Forum 4, R. 00-415 Universitäts-Prof. Dr. Isaac Kalimi Gutenberg-Forschungsprofessor für Hebräische Bibel und Geschichte Israels Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät Seminar für Altes Testament und Biblische Archäologie Saarstr. 21 Forum 4 55128 Mainz Telefon: 06131 39-26534 Telefax: 06131 39-26536 [email protected] http://www.ev.theologie.uni-mainz.de/3827.php http://www.gfk.uni-mainz.de/838.php Guest Lecture THE QUESTION OF JOB 26. Juni 2014 18 Uhr Forum 4, Raum 00-415 Sie sind herzlich eingeladen! Bitte senden Sie Ihre Anmeldung an mein Sekretariat: Beate Bechthold M.A. [email protected] The Question of Job Prof. Dr. Peter Machinist Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, Harvard University, MA, USA und zurzeit Gastprofessor für Kulturgeschichte des Altertums, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Münchner Zentrum für Antike Welten Dr. Peter Machinist is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages in Harvard University. In addition to being on the Faculty of Divinity, he is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, serving in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on the Study of Religion. Earlier, he taught in departments of religion or Near Eastern studies at Case Western Reserve University (1971-77), the University of Arizona (1977-86), and the University of Michigan (1986-90). He also served as visiting lecturer (1981) and Lady Davis Visiting Professor in Jewish History (2003) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is Visiting Professor at the Munich Center for Ancient Worlds of the University of Munich (201314). The University of Zürich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2009. His primary interest is in the cultural, intellectual, and social history of the ancient Near East, focusing particularly on ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible, and ancient Mesopotamia. Within this framework, his research and teaching topics include the ideology of imperialism and other forms of group identification; ancient historiography; mythology; prophecy; Assyrian history; and the history of modern biblical and other Near Eastern scholarship. Among his publications are Provincial Governance in Middle Assyria, „Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,“ „Outsiders and Insiders: The Biblical View of Emergent Israel and Its Contexts,“ „Fate, Miqreh, and Reason: Reflections on Qoheleth and Biblical Thought,“ „The Fall of Assyria in Comparative Ancient Perspective,“ „Biblical Traditions: The Philistines and Israelite History,“ „The Voice of the Historian in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean World,“ „How Gods Die, Biblically and Otherwise,“ and „The Road Not Taken: Wellhausen and Assyriology.“ Among his current projects is a volume of commentary on the prophetic book of Nahum, in the prestigious series, Hermeneia. This an effort to try to make sense of the structure and message of the present Masoretic Text of the biblical book of Job – to argue that this present text does in fact display a coherence of literary structure and of message, and does so by a process of progressively undermining what it says. The question, then, is whether anything is left to say after this process reaches the end of the book. I argue, yes, there is: the undermining clears out the underbrush of irrelevant questions about the nature of God, the justice of God, and the relationship of God to humanity. And once that underbrush is removed, one is prepared for another view of the divine-human relationship, which had already been forecast at the beginning of the book, but which could only be realized at the book’s end.