to address his children, and we hear an aphorism in praise of patience, advising Job’s children to be patient in everything that happens. This address to his chil-dren ends a major section (Chs. 6–27). Job has endured against Satan. The next round will come from his fellow kings.

4 Finding a Throne in the Upper World (Testament of Job 28–45)

The kings come to visit Job in Chapter 28, thus beginning the next round of his wrestling match, one where Job seems to be faring better. His fellow kings assail him, not by attacking his body or his possessions, but by questioning the stability of his mind. Eliphas sings a lament that chronicles the loss of Job’s possessions, stature, and honor, which begins by recounting how Job gave 7000 sheep for the clothing of the poor. The subsequent lines follow his descent until, “now you too have become a joke?” Each line is followed by the refrain “where then is the splendor of your throne?” While, Job was “a man in charge” before his adver-sity began, the kings now look at him and see a shambles, one whose manliness is diminished; they barely recognize him. Furthermore, because one’s mastery of others (the things and people inferior to one) is connected to one’s mastery of oneself, the kings now question whether Job is in control of himself, or if his mind has become unstable (35:4–6; 37:8; 36:6). In 35:4–6 we have a string of expressions assaulting Job’s mental condition: emotionally disturbed, mentally deranged, senseless, imbalanced, and sick.

Job will prevail through two fronts. One is by being above their game, and the second is by beating them at it. Job shows his mastery and manliness by no longer being distracted or consumed by matters of the flesh or this temporal world, which contrasts with Sitis’ obsession with having her children’s bodies receive burial. Instead, Job proclaims that his throne is in the upper world (33:3–5). He then says, “My heart is not fixed on earthly concerns, since the earth and those who dwell in it are unstable. But my heart is fixed on heavenly concerns for there is no upset in heaven” (36:3).

We hear of a divide between the physical world and the heavenly, echoing the reception of Platonic thought: the divide between this world and the ideal world, or the world of ideal forms. For Job will transcend this brute world in order to discern and place his hope in the upper world. Furthermore, he even has moments of breakthrough into the upper world. It is a world obscured to the kings and to Sitis, for they have no patience (28:5). They only see the upper world when Job causes them to see (40). We see in Philo similar ideas of the separation between this world

and an ideal world, as well as moments of divine frenzy, when one is able to break through and have unmediated access to the divine, to the upper world:

I feel no shame in recording my own experience, a thing I know from its having happened to me a thousand times. On some occasions, after making up my mind to follow the usual course of writing on philosophical tenets, and knowing definitely the substance of what I was to set down, I have found my understanding incapable of giving birth to a single idea, and have given it up without accomplishing anything, reviling my understanding for its self-conceit, and filled with amazement at the might of Him that is to Whom is due the opening and closing of the soul-wombs. On other occasions, I have approached my work empty and suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and being sown invisibly, so that under the influence of the Divine possession I have been filled with cory-bantic frenzy and been unconscious of anything, place, persons present, myself, words spoken, lines written. For I obtained language, ideas, an enjoyment of light, keenest vision, pellucid distinctness of objects, such as might be received through the eyes as the result of clearest shewing. (Migration, 7.34–35).

Job is showing some similar ability (or perhaps a gift from God, rather than ability) to break through the physical world to some heavenly sight and hope.

In addition to defeating his kingly opponents through his visions of the upper world, he beats them at their own game, the game of intelligence and riddles. Baldad says to Job, “if you are sound of mind and have your wits about you,” then explain the rising and setting of the sun (37:8). Job protests the question, again drawing a distinction between fleshly knowledge and heavenly knowledge. He then puts his own question to them, a rather comical one to the modern reader, about how the body separates liquids and solids upon being vacated, countering “[i]f you do not understand the functions of the body, how can you understand heavenly matters?” Job has drawn a clear distinction between these two realms, and has established himself as the one who can speak for both, because he has endured, because he has learned patience. In Chapter 40 Job will show them, the kings and Sitis, a vision of the heavenly realm where his children are crowned, upon which Sitis falls to the ground and worships the Lord. In what follows the kings are rebuked and forgiven by Job (as with the Book of Job), and then Job turns away from the narrative again, to address his children, thus closing the section (Chs. 28–45).

5 Like Father, Like Daughters (Testament of Job 46–53)

Job has endured. He has shown patience, and has been rewarded with earthly restoration as well as heavenly reward. In the final section (Chs. 46–53), Job gives

64 David Pettit

inheritances to his children, and most notably exalts his three daughters through the gift of multi-colored cords, perhaps to be understood as a type of sash or girdle. The meaning of these cords is unclear, especially as other textual variants render “the multicolored objects” (S) or “three cordlike aprons” (V); it is a string or cord in 48:1, a phylactery in 47:11.34 Despite the unclear meaning, it seems clearly connected to the three cords the Lord gives Job in 47:5, and perhaps to Job’s own sash in 52:1. The gift of the cords is significant in that it lifts the daughters higher in honor than Job’s sons; perhaps emphasizing the exalting effect of masculine virtue; swinging the daughters from one end of the continuum to the other. The daughters who are still demonstrating ignorance and a lack of understanding toward the gift in 47:1, now transcend the earthly to enter the ecstatic: “and they blessed and glorified God each one in her own distinctive dialect” (52:7).

The daughters’ ability to speak in angelic dialects is tied to the gift of the cords/sash; it bears special properties. However, it also shows the ability to transcend one’s womanliness. For just as Job shows his manly virtue by actively enduring in an inward manner, by transcending the pain and a this-worldly focus, and by discerning and entering into the upper world, so the daughters participate in this reality, even if it is a reality achieved vicariously through Job’s virtue. They will ascend on the continuum of masculinity, rising above their womanliness, to “gain a new heart” (meaning to enter the ecstatic state, 49:2), no longer minded on “worldly things,” and speaking ecstatically in the angelic dialect.

The elevating of the daughters and their positive portrayal has attracted atten-tion by scholars, particularly Peter van der Horst and Susan Garrett. The debate has been whether these chapters represent a further development and thus a later addition (Horst’s view), disjunctive with the prior portrayals of women, or a view of women consistent with the rest of Testament of Job (Garrett’s view), and thus consistently negative towards women. In keeping with the approach taken here, that masculinity and virtue is a continuum and not a dichotomy, then the portrayal of the daughters’ ecstatic experience of the heavenly is not at odds with what has come before. As I have argued, virtue/gender is not a binary, but rather a sliding scale.35 Furthermore, the focus of these chapters is still on Job,

34 Spittler, “Testament of Job,” 864.35 This motif of women taking on “manly virtue” is not a rare one. Philo, for example, who is quite negative towards woman, exalts Sarah and Leah as being paragons of virtue (Alleg. Interp. III.245, Migration XVII.95, XXVI.145). Philo says of the “all-virtuous Leah,” “She aims at being fa-vorably regarded, thinking praise due to her not only from thoughts masculine and truly manly, by which the nature that has no blemish and truth impervious to bribes is held in honour …” (Migration 95). It should be noted that Philo’s explanations regarding women are not unproblem-atic, at times representing the dynamics presented here, and at other times presenting women as

the one who demonstrated virtue. Just as he is granted a reward, he grants this special inheritance on his daughters. As Job is still the focus of the narrative, the daughters’ dramatic shift represents the swing that Job himself has undergone, from being stricken as a woman in pain, to one who has prevailed and who has transcended the limits of this world.

6 ConclusionThe Testament of Job bears a clear connection to the biblical Book of Job. There are numerous elements of the biblical Book of Job that are reflected or retained in the Testament of Job, but they do not carry the same force or significance (i.e., a one-line summary of God’s speeches, that Job forgives the comforters, etc.), because the focus and force of the Testament of Job is different. The clear empha-sis of the Testament of Job is the Hellenistic value of virtue, and Job’s opportunity to demonstrate virtue, for in order to be virtuous one must be tested. Further-more, undergirding and energizing the narrative is the unstable landscape of masculinity, and the constant energy required to attain to, or maintain one’s, masculinity/virtue. Virtue and gender become fused. Job must navigate this, which he does. In the course of the narrative, all others become foils to his pro-gress, as the other characters either lose the contest, do not endure or do not exhibit Job’s long-suffering and patience. They do not demonstrate virtue under adversity. The Testament of Job is an adaptation of the biblical Book of Job in its Hellenistic context, teaching of the importance of virtue, of patience.

Despite the Testament of Job’s distinctive retelling of the narrative, the recep-tion of the Testament of Job seems to be closely entwined with the reception of the biblical Book of Job. We see this reflected in James 5:11: “You have heard of the endurance [ὑπoμoνή] of Job.” Haralambakis points out that of the central themes in the Joban tradition, the themes of the Patient Job, and Job the Wrestler are present in, and are owed in large part to, the Testament of Job.36 The Testament of Job provides an alternative to the pervading dilemmas of the Book of Job, giving Job agency and ascendency, ascending to a God who will be pleased with virtue

allegory, or some blending of these two aspects. See Dorothy Sly, Philo’s Perception of Women (At-lanta, Ga: Scholars Pr, 1990). An additional and significant example of the motif of women being elevated with masculine traits is the mother in 4 Maccabees. She is praised for being “more noble than men in perseverance and more manly than men in endurance” [ἀνδρών πρoς ὑπoμoνήν ανδρειότρα]!” 15:28–30). See Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man”, 266.36 Haralambakis, The Testament of Job, 142.

66 David Pettit

and patience, rather than preoccupied with a wager with Satan. Perhaps it is this agency and active power in the Testament of Job’s Job that contributed to the Testament of Job being passed down in antiquity, and to its becoming entwined with the reception of the Book of Job. For in the face of the dialogic tension of the Masoretic text, and the pervading questions and pain of such seemingly unjust suffering, the Testament of Job redeems a God not so fraught with culpability, and a path that is clear, for “patience is more important than anything.”

Works CitedAristotle. 1926. Aristotle, XIX, Nicomachean Ethics. trans. H. Rackham. 2nd ed. Cambridge

Mass.: Harvard University Press.Begg, Christopher T. 1994. “Comparing Characters: The Book of Job and the Testament of Job.”

In Book of Job, 435–445. Louvain: Leuven University Press.Brown, Peter. 2008. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early

Christianity: Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press.

Charlesworth, James H. 2013. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Collins, John Joseph. 1974. “Structure and Meaning in the Testament of Job.” In Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, 35–52.

Fernández Marcos, Natalio. 1994. “The Septuagint Reading of the Book of Job.” In Book of Job, 251–266. Louvain: Leuven University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. trans. Robert Hurley. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage Books.

Garrett, Susan R. 1993. “The ‘Weaker Sex’ in the Testament of Job.” JBL 112 (1): 55–70.Gravett, Emily O. 2012. “Biblical Responses; Past and Present Retellings of the Enigmatic Mrs.

Job.” Biblical Interpretation 20 (1–2): 97–125.Haas, Cees. 1989. “Job’s Perseverance in the Testament of Job.” In Studies on the Testament of

Job, 117–154. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Haralambakis, Maria. 2010. “‘I am not Afraid of Anybody, I am the Ruler of this Land’: Job as

Man in Charge in the Testament of Job.” In Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and beyond, 127–144. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press.

Haralambakis, Maria. 2012. The Testament of Job: Text, Narrative and Reception History. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

Kugler, Robert A., and Richard L. Rohrbaugh. 2004. “On Women and Honor in the Testament of Job.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha (JSP) 14 (1): 43–62.

Laqueur, Thomas. 1992. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Moore, Stephen D., and Janice Capel Anderson. 1998. “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees.” JBL 117 (2): 249–273.

Newsom, Carol A. 2003. The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Økland, Jorunn. 2004. Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series. London: T&T Clark International.

Pfitzner, V. C. 1967. Paul and the Agon Motif. Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature. Supplements to Novum Testamentum, v. 16. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Philo. 1929. Philo: In Ten Volumes (and Two Supplementary Volumes). The Loeb Classical Library 226–227, 247, 261, 275, 289,320, 341, 363, 379–380, 401. Cambridge, Mass.: London: Harvard University Press: W. Heinemann.

Seneca. 1928. Seneca: Moral Essays, Volume I. trans. John W. Basore. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Seow, C. L. 2013. Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Shaw, Brent D. 1996. “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs.” JECS 4 (3): 269–312.Sly, Dorothy. 1990. Philo’s Perception of Women. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.Stowers, Stanley Kent. 1990. “Paul on the Use and Abuse of Reason.” In Greeks, Romans, and

Christians, 253–286. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.Stowers, Stanley Kent. 1994. A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles. New Haven:

Yale University Press.van der Horst, Pieter W. 1989. “Images of Women in the Testament of Job.” In Studies on the

Testament of Job, 93–116. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Winkler, John J. 1989. The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient

Greece (New Ancient World Series) 1st ed. by Winkler, John J. Published by Routledge Paperback. Routledge.

Article note: I would like to acknowledge the input of others towards development of this article. This article has benefited especially from the input of and dialogue with Pamela Eisenbaum, Daniel M. Yencich and Benjamin John Peters.

"I Was Exhausted as a Woman": The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job

Documents

Transcript of "I Was Exhausted as a Woman": The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job

Patriotism as an Environmental Virtue

The Nature of Virtue

The interfacial slippage of paper during blade metering

Civic Virtue and Socratic Virtue

Jertfa si pocainta in vechiul testament

Preachers Manual in New Testament Studies

Ephesians MacArthur New Testament Commentary ...

Problems for virtue theories in epistemology

Aristotle’s Account of the Virtue of Justice

Apresentacao Virtue Coaching

The New Testament Use of the Old Testament

NEW TESTAMENT - SMU

AUGUSTINIAN VIRTUE IN THE DICKENSIAN WORLD

processual slippage: an exploration of a painting project making

Virtue Ethics and Right Action: A Critique

Modeling and control of planar slippage in object ...

Exégèse Ancien Testament

CONVERSATIONS DANCE STUDIES - SLIPPAGE@Duke

INTRODUCTION TO READING THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Virtue of Simplicity