SOURCE: "The Case of Job," in Job: The Victim of His People, translated by Yvonne Freccero, The Athlone Press, 1987, pp. 3-18.

Girard is a French scholar whose critical studies include Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961; Deceit, Desire and the Novel), and La Violence et le sacré (1972; Violence and the Sacred). In the following excerpt from his critical study Job: The Victim of His People, originally published in 1985 as La route antique des hommes pervers, he examines the role of the community in Job's suffering.

What do we know about the Book of Job? Not very much. The hero complains endlessly. He has just lost his children and all his livestock. He scratches his ulcers. The misfortunes

of which he complains are all duly enumerated in the prologue. They are misfortunes brought on him by Satan with God's permission.

We...