The Male Soul in Drag: Women-as-Job in the Testament of Job

Abstract

Scholarship has interpreted the emphatic presence of female characters in the Testament of Job as an extended literary device, symbolizing the limitations of a feminized humanity. The female characters have been understood as foils to Job’s superiority; their only function, to enhance through negative contrast Job’s virtue and spiritual knowledge. Yet the text encourages a reading of the women as representations of several aspects of Job, as figures that mirror his struggles and victories. This article offers a close reading of the function of the female characters-as-Job. It concludes with some reflections on analogous literary traditions whose female characters function similarly, in the context of feminist biblical studies.