Making a Drama Out of a Crisis? A Consideration of the Book of Job as a Drama *

Abstract

The article considers afresh whether the book of Job may have originated as a drama, as suggested by its three-act structure, and its use of the play-within-a-play device. It assesses its relationship to other early dramatic forms—tragedy, comedy and Semitic drama—and concludes that there is sufficient structural evidence to explore Job as a drama, thus opening the text up to new meanings and insights. The untheatrical drama of Job is then compared to the highly theatrical drama of Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play Six Characters in Search of an Author in terms of plot, character, dialogue, thought and enactment, allowing each text to illuminate the dramatic nature of the other. The concluding observation is that Six Characters enacts isolation, entrapment and a breakdown in communication; while the drama of the book of Job passes beyond this primal scream to reveal truths of incarnation and redemption.